I have this diary blog. Sometimes I want to read the posts in chronological order, instead of reverse chronological order.
I think both orders have their uses:
chronological: to read posts one after another, for those who want to get updated after a long break
reverse chronological: to read the latest posts, for those who are up to date
How can (or could) this be accomplished?
I could think myself of a plug-in, but I don’t see any, like a calendar, or a footer underneath posts, containing a link to the next (and previous) post.
Another—klugy—solution I can think of is putting in the body of a post links to the next post in chronological order. This seems a lot of work and easy to miss by a reader (unless you put it both on the top and the bottom, and even then).
A third solution, with which I’m going until I’ll find something better, is to create a page with the contents of the /archive page, but with the posts reversed. I do a view source on the /archive page, copy the HTML, strip the non-posts bits, remove the padding in the text (like TAB characters), so I’m left with each description on its own line. Next, I convert it into MarkDown (I used iOS Drafts and an action called “HTML > MarkDown”), and then share it to a Pythonista script that reverses the lines and copies the result to the clipboard, which I paste into a new document. So yeah, still a kluge.
I suppose it’s a tricky solution, @Moondeer There are many different readers. Some just like to browse, others want to read every post, from the beginning, yet others are interested in particular subjects (not always covered by tags or search), etc.
Giving all those different readers a way to access and navigate a big body of text chopped up into posts, is both a librarian’s task, as will it be a compromise.
Even Google hasn’t cracked it, with suggested articles that are related to a current article or search phrase. And of course, Google’s motives aren’t pure, either, wanting to earn from both content creator and consumer.
You have to change your index page or archive page for sort order. It’s not that hard. My blog is reverse chronological by day-- so within a day the post are chronological but the days are grouped in reverse chronological order.
This is my index.html to achieve this:
{{ define "main" }}
{{ $posts := where site.RegularPages "Type" "post" }}
{{ $grouped := $posts.GroupByDate "2006-01-02" }}
{{ $paginated := (.Paginate ($grouped)) }}
<div class="content list h-feed">
{{ range $paginated.PageGroups }}
{{ $thedate := (time .Key) }}
<h1 class="day"> {{ $thedate.Format "January 2, 2006" }}</h1>
{{ range .Pages.Reverse }}
{{ if eq .Type "post" }}
{{ partial "post_header.html" . }}
<div class = "post-content e-content">
{{ .Content }}
</div>
{{ partial "post_footer.html" . }}
{{- end }}
{{ end }}
<hr>
{{ end }}
</div>
{{ partial "paginator.html" . }}
{{ end }}
May not be hard for you, @jsonbecker for me this is gobbledegook. I’m not a web developer, just a MB user. I have no idea how it works, nor how to modify it for my own use.
@sod What is this ”Slack” thing referred to in the article? I tried to sign up, but it failed somehow. Also, there are sooo many steps, it’s just too much for me.
If this signing up for Slack (whatever that is) already fails, I’m not even going touch my current theme, since it will certainly fail and break my MB.
The Slack no longer exists. This board is the replacement of that space.
That said, the short answer is, “Yes this is possible, but it requires being able and willing to modify your theme and customize it, which is not a beginner level task.”
For a plugin to do this, I believe it would have to be written to the specific micro.blog theme that you are using.
Thanks so much! I noticed already that many of the older articles can best be ignored, especially those with missing images. I suppose every time the backend of MB changes, many help articles in this forum should either be upgraded as well or deleted. It will only confuse beginners like myself.
So @jsonbecker it seems one can’t control much of MB through the settings; it has to be done through templates. Any tips how to learn that, with no desktop nor laptop available to me? The documentation on gohugo.io is pretty sparse, as is usually the case with floss software.
I think Miraz tutorials, linked above, are excellent resources as they are tailored for Hugo in a Micro.blog context. But, there’s also video tutorials, like this one by Mike Dane, and books, like Hugo in Action and Build Websites with Hugo. So, hopefully, you can find a resource out there matching your preferred way of learning.
A tip is to set up a test blog. You get one for free on Micro.blog. It’s nice to have a dedicated place for testing out ideas and break things without consequences.
I don’t think it’s outdated. Let’s get through this together, one step at a time. If you go back to the tutorial and scroll up a bit, you will see the following paragraph:
Help! My theme doesn’t have the line for a custom favicon. No problem: copy this line: <link rel="shortcut icon" href="https://{{ .Site.Author.username }}.micro.blog/uploads/yyyy/nnnnn.png" type="image/x-icon" /> and paste it in to head.html as in the screenshot below.
I guess I’m just bad at following instructions, or rather, understanding instructions. Story of my life.
Also, it didn’t work. I tried on my iPad reloading several times, private browsing mode, and another browser (iCab). Both showed the standard favicon of MB.
Since I don’t know what I’m doing, I also don’t know what I’m doing wrong.
I suppose modifying templates is just not for beginners, and neither are the video tutorial, nor the books suggested. It seems one needs to have some experience with web development. I have none.
Maybe, but I would argue that the opposite is true. Modifying something – instead of building from scratch – can be a viable path to acquire a new skill. For example, instead of designing and building a house as a first project, one can learn the ropes on an existing home. Paint a ceiling, install laminate flooring, build an interior wall, tear another one down, and so on.
As I touched on earlier, we all prefer learning in different ways. The already linked resources may be balanced wrong according to your current skills and previous experiences. As I don’t know you or how you learn, it’s a bit of a challenge to recommend resources.
I’m sure of one thing: no human being is born with the skill of building Hugo Templates. I’m also pretty sure you can do this!
But you can also ask yourself: is this something I need to or want to learn? What’s the goal? Is it to learn something new and have fun doing it? Or is it to have a page listing your blog posts in chronological order?
If it’s the latter: you could just have someone else do it for you.
All that said, I would love to figure out what’s going on. Send over a link to the blog in question, and I will take a look.
The question rather is, is there a platform that better suits my needs? I’m not married to the idea of using micro∙blog as my sole blogging platform.
I’m a blogger, not a front end web developer. I have little interest in becoming one, since it’s rather an investment.
For starters, from a brief overview on W3Schools, I gathered one needs a computer with a windowing OS, like a Mac laptop. It just doesn’t cut it with an iPhone:
That’s contrary to my wish to reduce my dependency on digital equipment as much as possible, and why I opt for a managed blogging solution rather than rolling my own.
In short, I’m stuck with the tools provided. My crummy solution with reordering the /archive page offline and splitting the result up in years is about what I’m able to do, it seems.
Modifying a template is just too finicky and easy to get wrong. Writing a plug-in seems well beyond my capabilities and skill level. So both of those aren’t options for me.
If you go back to the tutorial and scroll up a bit, you will see the following paragraph:
