One of the features of a blog is that the posts appear in reverse-chronological order – that is to say, with the latest content first. But there are times when that might not always be appropriate. Let me give you an example.
I’m planning a series of blog posts on a certain topic. Current subscribers and regular readers will spot them as they come in, but what about comers to the party? One way of grouping all the posts would of course be to stick them all in the same category. But all the posts will be displayed in traditional reverse-chronological order, meaning folk have to work their way from the end to the beginning, or dig around for the first post in the set.
There is a way around this though, which can be achieved by fiddling around with the URLs you use. Let’s take the posts on DavePress within the blogging category as an example. The traditional view of the posts can be found at http://davepress.net/category/blogging/ which has the latest at the top. Compare that with the results of http://davepress.net/category/blogging/?order=asc (note the ?order=asc at the end). This view of the posts put them in chronological order, starting at the beginning.
You can apply this to any view of your posts, including the home page, and tag and author views. There are other options too, including sorting posts or pages alphabetically. If you really wanted to, you could also incorporate it into your theme, making such presentation an integrated part of your blog.
I’ll be using it to help promote the blog series I’m planning. By circulating the URL including the extra bit to reverse the post order, people will be able to find themselves at the beginning and work their way through without excessive scrolling just to get started.
Am sure there are other uses this could be put to – any thoughts?
