Luke Davis


Chronological ordering of posts is good actually

Filed under: blogging | writing

Here’s the deal: whether you like/dislike chronological ordering of posts, that’s cool for you and since it’s your website, you do whatever works for you. But claiming that chronology is the anthesis of information discovery isn’t completely true because look at how people reacted when Twitter stopped offering chronological ordering of the timeline by default. Maybe there’s an argument to suggest chonology has been thrusted on people and because they’re so used to it that it feels natural when it isn’t. Ordering books in a library or DVDs in a shop by release date vs. alphabetical order would seem weird but when it comes to blogs, it serves a valuable purpose.

Chronological ordering of posts gives the reader a timeline of someone’s thoughts changing and growing over time. What did they discuss in a certain time? What did they say about it? Did they return to those moments in the future? Not all posts are thematically connected over time but they form a thread of consciousness and how someone writes.

If you’re looking for something specific, maybe you could do a Google search or the site owner has tags or some kind of categorisation to sift through. It seems ironic to extol the virtues of discovery and only offer one way and say another popular one is wrong.

I don’t have search on this site so instead I have different avenues of discovery with tagging that feeds into my digital garden. And if that doesn’t work for you, there’s always a Google site search.

What we don’t need in an era of claiming “blogging is back” is giving people a million and one different definitions of what a blog is/isn’t, what a digital garden is/isn’t and how they’re either the same or different. How does that help newcomers? The number of frameworks and static site generators is overwhelming and we need smoother transitions away from exclusive social media use or Substack newsletters. Let’s welcome people instead of throwing things at them. It’s more than just “get a website”.

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