If you’re a blogger, I’d encourage you to create your own easy-to-locate, visible Archives page and organize it by categories of your own choice. Let me ‘splain what I mean and why.
When I first starting reading blogs, I sometimes wanted to go back and read the previous posts of a particular blogger. The problem: It was almost impossible to find and sort through their earlier posts.
Some blogs have a side-bar (sometimes labeled “archives”) where you can read posts by the month-and-year they were written. I’ve always found those clumsy and unhelpful. The blog posts aren’t labeled or categorized.
Other blogs have a side-bar of a few categories listed, but then you have to sort through each category to find an interesting post. That often means sifting through reams of text before you find a post you want to read.
Other blogs have no such navigation, and you’re at the mercy of scrolling to the bottom of each screen only to click the “previous entries” link ad infinitum.
None of this works for me. It’s too time-consuming. And this is the case with many blog readers as well.
Soooo . . . to help people navigate quickly and easily through what I’ve written in the past, I’ve created my own “Archives” page. And it’s organized into seven categories that I formulated myself.
The Archives page has the following categories with the blog posts neatly listed underneath each. These seven categories sum up what my blog is all about:
- God’s Grand Mission
- Deeper Christian Life
- Missional Organic Church
- Rethinking the Status Quo
- Writing, Productivity, and Creativity
- Humor
- Reviews
Every time I write a new post that gets decent traffic, I manually add it to the Archives page.
While the Archives page doesn’t feature every blog post I’ve written, it features the most popular. I’d estimate that 90% of what I’ve written is listed there.
If you’re new to the blog, I hope you find the Archives page of help. And if you’re a blogger, I’d encourage you to create an Archives page of your own, organized by your own tailor-fitted categories.
You’ll quickly discover that many of your older posts will suddenly receive fresh traffic. A good thing, especially if you’ve labored hard on a particular post. An Archives page can help prevent such posts from being lost and forgotten forevuh.
Hi Frank,
I put together my archive page as you suggested and it has already paid for my time. Several of my older posts that don’t get much traffic any longer received many views yesterday. So thanks again for the tip.
Jim
Hey Frank, I’m all for helping people quickly and easily find past blog posts. I’m not seeing much difference between the automated way WordPress manages categories and the manual archives you’ve created. If “90% of what I’ve written is listed” in the archives, why not create those 7 categories in WordPress, check the appropriate category before publishing the blog, and let WordPress create the archive for each category automatically?
Paul: Good to hear from you! I personally like the lay-out of the manually created Archives page much better. For one thing, all the blog posts can be viewed on a single page. Also, for someone who has been blogging for awhile, I created new categories that better sum up the blog. So the 7 categories I’ve created aren’t reflected on the original categories that WordPress used when I first started blogging. I also think a single Archives page is much cleaner looking than the ones WordPress creates auto. Your mileage may vary of course.
Another useful way is to include a “Search” facility in the blog.
Cajetan: “Search” is helpful when you’ve read a post and can’t find it. But it’s pretty unhelpful if you want to see what a blogger has written previously. That’s where the Archives page comes in.
Thanks for a great idea.