Autopagination Wiping Out Monthly Archive Access
A few days ago I wrote about Blogger's new "Autopagination," which unilaterally limits the number of posts and/or images allowed on a Blogspot blog's "front page."
For instance, instead of a week's worth of posts, as I've had for the last 4-1/2 years, roughly four days at a time are now showing. Click the title of this post for my original post on this topic.
I just discovered, thanks to another blogger's post, that this new program is also wiping out the ability to scroll through monthly archives! For instance, if you click on my February archive, half the posts are gone; you can only access back to February 15th. Roughly the first half of every month appears to be inaccessible via the archives.
If you search for an individual post from early in February, for instance THE MAGIC OF ORDINARY DAYS from February 7th, you can still pull it up, but there is no longer a way to simply browse old archives if you don't know what you're looking for. (I wonder how, if at all, the "vanishing archives" will impact Google searches...)
This lack of ability to scroll through archives is particularly problematic since Blogger is reducing the amount of posts available on the blog's front page! It's really not acceptable for Blogger to unilaterally "hide" half a blog's past content in this manner.
Perhaps changing the editor and being able to have an "older posts" button at the bottom of the page will be a workaround for accessing older posts in the archives, but in the meantime it's frustrating.
It's inexplicable to me why Blogger has suddenly taken a format which has worked beautifully for years and "broken" it with their so-called "fix." I sincerely hope Blogger will consider removing the autopagination program and resume the model which has been a success for so long.
posted by Laura @ 9:15 PM
6 Comments:
For some reason the way I have my archives on my sidebar works pretty well and doesn't hide all of my posts- I don't know what the difference is (or what blogger is doing behind the scenes maybe).
I have my blog archive added as a "gadget", called "Blog Archive", from the blog layout page. I don't think I am using the one on the settings page. Is that different from your layout/setting page?
I'm a bit mixed on this new change. Blogger is punishing those bloggers who have pages that are way too big. Several really large individual posts on one page make it difficult to download for users. So with a KB limit, the pages are easier to download. I know that with the blogger who stole my content, it took me forever to download his site because he had so many images on one page. But this is also punishing those users that have nicely packaged posts with text and a few images, but don't overload their page with lots of junk.
http://buzz.blogger.com/ -> They also claim people will get more pageloads. I'm not sure I like that all that much. It's going to skew my visitor data!
I know that when I find a new blog, I like to use the "Older Entries" feature and page through the site rather than going through monthly archives. To me it's a lot easier than downloading month by month. So for you, it may be better to upgrade to the new editor for that kind of pagination.
As for archiving, you may want to consider changing to Weekly instead of Monthly archiving. I see that's an option with Blogger.
Hi J.C.! My Archives are set up under the "Archiving" tab of Blogger's "Settings." It's simply a box I click to "archive monthly." Then under "Formatting" I choose how the archive dates will look (i.e., "March 2010").
I haven't seen anything about "gadget," but maybe I'm looking in the wrong place? Or maybe it's my editor? Hmmmm.
Thanks for the feedback!!
Best wishes,
Laura
Hi Raquelle, I really appreciate your generosity sharing your time to give me these ideas. The technical aspects are a bit of a challenge to me (grin), and I've been happily sailing along with my blog pretty much unchanged since Day 1, other than updating the blog roll. I just recently figured out how to preschedule posts! LOL.
I'm definitely going to give updating the editor a whirl, either this week or perhaps I'll wait till next weekend, when my daughter is home from college on spring break, so we can walk through the process together.
The weekly archiving sounds like a possibility as well, in order for the posts to again be "visible" -- although it's kind of ironic, I've been blogging so long that would fill a lot of space on my sidebar which I would think would make the page take longer to load? I'll change the editor first and see if that changes the archives access as well (i.e., if there's then a button to scroll back through the earlier part of a month's archives).
In any event I can see I'm going to have to take my tech know-how to the next level at this point!
Thank you again so much for the ideas and encouragement!
Best wishes,
Laura
Not sure Laura- when I sign on I go to "Layout" and see blocked out version of my layout titled "Add and Arrange Page Elements"- under the sidebar section I can click "add a gadget" and it will bring up a list of different blogger gadgets. The Archvies one is near the bottom I think. I clicked on that and it gives me a Blog Archives box where I can drag to whereever I want it on my layout. But you might be working under a different editor. Blogger has never been entirely clear about everything they do which makes it a frustrating system to use sometimes.
Hi J.C.! It must be my editor as I don't see anything such as you describe, i.e., "layout," on my end. Perhaps that will change when I switch from "Old Editor" to "Updated Editor"? (I just haven't "pushed the button" yet there because I'm not sure how time intensive it will be to get up to speed on the changes...)
Thanks again for your input, I appreciate it very much! It's very nice to know I'm not so alone while figuring this stuff out --
Best wishes,
Laura
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