The Blog as Journal

A downside is that most blogs scroll off into nowhere. At the end of the front page of the blog, there's a jarring change of format. Instead of continuing to scroll through entries, just tapping the ol' spacebar to see what's next, most blogs leave the reader with no place to go. There's not even an up-arrow labeled "Back to the top." This is analogous to reading a book and, at the end of the first chapter, instead of leading to the second chapter, you are confronted with the Index and have to figure out what comes next.

The last line on the first page of Internet Time Blog reads "More! Click for Page Two." Page 1 displays the dozen most recent entires, page 2 the next twenty entries, and page 3 the following thirty entries.

The Blog as Reference

I pigeon-hole this more lasting stuff into twenty topics. Examples are "Time", "How People Learn", and "First Principles." That last one has been evolving for decades. When something new grabs me, I may post it as a comment to the topic. Recently I added a quotation to the First Principles topic:

"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while the wolf remains of a different opinion." -- W.R. Inge

Every now and again, depending on the volatility of the topic, I harvest the best individual posts and insert them into the topic pages.

In addition to the topics, I categorize posts along similar lines, e.g. "Blogging", "Books", "Customer Care", "Collaboration", etc.

So?

Blogging is an immature form that has yet to evolve very far from its geeky roots. The structure of most blogs accommodates their writers more than their readers. It's time for bloggers to share their goals with their readers. Those golas should inform the way bloggers structure and maintain their blogs.

I'll show some examples in the continuation below.

P.S. These are some of my thoughts about public blogs. I'll take up confidential blogs in a subsequent post.

Here's the home page of Internet Time Group. I moved the Blog into prime position when timeliness started to become more important on the web than permanence. Readership has grown from 300 visitors a day to several thousand. Fresh content attracts interest.

My home page has three basic sections. Most of the time, the Blog is the only thing I touch; the other parts generate themselves. I often create new entries in wBloggar or EditPad because they're easier to use -- and less likely to crash and vaporize my input.

The last line on the first few pages invites the read to continue reading.

Topic pages summarize a score of more lasting reference subjects.

Some topics rarely change.

Others, like Articles, change at least once a month.

As with any Blog, this is a perpetual work in progress.