Logs

# One thing I like that Dave Winer does on his blog is have posts listed chronologically for any given day - you start the day at the top and read down in time order. We read top to bottom normally so it's natural.

So I've been toying with the idea of a "Today" page to list just the posts from, well, today in chronological order then, maybe, having it as the front page of the blog.

It's easy enough to create a custom WP_Query to do this but I use a plugin to control post excerpt appearance which doesn't seem to want to play with a page based on a custom page template.

It looks as though you can't use pre_get_posts to target a specific page so a custom query appears to be the only way.

I'll keep digging for a solution.

# As a workaround I've added a condition in my content template to show full posts on the Today page - it actually makes more sense that way if the purpose of the page is to read everything top down.

# Liked: BalancedLight...

Another webmention directory in the wild!

# Okay, so I set the Today page as the blog home page, just as a test to see how it goes. If there are no posts yet for that day it will tell you then list all the previous posts in the existing format.

I really like the idea of "Today" but am not sure if it will work as the blog front page. People are so used to reverse-chron (just look at the outcry over Twitter introducing even small algorithmic changes) that I don't know whether they will adjust.

Is having to scroll down too much hassle? Will it look like there are no updates after the first couple of posts?

We'll have to wait and see.

Comments

jack says:

@colinwalker Same here. I haven't been motivated enough to try and make it happen though. Glad you are! May have to go back to using Winer's tools some day :)

matthew says:

@colinwalker I like the today set up, what would be quite interesting is having the ability to jump to the same day in a previous year.

# Still undecided if the title should actually say "Today" or the date.