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One micro feature I implement on my blog that I would like to see everywhere: a single-page index of all the posts, like at https://blog.zorinaq.com https://blo

by mrb 2y ago

One micro feature I implement on my blog that I would like to see everywhere: a single-page index of all the posts, like at https://blog.zorinaq.com https://blog.zorinaq.com Don't paginate this. I want to see at a glance the titles of all the posts the author wrote. I want to be able to ctrl-f to search these titles. Heck, even if you had 100k titles they could still easily be shown on one page, as it would compress to 1 or 2MB transmitted on the wire which is still more lightweight than the average web page size.

j2kun 2y ago
I added this on my blog (https://www.jeremykun.com/posts/ https://www.jeremykun.com/posts/) and I even find it useful as replacing 90% of the need for a search bar. I haven't yet re-added a search feature since I migrated off Wordpress to hugo
- thesnide 2y ago
  So that. I mean, just make sure that your blog is easily consumed by any web search engine. And in addition to the full non-paginated index, I also have a full non-paginated tags page. Like categories, but with pages showing multiple times if they have multiple tags. https://blog.pwkf.org/tags.html https://blog.pwkf.org/tags.html My pet feature I'll try to add is sidenotes. It does annoys me to jump back and forth to read them. Even as a popup (wikipedia style), it is still intrusive...
  - j2kun 2y ago
    The hugo theme I use has this built in, and the sidenodes change to footnotes if the width is too small. https://github.com/capnfabs/paperesque https://github.com/capnfabs/paperesque
- jen729w 2y ago
  I recently added a search feature to my site. I almost cracked open the Algolia docs … and then I just wrote a 4-line form … <form action="https://duckduckgo.com/" method="get"> <label>▷ <input type="search" id="search" name="q" /></label> <input type="hidden" name="sites" value="johnnydecimal.com" /> <input type="submit" value="Search" style="display: none;" /> </form> …and now DDG just does it for me. Zero cost, zero hassle.
aaronax 2y ago
There is a "back-channel" way for most sites: sitemap.xml Many sites have it, since it is helpful for SEO. Examples: https://www.1500days.com/sitemap.xml https://www.1500days.com/sitemap.xml (Wordpress) https://dri.es/sitemap.xml https://dri.es/sitemap.xml (Drupal, illegible though) https://aaron.axvigs.com/sitemap.xml https://aaron.axvigs.com/sitemap.xml (Drupal, legible)
- crazygringo 2y ago
  Sadly, sitemaps aren't usually much help because: - They're often only URL's which may not have titles or dates at all - They're often not in any particular order (there's no reason for them to be chronological, so they frequently aren't) - They're often paginated as well, where sitemap.xml just refers to multiple <sitemapindex> pages, so you can't Ctrl+F on a single page anyways - You don't get one per-blog if there are multiple blogs on a domain - You get all the other junk from the rest of a site if it's a blog that's part of a larger site
crazygringo 2y ago
Yes please! Another reason: I'll often come across a blog post from 12 years where the author writes "in my next post, I'll continue to discuss..." And how the heck am I supposed to find that next post? They didn't add a hyperlink, obviously, because they hadn't written it yet. Sometimes a blog has posts you can navigate by month, but that's definitely a small minority of blogs I come across. If there was just a single-page index, I could Ctrl+F the title of the current article, and quickly see what followed it chronologically.
- slater 2y ago
  > And how the heck am I supposed to find that next post? Subscribe to the blog's RSS feed?
  - crazygringo 2y ago
    These days an awful lot of blogs don't have RSS feeds. Especially blogs that are part of broader news publications, in my experience. But yes you're right when there is a feed you can open that in Chrome and Ctrl+F, at least. (Obviously my complaints come from blogs that don't have this. But also, opening an XML file isn't exactly user-friendly, and 99% of end users would never know to do it.)
    - netghost 2y ago
      But is it a blog if it doesn't have an RSS feed? …okay sure, technically yes, but not one I will be able to follow, or remember to read until it pops up in someone else's aggregator or links in the future.
    - account42 2y ago
      > These days an awful lot of blogs don't have RSS feeds. That's not my experience.
  - aidenn0 2y ago
    > Subscribe to the blog's RSS feed? Which has the 10 or 20 most recent posts, but not the post from 12 years ago. If it's a wordpress blog, you can use pagination tricks to get older posts, but, AFAIK, there's no standard way to say "Give me all of the posts" when fetching the RSS feed.
emporas 2y ago
A single-page index of all posts is hands down the number one feature every blog should have. Also, no images to clutter the index, and slow down the page.
jodrellblank 2y ago
> like at https://blog.zorinaq.com https://blog.zorinaq.com 2013, Bitcoin hits $1k: https://blog.zorinaq.com/1-bitcoin-1000-us-dollars/ https://blog.zorinaq.com/1-bitcoin-1000-us-dollars/ "Sure a crash that would bring it back down to below $1,000 is possible or likely, but it would not change its long-term prospect, a few years from now, from being valued between $5,000 and $50,000 and possibly more." from then, 4 years to $5k, 8 years to $50k.
kcartlidge 2y ago
> One micro feature I implement on my blog that I would like to see everywhere: a single-page index of all the posts I've got a variant of this on my own blog [1]. Full site contents generated automatically from (and grouped by) the content's tags. To avoid the appearance of self-promotion, I'll balance this with an up-front warning that the actual content makes the opportunity cost of visiting debatable unless you're really curious ... [1] https://kcartlidge.com/contents/ https://kcartlidge.com/contents/
lsaferite 2y ago
FWIW, I love the 'EOF' footer on that page. It's a very clear indicator _for me_. (not sure about non-tech peeps though)
- mrb 2y ago
  Thanks :)
ksec 2y ago
Exactly this. This page only downloads 7K, it could have 100 times the links it would still only be 700K.

by mrb 2y ago

j2kun 2y ago

I added this on my blog (https://www.jeremykun.com/posts/ https://www.jeremykun.com/posts/) and I even find it useful as replacing 90% of the need for a search bar. I haven't yet re-added a search feature since I migrated off Wordpress to hugo

thesnide 2y ago
So that. I mean, just make sure that your blog is easily consumed by any web search engine. And in addition to the full non-paginated index, I also have a full non-paginated tags page. Like categories, but with pages showing multiple times if they have multiple tags. https://blog.pwkf.org/tags.html https://blog.pwkf.org/tags.html My pet feature I'll try to add is sidenotes. It does annoys me to jump back and forth to read them. Even as a popup (wikipedia style), it is still intrusive...
- j2kun 2y ago
  The hugo theme I use has this built in, and the sidenodes change to footnotes if the width is too small. https://github.com/capnfabs/paperesque https://github.com/capnfabs/paperesque
jen729w 2y ago
I recently added a search feature to my site. I almost cracked open the Algolia docs … and then I just wrote a 4-line form … <form action="https://duckduckgo.com/" method="get"> <label>▷ <input type="search" id="search" name="q" /></label> <input type="hidden" name="sites" value="johnnydecimal.com" /> <input type="submit" value="Search" style="display: none;" /> </form> …and now DDG just does it for me. Zero cost, zero hassle.

aaronax 2y ago

There is a "back-channel" way for most sites: sitemap.xml Many sites have it, since it is helpful for SEO. Examples: https://www.1500days.com/sitemap.xml https://www.1500days.com/sitemap.xml (Wordpress) https://dri.es/sitemap.xml https://dri.es/sitemap.xml (Drupal, illegible though) https://aaron.axvigs.com/sitemap.xml https://aaron.axvigs.com/sitemap.xml (Drupal, legible)

crazygringo 2y ago
Sadly, sitemaps aren't usually much help because: - They're often only URL's which may not have titles or dates at all - They're often not in any particular order (there's no reason for them to be chronological, so they frequently aren't) - They're often paginated as well, where sitemap.xml just refers to multiple <sitemapindex> pages, so you can't Ctrl+F on a single page anyways - You don't get one per-blog if there are multiple blogs on a domain - You get all the other junk from the rest of a site if it's a blog that's part of a larger site

crazygringo 2y ago

Yes please! Another reason: I'll often come across a blog post from 12 years where the author writes "in my next post, I'll continue to discuss..." And how the heck am I supposed to find that next post? They didn't add a hyperlink, obviously, because they hadn't written it yet. Sometimes a blog has posts you can navigate by month, but that's definitely a small minority of blogs I come across. If there was just a single-page index, I could Ctrl+F the title of the current article, and quickly see what followed it chronologically.

slater 2y ago
> And how the heck am I supposed to find that next post? Subscribe to the blog's RSS feed?
- crazygringo 2y ago
  These days an awful lot of blogs don't have RSS feeds. Especially blogs that are part of broader news publications, in my experience. But yes you're right when there is a feed you can open that in Chrome and Ctrl+F, at least. (Obviously my complaints come from blogs that don't have this. But also, opening an XML file isn't exactly user-friendly, and 99% of end users would never know to do it.)
  - netghost 2y ago
    But is it a blog if it doesn't have an RSS feed? …okay sure, technically yes, but not one I will be able to follow, or remember to read until it pops up in someone else's aggregator or links in the future.
  - account42 2y ago
    > These days an awful lot of blogs don't have RSS feeds. That's not my experience.
- aidenn0 2y ago
  > Subscribe to the blog's RSS feed? Which has the 10 or 20 most recent posts, but not the post from 12 years ago. If it's a wordpress blog, you can use pagination tricks to get older posts, but, AFAIK, there's no standard way to say "Give me all of the posts" when fetching the RSS feed.

emporas 2y ago

A single-page index of all posts is hands down the number one feature every blog should have. Also, no images to clutter the index, and slow down the page.

jodrellblank 2y ago

> like at https://blog.zorinaq.com https://blog.zorinaq.com 2013, Bitcoin hits $1k: https://blog.zorinaq.com/1-bitcoin-1000-us-dollars/ https://blog.zorinaq.com/1-bitcoin-1000-us-dollars/ "Sure a crash that would bring it back down to below $1,000 is possible or likely, but it would not change its long-term prospect, a few years from now, from being valued between $5,000 and $50,000 and possibly more." from then, 4 years to $5k, 8 years to $50k.

kcartlidge 2y ago

> One micro feature I implement on my blog that I would like to see everywhere: a single-page index of all the posts I've got a variant of this on my own blog [1]. Full site contents generated automatically from (and grouped by) the content's tags. To avoid the appearance of self-promotion, I'll balance this with an up-front warning that the actual content makes the opportunity cost of visiting debatable unless you're really curious ... [1] https://kcartlidge.com/contents/ https://kcartlidge.com/contents/

lsaferite 2y ago

FWIW, I love the 'EOF' footer on that page. It's a very clear indicator _for me_. (not sure about non-tech peeps though)

mrb 2y ago
Thanks :)

ksec 2y ago

Exactly this. This page only downloads 7K, it could have 100 times the links it would still only be 700K.