Hopefully not too much introspective why-are-we-here shenanigans
Mike’s book, as mentioned here, is now available to purchase.
If you want to buy it, go to http://www.shaggyblogstories.co.uk/. If you want to find out more first, Mike’s written a summary on his site.
Kudos, by the pint, to Mike for making this happen.
Weblogs are very time-sensitive, as you probably know. They attempt to capture the *here* and the *now* and the *this* and the *that* and the *wow* and the *yeah* and the *groovy* and the ilk.
There are caveats however. Certain time-sensitive data is just not worth reporting on.
Firstly, the “hey, do you like my new design?” post. You just know that this is going to look daft in three years time when someone is browsing through your archive and they come across it. If you really must publish a post like this, at least have the decency to include “before” and “after” screenshots.
A variation on this is the “I’ve added a small rotating badger to my sidebar” post. Rotating badgers are cool, so I’m going to forgive this particular instance, but as a general rule I feel that if you publish a post when you *add* the small rotating badger, then you should then really delete that post once you’ve *removed* the small rotating badger. Or include “before” and “after” screenshots. Whatever.
The second example of time-sensitive data that’s not worth reporting on is:
> I’ve now had 100 comments on this site!
…and…
> I’ve now had 200 comments on this site!
…and…
> I’ve now had 307 comments on this site!
…and all the variations like…
> I’ve just checked, and I’ve now written 10,000 words on this site!
…or…
> I’ve written 38,000 characters on this site, not including whitespace, HTML markup, links to small rotating badgers and punctuation other than exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
My **actual point** is that I’ve added a “More from the same category” thing. If you are viewing the [individual entry archive page for this post][], then you should be seeing it at the end of this post ((oh boy, if I delete it and then forget to update this post then I’ll never hear the end of it now.)). It basically digs a random entry out of the archive that is under the same category as the post which you are viewing. I’m quite meticulous ((note my use of the term “quite”: there is still a lot of stuff in “Uncategorised”)) about categorising posts, but generally I don’t make them visible to readers. This changes that.
[individual entry archive page for this post]: http://pete.nu/blog/2006/10/related-post/
Posts can belong to multiple categories, so it’s theoretically possible to browse the entire site just by following the trail that starts below. It only appears at the bottom of individual entry archives – I could put it at the end of each post on the front page ((or search results page, or monthly archive page… you get the jist)), but I’m currently leaning towards keeping the front page free of clutter.
The “More from the same category” thing is in the form of a small WordPress plugin, which I can make available if you so desire.
Now, my minions – feel free to go back in time, and leave daft comments on old posts. Back when it was good.
*Posted [here][] – Naturally the moderator refused it. Though ostensibly for fighting spam, moderation is also very handy for suppressing criticism.*
[here]: http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2006/06/the-giant-blogging-terms-glossary/