Skip to main content

Duplicate Post URL Prevention, And Yearly Archiving

We see an occasional suggestion, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger, about archive convenience.

Some blog owners, presumably ones who do not publish so often, would like to archive posts on a yearly basis.
It would be great, if you would add the option of "Yearly" under the Archive gadget "Archive Frequency".
This blog owner may not know why posts are archived on a weekly or monthly schedule.

One of the most challenging tasks in the post editor has to involve post URL creation.

Post URLs absolutely must be unique.

Besides having to create a URL from the post title, the post editor has to ensure that no post title causes a previous URL duplication - after removal of unnecessary words. One unbreakable rule of Blogger posts (Internet life, in general) is that two posts can not have the same URL.

Post URLs use a structure that includes the Year and Month, as "/yyyy/mm". That is how the Archive gadget opens the post list, for the "Monthly" archive option.


My previous post, on this subject - and the Archive gadget ("Contents") opened, to the month of its publishing.



The Archives gadget opens the post index to the proper year and month.

The Archive gadget display opens to the year and month of the first post on the page. It does that, by using the URL of the post displayed.

The Post:

Blogging - The Directory and URL Structure

The URL:

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2009/08/blogging-directory-and-url-structure.html

The Archives gadget can't show a year - or infinity - of posts.

See how the Archives gadget opens up, to the year / month ("/2009/08") of the post?

Can you imagine the performance issues, if the Archives gadget were to open up an entire years worth of posts? Then there is the resulting sidebar length increase - causing main page length increase.


The archives list for this blog, for 2009/08. I'm not going to try to display the entire list for 2009.



Every Blogger feature has to have limits, to make the Blogger service usable by everybody.

Like the oft misunderstood auto pagination feature, Blogger features should display only so much, at one time. One display limit includes retrieval of content - and archiving is an important component in limiting content retrieval.



Some #Blogger blog owners would like to archive posts on a yearly basis, so they could open the Archives list for an entire year, at once.

Not all blog owners understand how the Archives display follows the post URL structure - which includes the year and month, to prevent URL duplication. Like auto pagination, monthly archiving limits mass content retrieval - and makes the Blogger service more useful, for everybody.

Comments

Wei Hong said…
An irrelevant argument. Users should be allowed the option, for use where appropriate. For example, a blog that has only a few posts per year would not suffer a performance hit whatsoever, whereas a monthly frequency results in needless user unfriendliness.
Nitecruzr said…
Hi Wei,

Thanks for your thought.

Generally, people who only publish a few posts per year don't get (search engine) performance. I think Blogger designs their features around blog owners who publish at least weekly.

Blog owners who only publish a few posts per year are significantly in the minority - and don't figure in the class of performance hit whatsoever, because they get no performance anyway.

And if you only publish a few posts per year, you can use a LinkList gadget, manually updated. It takes maybe 30 seconds to add a LinkList entry - and you're done.

Popular posts from this blog

What's The URL Of My Blog?

We see the plea for help, periodically I need the URL of my blog, so I can give it to my friends. Help! Who's buried in Grant's Tomb, after all? No Chuck, be polite. OK, OK. The title of this blog is "The Real Blogger Status", and the title of this post is "What's The URL Of My Blog?".

Add A Custom Redirect, If You Change A Post URL

When you rename a blog, the most that you can do, to keep the old URL useful, is to setup a stub post , with a clickable link to the new URL. Yo! The blog is now at xxxxxxx.blogspot.com!! Blogger forbids gateway blogs, and similar blog to blog redirections . When you rename a post, you can setup a custom redirect - and automatically redirect your readers to the post, under its new URL. You should take advantage of this option, if you change a post URL.

Adding A Link To Your Blog Post

Occasionally, you see a very odd, cryptic complaint I just added a link in my blog, but the link vanished! No, it wasn't your imagination.