One of the great things about blogs is their natural method to display recently added articles. Whether you have a regular website or a blog, an important feature to have on your home page is an easy method to access recently published material.

It’s Gone Now!

Here is something I hate, and I am sure many others do as well. I find a link or article on the home page of a website one day, and when returning at a later date no longer being able to find it. A common occurrence for websites and blogs is to have their newest items posted on their home page, not a problem. The problem kicks in when it gets buried into some unknown directory. The visitors hopelessly struggles to find that article that they know they saw on your site. Blogs are great at avoiding this, mostly because their default templates include an automated archive.

The Archives

On blogs, archiving old posts are automatic. On this particular site, I show the last five posts on the home page. One could use the “Previous Entries” link at the bottom, or simply use the archives I have in the left menu. Items are archived by category, and by the last three months of material. What if those don’t work? Use the search function. I can’t be expected to keep recent posts on top forever you know. At a certain point, usability falls onto the responsibility of the user. They have a bookmark function for their browser, they can use that if it is that important.

Looking at this Lixux Server Blog, you can see another example of archiving. Though they don’t show the months archives, they include direct links to all of their recent posts in their right side bar. Monthly archives in their case would be an uneccessary step because posts are not made frequently enough to need it. It would simply be more work for the visitor to use a monthly archive.

On a basic website, archives are still important. If you run an online store you could have an archive of recent promotions, if you have an educational site you could have an archive up the latest updates, and so on. Whatever it is new that you put on your site on a regular basis, inlclude an easy to find archive of recent updates.

Where do you put the archive? On the home page! You don’t have to have the entire archive listed there though. A simple link to an archive page is good enough. The goal is to give your visitors a method to find the recent stuff.