Need help? Check out our Support site, then


WordPress.com Forums » Support

how to handle a blog that is a "story"?

  1. chandijennifer
    Member

    How to handle a blog that is an on going story?
    A new visitor to my blog suggested that I should have a link at the top of the main page that would lead new readers to the beginning of the "story"

    He said that as a new visitor to my blog, he realized that he needed to read earlier posts to be clued in to the story. His feedback was good. People shouldn't have to dig through the archives to find the beginning of the story. He suggested a link at the top of my home page which would say something like: "go here for the beginning of the story" but I am not sure how I'd do that. Any advice/suggestions?

    Or I could have the earliest blog be at the top but that's probably is not a good solution.

    Chandi
    http://italiandreams.wordpress.com

  2. vivianpaige
    Member

    It might take a bit of work to get it done (but would be easy to keep up) but how about creating an index page that lists the posts chronologically? Then at the top (or bottom) of each current post, you could include a link to the index page. (Something along the lines of "Missed an earlier part of this story? Click here.)

    You don't really want the oldest post first on your blog - that would force your readers to have to scroll to the last page for the latest post (not to mention that it would require you changing the date/time stamp on EVERY post every time you did that, since by definition, the blog shows the latest post first).

  3. raincoaster
    Member

    Try this:

    http://faq.wordpress.com/2006/11/04/how-to-write-a-book/

  4. chandijennifer
    Member

    Thanks to both of you. Great ideas. Wow, raincoaster, I had no idea there was such a thing. I'll give it a try! Thanks a million!

  5. chandijennifer
    Member

    Raincoaster:

    The instructions begin with "create a page called front"

    To create such a page would I do the following:
    In dashboard go to write, page, then in title put "front" and not even write anything in the page itself?

    I am supposed to then create 2 more pages called index and called chapters.

    Hopefully I can follow the rest of the directions without having to ask you anything else.

  6. vivianpaige
    Member

    Read the whole FAQ first and then it will become clearer.

    Essentially the book thing is:

    Front - cover of book - links to
    - Index - a listing of the chapters, linking to
    - Chapter 1 page
    - Chapter 2 page
    - Chapter 3 page

  7. chandijennifer
    Member

    Oh Boy, sorry, another question: in the instructions it says to make a link to the index page on the front page. Do I do that under "page parent" or do I actually put the URL into the body of front page? The instructions are a little vague.

  8. chandijennifer
    Member

    Hi Vivian, I definitely read the whole FAQ a few times. It is just that the instructions assume that a person knows all the technical ins and outs of creating things in wordpress and I am a newbie.

    I need more specifics like where to go to create the page and if in the case creating the page means simply writing "FRONT" in the title part and leaving the body part blank.

    I need more specifics about what is meant when the instructions say "on front page make 1 link to index page" I don't know HOW to make that link. I need to be lead through HOW to do the things that the instructions say to do.

  9. vivianpaige
    Member

    The FAQ is your friend. http://faq.wordpress.com/ Just about anything you want to know is there.

    There is a FAQ on writing links, http://faq.wordpress.com/2007/07/01/how-to-write-links/

    If you don't know how to write a page, http://faq.wordpress.com/2006/11/11/a-post-and-a-page/

  10. chandijennifer
    Member

    Thanks Vivian,

    I know how to write a page, it's just that in this case, it's not clear to me WHAT I write on the pages that the instructions say to create. I am supposed to create 3 different pages called 'Front', 'index', and 'chapters.' For this particular situation it seems like maybe I would simply give the pages those titles with NOTHING in the body of the page?

    I read the FAQ on how to do links. Thanks for that. The question still remains though, in this particular case, when I am told to make a link to the index page on the front page, where would I do that link? Would I simply write the link in the blank body of the front page?

    I am also wondering how the 'page parent' feature should factor into this, if at all.

  11. chandijennifer
    Member

    Well, I figured it out. If you're under HTML view there is a button called LINK. Now why couldn't that bit of info have been included in the instructions about how to do links??

  12. lizii
    Member

    The link button is in the visual mode too. When you highlight a word, the link buttons come up. They're next to the more tag, and there's two of them; they look like chains. :)

  13. vivianpaige
    Member

    Actually, the one with the chain is the link button. The one with the broken chain breaks the link.

  14. lizii
    Member

    Yes, that's what I meant. Sorry for the lack of clarity.

Topic Closed

This topic has been closed to new replies.

About this Topic

Tags

No tags yet.