When Being Naked Is A Bad Thing

Via the ever-resourceful Harvey, this old-but-very-useful tip from Kevin at Wizbang for MovableType blogs.

MovableType and TypePad (a hosted MovableType platform) allow you to set a default number of posts to appear ... or a default number of days to appear ... on the front page of your blog.

Some think it's better to show the last, say, seven days of posts on the front page instead of the last, say, ten posts. But, if you choose to show seven days and you don't post anything for, say, eight days, your blog will appear blank on the front page. Oh, the archives will show your stuff. It's just that front page that looks blank. And that's what's called a "naked blog."

And that's bad.

By default, MovableType displays a certain number of days worth of entries. Since MovableType is a tag-based blogging platform, you can control the number of posts directly within the tag. Kevin's solution is simple and to the point:

In your Main Index template, replace this:
<MTEntries>

With this
<MTEntries lastn="25">

Now, as Harvey says, you might not want to show 25. The recommendation is no less than 10. Harvey uses more, because sometimes he gets drunk and posts a lot.

Is There Another Way?

Of course, there's another way. Change your configuation to show a number of posts instead of a number of days.

The downside? Some people only want to show today's posts, or this weeks posts, or some such calendar-based number of posts, on the front page. Which is fine, if you will post regularly. But, if you end up not posting for the defined number of days, we're back to where we started.

The suggestion is ... again ... pick a number of posts to display on your front page and live with it. If they go back to far, reduce that number. If they don't go far enough back, increase the number.

What About Other Platforms?

Although Blogger is also a tag-based platform, I can't find an attribute for the <Blogger> tag (that's Blogger's equivalent of the <MTEntries> tag). Which means editing the Template won't work.

Rather, set your configuration to pick a number of posts.

From your Dashboard, click on Settings then Formatting. Where it says Show X days/posts on the main page, change the number to however many you want (10, 25, 50, 142, etc) and change the days/posts field to show posts.

CORRECTION: Blogger doesn't have this issue. You pick "7 days", you get the last 7 days of posts, consecutive or not. Thanks Harvey!

For a WordPress, WordPress.com, or Blogsome site, from the Dashboard, click Options, then Reading. In the Blog Pages section, where it says Show at most, enter the number of posts, then change the days/posts field to show posts.

Comments

[Harvey]

As far as I can tell, Blogger isn't subject to NBS. I'm pretty sure it just displays the last x # of days that actually have posts.

By which I mean that none of my neglected test blogs have ever gone blank on me.

[basil]

Once again, you are correct. And I have enough test blogs that I should have been able to easily verify that. Silly me. And good catch. I've updated to reflect accurate info.