Viewing a month's entries on one page

[juhgu]

Title:
Viewing a month's entries on one page

Area:
Archive

Summary:
In the archive, it'd be nice to see one month's entries on one page.

Description:
I sometimes have to go back to my old important entries to revise them (because of moving from LJ, because the URLs to my photos may have changed, because I'm organising memories etc etc etc). In the archive, I can already select "view subjects" to show the subjects of all entries of that particular month. It's handy, but it would be even more handy to (have an option to) simply show all the entries and their content on one page.

Granted, the page could sometimes be huge if there's a lot of entries, but then again, it's not something users do frequently, so I'm hoping it wouldn't be too heavy on the servers.

Cheers,
Juhana

Poll #886 Viewing a month's entries on one page

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 46

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
12 (26.1%)

Should be implemented with changes.
22 (47.8%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
5 (10.9%)

(I have no opinion)
7 (15.2%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[snakeling]

The two pages (just the subjects and the whole posts) should co-exist. And of course, it should respect cuts.

[denise]

I am uncertain about whether or not we could do this without killing the servers, and loading that page would be a nightmare for any reasonably active poster, but I let this through the queue because I'm not 100% certain that it's technically impossible.

[laitaine]

Your main journal will show you x pages at a time, so will the tag/$tag pages. Surely if this were implemented, the page could load the first x posts of the month and then require the user to navigate to see the next x etc. If this can be done for tags I don't see why it couldn't be done for a month of posts, since you're kinda-sorta-but-not-really searching for all entries "tagged" as, say, November 2007.

I speak as a baby dev who still has trouble finding stuff in the code and making basic changes, so I don't really know what I'm talking about/if it's possible, but in principle I would have thought it should be.

[zvi]

But isn't that missing the point of the suggestion? If you're showing only 20 entries (I'm guessing that's the number of entries most people have their recent and reading pages set to, since it's the default) but you regularly post 50 or 60 times in a month, has the site actually responded to your needs with the partial view?

[azurelunatic]

If you regularly post 1 or 2 times a day, and you're trying to view all of November 2007, there is a big difference between 30 pages with 1 or 2 entries each, and 2 or 3 pages with (hard limit for lastn) up to 50 entries each.

[triadruid]

I hate that pagination force. I can understand the severe server hit when you're looking at your friends page, but when I want to view all of my entries tagged 'Books I've Read' and want to search for a particular title? Irritating.

[triadruid]

Although as a compromise, being able to add ?display=lastn to the URI would be nice.

[7rin]

I think I like this, since not evryone would be using it at the same time, and so it'd save on server load? <= note, question mark indicates this is a question rather than a statement.

[kyrielle]

Yes, this sounds like a nice compromise.

[instantramen]

I'd want a combination of snakeling's and laitaine's suggested alterations if this were implemented, because otherwise I can imagine post-heavy journals killing not just the servers but the computers of unsuspecting readers who might be on computers too old or connections too slow to handle an entire month of posts.

[distractionary]

+1.

[distractionary]

Also, I greatly appreciate the inclusion of "I have no opinion" in the poll's options.

[7rin]

I entered a "suggestion" that this was added. My suggestion was rejected as it's already been added, but - according to the wonderful denise (hoping I've speeled that right) we won't see the relevant radio button until the first question asked after the last code push (if I understand the explanation correctly).

[triadruid]

Ugh. Only if it is ONLY for personal journals (could you imagine a high-volume community asking for monthly views), and probably a paid feature due to the server load.

On the other hand, I don't want it paginated. Most often when I want to view all posts from a certain tag/calendar period, I want to see ALL of them at once.

[juhgu]

I personally don't see why anyone would want to see a month-view of a journal with 100 entries per month like that, but it has to be prevented, of course. Dividing it into pages sounds like a sensible idea, and I'm guessing it wouldn't be much heavier on the servers than any other DW page with 20 or 30 entries. Restricting to personal journals sounds reasonable, not sure if it'd be necessary to restrict it to paid accounts.

I don't have a problem with pagination, but it's kind of irritating if there's, say, 20 entries per page, 22 entries total, and it divides only two entries to an unnecessary extra page. So, something like "divide into pages of 20 except if there's less than 25 entries" would be a nice touch, although not important.

[juhgu]

Oh, and on an unrelated note, I really like how here the administration actually reads and responds to suggestions! :)

[7rin]

Haven't voted yet (I'm gonna vote for "with changes", having read the thread). Personally, I'd be happy to be able to view the entirety of the month 'requested', but still having to stick to the limits designated by the journal style that it's viewed under.

[susanreads]

So, something like Recent Entries, but restricted to the specified month, and first to last instead of latest first? That would look sensible to me.

[turlough]

I like the sound of that.

more options for archive pages

[shaela]

I’d love it if this were an option. I can see why it wouldn’t work for everyone, and breaking up months with a lot of entries into reasonably-sized pages makes sense. (It would work the same way tag archives do, yes?) But I’m lucky if I can post once a week, so my monthly archive pages look… kind of empty. I’d rather have the list of entries for each month on the yearly archive page (instead of the calendars), and the entries themselves on the monthly archive page.