RadioRadio
Sunday, June 23, 2002[4:14:12 PM]
Radio as Content Disposal System: Splitting the archived content by day is terrible. Only a desparado will search for content by clicking the calendar.
I know, because I watch the logs. Google searchers hit my site all the time, looking for content that has scrolled off the main page. Approximately no one has ever hunted back through the calendar. My calendar is at the top left. If the calendar could possibly work, it would work for my site.
The couple of people who have *tried* to use the calendar were completely foiled: they started with the previous date -- a day which was still on the main page.
To fix this problem is simple. Radio already has a setting for how many days should appear on the main page. Just add a setting for how many days should appear on each archive page.
Then instead of a calendar listing every date, you get a simple list of recent archive pages, and each archive page can have previous and next links. (You *could* do that even with the calendar, it just wouldn't be worth much.)
The problem with the solution is that you couldn't change the number of days on previous archive pages, because that would break the urls. But even broken links would be better than complete inaccessibility.
Why does Radio need to change? All this cool stuff I (we) write and point to becomes completely inaccessible after seven days. You can't even get to it from Google. (Except through Google's archive.) What good is a Content Disposal System?
[For the record, I like Radio a lot, and think the $40 price tag with included hosting is fantastic. Userland should change the archiving, and Google should wake up and point to archives.]
© Copyright 2002 john robert boynton.
Last update: 9/27/02; 6:31:19 PM.