How to make your posts appear in chronological order with the push of a button.
As a writer who creates long texts out of a series of small posts, it was so so important to me that my readers at least have a chance to be able to read them in order.
But because tumblr’s architecture doesn’t have an easy way to support doing this, me and a couple of people have figured out a way, through jumping a series of hoops and running through some red tape, to create a way for people to arrange their posts in chronological order in an easy accessible way for their readers. There are two ways to do this, because some themes don’t support the primary way and this post will go over both:
1. The first thing you need to do is tag every post you want to show up in this chronological list with the same tag. It should be something unique to your blog. For example I use the tag “the beginning” in all of my posts.
2. Now that all your posts have been tagged, you can manually create a link using the term “/chrono” at the end. For example if you used the term “the beginning for your primary tag, the link would look like this:
“http://www.yourblognamehere.tumblr.com/tagged/the_beginning/chrono”
Putting the term “/chrono” at the end of the link will arrange all of your posts with the tag you chose in chronological order. Go ahead, try it and see. If you’d like, you can arrange any tag in chronological order by doing this. Its really fun and can help organize your site a lot, especially if you’re a novelist or using it for a news blog.
3. THIS IS THE HARD PART: making a link for your page.
Every blog theme is slightly different and I have had to deal with a lot of themes that require you to hop several hoops before you can get anything to work the way your want. So. Here goes nothing
- You open the customize link and scroll down to “pages” on the left hand side. Click the button that says ” +Add a page”. and a small window will open up. In the “Standard Link” section make a name for your new button. I tend to use the name “read from the beginning”. Then, in order to get the button to redirect readers to a chronological version of your site (or to a chronological list of posts under the term you chose) at the top of that window there will be a pulldown menu. click the option ” redirect”. Place the link your created previously in the “Redirect to” section. In the “Page URL” section, make up a quick url to redirect from. usually I go with “yourpagenamehere.tumblr.com/redirect”. Then press save. In the section where you would have your information like “Archive” or “RSS” or “About” there will be a new link that says “Read From The Beginning” that when you click it, it will order everything the way I said it would.
4. On the off chance that that didn’t work (which it sometimes doesn’t) there is another way. Most people couldn’t give two shits about their RSS Feed button. No one really uses it. Most people feel similarly about their “Archive button”. So, because no one cares, there is a way to go into the html and replace that link with any link of your choice.
How to do this: You go up to the top of the customize section under the picture that says what theme you’re using and there is a button that says “Edit HTML”. Click that button and the left side will open up into the HTML of your blog. DONT FREAK OUT. I REPEAT DON’T FREAK OUT. YOU DON’T NEED TO KNOW HOW TO WRITE HTML/CSS TO DO THIS. JUST TAKE A DEEP BREATH AND FOLLOW MY INSTRUCTIONS. Press the keys “Ctrl” and “F” at the same time and a word finder will open up. Type the word “archive” into the finder and it should highlight the word “archive” in the CSS. it might take a couple of tries (no more than 3), but you need to find the correct use of archive. It should look like this
{block:ifDisplayarchivebutton}
<div class=”leftbox”><a href=”/archive”>Archive</a></div>
{/block:ifDisplayarchivebutton}
The only parts of this that you need to worry about are in green. I’ve helpfully bolded the parts you will change. What ever is in green between ” ” will be where you put your link. The link you made with “/chrono” at the end. This will be where your blog will redirect people. in the > < area, backspace the word “archive” and put “Read From The Beginning”
So this new configuration should look like this:
{block:ifDisplayarchivebutton}
<div class=”leftbox”><a href=”http://www.yourblognamehere.tumblr.com/tagged/the_beginning/chrono“>Read From The Beginning</a></div>
{/block:ifDisplayarchivebutton}
Basically, what you just did was take a section of your CSS that was dedicated to directing someone to aspect of your website, and force it to direct them to a completely different link: the link you created that has your posts in order.
DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING ELSE IN YOUR CSS UNLESS YOU HAVE MAD SKILLS. OTHERWISE TERRIBLE THINGS CAN HAPPEN.
5. The previous method is the most technical method, so therefore it is also the most fail safe method. The first method is the easiest. But with a lot of custom themes, often you can’t use it. You can also use these methods to create special themed pages or to redirect someone anywhere you want. For example, I created a facebook link on one of my blogs that redirected people to my facebook. or whatever.
Anyway, I hope you guys in the writing community spread this around because so many people seem to want to know how to make this happen and I really wanted to share the knowlege. <3
If anyone has any more questions, feel free to send me an ask.
