OJ’s rants What would OJ do?

16Jan/0716

Multi-Page Posts

As you no doubt have guessed, I can be a little verbose from time to time as I'm ranting away ;) So I pondered the possibility of breaking up my posts across multiple pages. I installed a plugin that allows me to break the single post up into a series of pages, and I was on the verge of using it for the first time a couple of posts ago when I thought it might not be a good idea.

The issue I have with it is that it might be a deterrant to people who are reading. So I came up with a list of pros and cons during the course of investigating the options.

Pros:

  • Reduces bandwidth usage - By breaking the posts up into smaller pages the amount of information I'm serving up is considerably less in the cases where people don't want to read the whole lot, or where they've already read the whole lot. This is not just good for the user who might be limited by downloads or speed, but good for me as it reduces the amount of information I serve up.
  • Reduces fright - Seeing a small amount of text makes it a lot less daunting to read than being faced with one huge page of text.
  • It looks cool :).

Cons:

  • Readers aren't immediately aware of how much they're going to have to read.
  • Can be daunting if there's a large number of pages.

That's really all I could come up with :) I'm leaning towards using them from now on when my posts get big, but I'm still not 100% sure. What do you guys think?

Filed under: Blogging Leave a comment
  • http://www.shiftperception.com/ Dan

    Well, the visual communicationist inside of me thinks that another option is to have summary posts, showing how many pages are in the post and what the post is about… then again, that assumes you are going to have massive rants everyday.

    You could (dare I say it) go the SMH route, and have links to each page, or a show all button. I didn’t like their pagignation at first… but the option of reading all is a best-case scenario.

  • http://www.shiftperception.com Dan

    Well, the visual communicationist inside of me thinks that another option is to have summary posts, showing how many pages are in the post and what the post is about… then again, that assumes you are going to have massive rants everyday.

    You could (dare I say it) go the SMH route, and have links to each page, or a show all button. I didn’t like their pagignation at first… but the option of reading all is a best-case scenario.

  • http://buffered.io/ OJ

    I’m not a fan of summary posts. In my experience, people read the summary and don’t read the entire article. Plus I’m not sure if I’m going to have massive rants every day – chances are I won’t, but I might have the odd “purple patch” of large posts ;)
    I think I’m going to paginate them if they’re really long. If it doesn’t “work”, I can always take the plugin off. I’m not sure if there’s a “show all” in this particular plugin so I might have to look elsewhere for one that does.

    Thanks for the feedback.

  • http://buffered.io OJ

    I’m not a fan of summary posts. In my experience, people read the summary and don’t read the entire article. Plus I’m not sure if I’m going to have massive rants every day – chances are I won’t, but I might have the odd “purple patch” of large posts ;)
    I think I’m going to paginate them if they’re really long. If it doesn’t “work”, I can always take the plugin off. I’m not sure if there’s a “show all” in this particular plugin so I might have to look elsewhere for one that does.

    Thanks for the feedback.

  • http://pervivere.blogspot.com/ Simon

    I use netvibes as a feed reader so I find myself using the tooltip summary on prolific feeds like slashdot and boing boing just to see if it’s of interest before opening and reading it anyway (not that I’d *ever* screen your posts Oli…)

  • http://pervivere.blogspot.com/ Simon

    I use netvibes as a feed reader so I find myself using the tooltip summary on prolific feeds like slashdot and boing boing just to see if it’s of interest before opening and reading it anyway (not that I’d *ever* screen your posts Oli…)

  • http://www.keithjudge.com/musings Keef

    I prefer the full posts. From a reader’s perspective I find it’s best to require as little as possible from the reader. If clicking through posts is required, people tend to read them less. The Daily WTF recently changed to summary posts so it now takes a click (and back again) to read each article, which is annoying.

  • http://www.keithjudge.com/musings Keef

    I prefer the full posts. From a reader’s perspective I find it’s best to require as little as possible from the reader. If clicking through posts is required, people tend to read them less. The Daily WTF recently changed to summary posts so it now takes a click (and back again) to read each article, which is annoying.

  • http://buffered.io/ OJ

    I agree mate, I am not a fan of the new DailyWTF clickety click. I much prefer to have it all there as well.

    Perhaps I’ll trial it for a post or two and see how it goes :)

  • http://buffered.io OJ

    I agree mate, I am not a fan of the new DailyWTF clickety click. I much prefer to have it all there as well.

    Perhaps I’ll trial it for a post or two and see how it goes :)

  • Gav

    If you want to see the whole post on DailyWTF without clicking the link, look for the ‘Display Full Article Text’ check box at the top right of the first post :)
    And I prefer always having the full article visible (on any website). Quite often if I have to click to another page to carry on reading I just won’t bother. Unless the article is really interesting.

  • Gav

    If you want to see the whole post on DailyWTF without clicking the link, look for the ‘Display Full Article Text’ check box at the top right of the first post :)
    And I prefer always having the full article visible (on any website). Quite often if I have to click to another page to carry on reading I just won’t bother. Unless the article is really interesting.

  • Yoann

    Personnally, I think you could do without multiple blog posts on the same page… only the last one in full… or maybe the others only viewable through clicks… I am definitely one for an article on the same page, going through pages to pages is a drag and for the sake of a few kilobytes, I don’t think it would make such a difference.

  • Yoann

    Personnally, I think you could do without multiple blog posts on the same page… only the last one in full… or maybe the others only viewable through clicks… I am definitely one for an article on the same page, going through pages to pages is a drag and for the sake of a few kilobytes, I don’t think it would make such a difference.

  • http://www.vector-seven.com/ Tom

    I prefer whole posts. Link from earlier posts to newer posts and vice versa.

    That’s just my opinion of course. To me, reading multi-page articles always feels like I’m being forced to laod up still more ads. Which I know is not your intention :)

  • http://www.vector-seven.com Tom

    I prefer whole posts. Link from earlier posts to newer posts and vice versa.

    That’s just my opinion of course. To me, reading multi-page articles always feels like I’m being forced to laod up still more ads. Which I know is not your intention :)

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