The utility of a blog post calendar
by Josh Staiger
Is the post calendar that appears on the front page of many a blog really all that useful?
Let's think about our blog reading habits. Does anyone say to oneself "I really must know what the Philip Greenspun has written on the ninth of this month vs. the previous Wednesday"?
The most useful feature of the blog post calendar is that it gives a succinct overview of what an author's posting frequency. Is he a diurnal poster or a twice quarterly poster?
Regular readers will already have a fairly good picture of an author's posting habits.
The calendar is therefore much more useful to the new visitor, who stumbles upon one's site and wonders what it is all about. It logically follows that calendars should be relegated to the "about" page of a blog, rather than chew up screen real-estate for all users (who haven't yet accepted an RSS reader as their lord and savior) on the main page .
Indeed, most prominent bloggers that I read have long since ditched the calendar idea altogether.
Something to consider for the redesign of joshstaiger.org.