Planning a Feature

I’m preparing for publishing entries without a title. I’ll need to consider how they show up within the existing limitations.

The Index Page

My index page is currently a list of titles. In reverse chronological order. The dates aren’t listed.

A title-less entry has no place in this format. I could change the format to accomodate. I don’t want to begin including full entries or excerpts on the index page. I don’t want to extract a title from a note without a title.

Adding a “notes” page that scrolls forever could be introduced. That would be fine for a while. No need to solve problems I don’t have yet. I’d need to link to it. Links are cheap.

Is “note” the right name for an entry without a title? Is it a “status”? I’ll probably do more idea sharing and less status updating. Status begin to require hour-to-hour fidelity. Notes still retain a fidelity of publishing frequency that is more my speed.

The RSS Feed

The entries can show up. Without a made-up title. RSS readers that I’ve dorked with seem to do fine on entries that have no title.

The Permalink Page

Deciding what to put in the HTML title tag seems like the biggest unknown. I want something more descriptive than just the site name. That could be good enough for today.

Iterating

Publishing in RSS and permalink pages can happen immediately. Creating a page that displays all of them can come next. Building some top-level website navigation to change between “posts” and “notes” could be third.

The time is ripe for navigation and additional pages. I’ve been spending all my time building the publishing pipeline across Netlify, GitHub, and iA Writer. Now that the functionality is emerging, providing some navigation around that functionality has sufficient motivation.


Published: 2023-01-23

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