Humanized History is a plugin to implement a "Humanized History" feature for
WordPress archives, using some PHP glue on the back end and some unobtrusive
JavaScript on the front-end. In JavaScript-enabled browsers, Humanized History
eliminates the need for users to click on "previous posts" links to read back
through your archives; instead, when users get near the bottom of the current
page of posts, the included JavaScript automatically displays more posts for
them at the bottom of the page, providing a magic endless scrollbar that scrolls
through your entire archives, in place of traditional page chunking.
Search robots and browsers without JavaScript enabled will see the same old
pages with previous page/next page links, so you lose nothing in accessibility
or friendliness to search engines.
The plugin was inspired by the discussion of the concept by Aza Raskin at
Humanized (2006-04-25): No More Pages?. To see a sample of the feature as
implemented in WordPress, go to
http://projects.radgeek.com/ and scroll down
toward the bottom of the page.
Don't make your readers ask you for more content.
Just give it to them.
Humanized History requires a working installation of WordPress. It has been
tested with several versions of WordPress 2.x; I can't promise compatability
with older versions of WordPress, but if you've tried it successfully, I'd be
glad to hear about it.
To install the plugin:
- Create a subdirectory named
humanized-history in the plugins directory of
your WordPress blog.
- Put copies of
humanized-history.js and humanized-history.php in the
humanized-history subdirectory.
- Add a new function to your
functions.php template file named
template_post_display(), which should display the contents of a single post
however they are normally displayed on your blog's front page and archive
pages. (This should usually just be copied and pasted from the post loop of
your index.php template or your archive.php template.)
- In the WordPress Dashboard, go to Plugins and activate the Humanized History
plugin.