Problem: Users have difficulty finding and browsing older blog content

[sliptonic]

Ondsel publishes approximately 1 blog post per week. The content has tags for things like 'thought leadership' 'FreeCAD', 'Assembly', etc.

Currently the left side column shows the last ~10 titles. If the user wants to browse older articles, the only option is to go back to the 10th oldest article and then use navigation at the bottom of the page to 'read previous' article.

We would like to implement better access to the content. This can take the form of

• search tool
• Pagination of older titles
• tag cloud
• browse by category.

It is not necessary to implement all of these. Recommendation for best practices are appreciated.

[patdavid]

After a busy lunar new year and mardi gras down here on the gulf coast, I'm setting aside some time to start hacking at blog improvements. What things do we want to address @prokoudine @sliptonic?

Can we list some things we want to fix up here in this issue and I can start hacking at them?

Also - I cannot seem to find a way to un swizzle a component - anyone have any ideas?

[prokoudine]

1. The blog index pages (where you get pagination) should display 'description' from the front matter rather than the entire post and then link to the entire post in a quite visible way.
2. There should be some form of navigation by topic, e.g. cloud of tags (but please suggest better solutions, if you have any).

That's the two most useful things to have.

[patdavid]

@prokoudine

1. The blog index pages (where you get pagination) should display 'description' from the front matter rather than the entire post and then link to the entire post in a quite visible way.

This can be done, but the "docusaurus way" is to add a <!-- truncate --> line in your markdown files to indicate where the content should be cut off for list view on the /blog/ page. The everything above that line will be rendered in the /blog/ list page with a "Read more" button:

I can theoretically swizzle the bloglist component to modify this behavior, but I hesitate to modify core functionality if it can be avoided (to minimize problems upgrading later).

With that being said, it's up to you if you'd like me to go down that path.

So - do you want to use <!-- truncate --> to mark the summary view of blog posts, or should I modify (swizzle) the BlogList component and customize it to use a frontmatter description parameter?

[edit] - I should point out that my recommendation would be to use the "docusaurus way" if possible. ;)

[prokoudine]

Let's go the <!-- truncate --> way for now. My understanding is that's all I need to do to get what you displayed on the screenshot above?

[prokoudine]

Truncating was done today.