Timelines in Blogs

[iamEkho]

Hello All,

I appreciate your help/input!

GOAL: I want one of my blogs to act as a timeline where the first/top article on a page is the First in the timeline and then 'next' takes you to the second, third, and so on in order.  

ISSUE: This works exactly backwards to the Blog functionality in Shopify.  Today, when you publish a new article that becomes your most recent/top post.  I know this can be fixed by forcing a 'publish date' that orders the blogs.  However, the 'continue reading/next article' functionality continues to read in reverse order.  

Example: If you are reading the 3rd article (listed as 3rd in the chronological order, using the publish date to force the order on the blog display page) - when you get to 'read more' it takes you to the 2nd article as that has a 'newer' publish date.  What I want is for it to take you to the 4th article if you click read more/next.

I have reached out to this app developer to see if their solution would fix the issue, but I think the 'next article' issue will persist.

So I am wondering if someone has another work around.  I would like to continue using the general features of the blog so that this remains scalable.  I don't have every article written yet, so I don't want to have to create custom/manual navigation only to have to constantly update that when I write a new article. 

Let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you,

[PaulNewton]

It's been awhile but this might just be fixable setting the sort order in liquid on the blog articles created_at date

https://shopify.dev/docs/api/liquid/filters/sort#sort-sort-by-an-array-item-property 

https://shopify.dev/docs/api/liquid/objects/article#article-created_at 

Always backup themes before making changes to files

Something like the following UNTESTED code {% assign articles = blog.articles | sort: 'created_at' | reverse %} in the blog templates/sections

While that app is more visual if your code savvy , mechanic could be scripted to modify data over the api.

nothing specific to this use case but example tasks https://tasks.mechanic.dev/ 

but they do have a pay what feels good pricing policy which can help offset development https://learn.mechanic.dev/platform/policies/pricing 

If you need this customization , or automation, explored then contact me by my email for services.
Contact info in forum signature.
ALWAYS please provide context, examples: store url, theme name, post url(s) , or any further detail in ALL correspondence.

Good Hunting.

[PaulNewton]

If it's a small set of articles you will manage manually an advanced alternative  is to manage the order using a linklist in the shopify navigation for the online-sales channel.

Another newer option is using a metaobject instead of linklists to facilitate this process.

Then for that blog replace it's article loop with linklist/metaobject logic and references.