4  Diary article element

The diary article is a simple means of keeping a strictly time-based ordering of entries.

A diary article can have up to two paragraphs or lists before the entries to provide some context, and between one and 10 in each entry. Entries are not meant to be full-on articles like in a blog, but more for commentary or a rant about some current events or a project. They are sorted by creation date with the latest either first (default) or last. The have a heading and an introduction, like a section, but no shorter navigation text as the navigation bar lists them numerically. The bar appears with five or more entries, and the interval between them increases with the number of entries.

The sorting is strictly by creation date, so if wanting to update an entry and have it appear more recently, a new entry would have to be created, and the old content move to it using the To facility. Duplicate entry timestamps, such as might occur when inserting from spikes, are prevented by appending some random text to the timestamp of the added entry, as duplicate timestamps would interfere with the proper functioning of the navigation links.

There can be 199 entries, so a diary can hold a lot of commentary. At one entry a day, a diary can cover only six months. To cover a longer period, use a category to hold a collection of diaries, and use a navigation article with a catalog to keep them chronologically ordered. Make the navigation article the category's signature article so that it appears at the top of the list so it is easily found if a visitor drills down through the categories.