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 12, along with lines, 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 99 entries, so a diary can hold a lot of commentary. At one entry a day, a diary can cover only three months. To cover a longer period, use an ordered category to hold a collection of diaries, or a navigation article with a catalog. Make the navigation article the category's first article so that it is easily found if a visitor drills down through the categories.