For the longest time I displayed the full post on my blog. Recently Andy Beard gave me some advice and one thing he recommended was to show partial posts on the front page and it really makes sense when you consider duplicate content.

I use the Homepage Excerpts Plugin to do it at http://www.dailyblogtips.co...

That of course is for the SE's. For humans I'd imagine your regular viewers wouldn't mind either way, as they are normally caught up on your posts and not too interested in posts deeper down. First time viewers may prefer excerpts, who knows. Good idea with the poll to get a better idea.

Thanks Josh, I hadn't really considered the SEO benefits.

Thanks for the plugin recommendation too. (unfortunately it doesn't help me much because I'm not on Wordpress here) The link is appreciated though, as I'm sure some other readers will find it of use if they are thinking of going down this road.

I can easily implement a "read more" type solution to break up my posts if I go that route. Thanks for your suggestions, more food for thought which is what I'm counting on my cleverer readers for :-)

Maurice (TCH)

I personally prefer to see full posts on sites that I visit through links or casual browsing. I like to scan the content on the home page without having to click to see if the blog interests me enough to subscribe in my feed reader. So, I am trying to follow the same in ShanKri-la.

I am thinking of increasing the number s posts from 3 to 5 though. The SEO aspect of it is something I haven't thought of either.

Oh the fun of figuring out the right balance. :-)

There is exactly one reason why I voted on this item and that is because it worked with my laziness I arrived, I read down, I voted.

When you publish the first part of a post on the main page and require the clicking of the link to get to the rest you have to pack the first part with enough "wham" to make the reader want to click and then enough "bang" after to make them glad that they did.

On the other hand to put the entire post on the main page you simply have to keep the reader interested enough that they don't stop reading.

There is a forth option and that is to have the extra text "appear" inside a hidden div which is unhidden with a javascript link. Personally I feel that is a lot of effort for the result but some people like that sort of thing.

Hi Matt

Thanks for dropping in, Yours is another valid argument. I'm not sure new readers in particular will be captivated by a few lines of my (admittedly stunning ;-)) prose and want to read more. As you point out, we are getting lazier online and want things delivered as easily as possible.

At this stage it still looks like a pretty 50/50 split in opinion. Maybe more voters will reveal a majority preference but somehow I don't think so.

I also think for SEO purposes, it's good to have the full text on your front page. For my celeb blog, I was using a magazine layout before, but a lot of the key words and phrases I had so carefully used were getting cut off and relegated to secondary pages. Doesn't matter on a personal blog, but if this is a for-profit blog where you're looking for google traffic, it's something to consider

Hi Jayne

Thanks for adding your 2 cents to the mix - now things are looking more evenly divided than ever :-)

I'm maybe getting confused here though, because Josh seems to be advocating partial posts = best for SEO and you seem to feel that the opposite i.e. full posts = best for SEO.

This is more about my readership than the spiders, so I'm not too worried about the SEO aspects, but it's interesting to see such opposing theories.

I'm a snippet person too. If you show snippets then your readers can potentially see more of your stuff on the same page.Often an opening paragraph will act as a suffficient lure and entice a click.

If you show ten full posts on each page then you make that page very fat content wise, especially if you write long huge rantslike I often do! :D

Thanks Rob

I guess "don't ask, don't get" applies in spades here LOL. It's amazing how readers differ in their views although your latest vote puts the snippet people a nose in front. The only thing that worries me about that route is whether I can entice people with my initial paragraph..........

Do you have any SEO tips light of previous comments, or is it neither here nor there?

The SEO benefit makes a difference if you are not gaining many links to the single pages, and Josh had links, but maybe not as many as me ;)

The main reason I changed wasn't for SEO reasons, but for speed of page loading.

My front page with all the graphics in post used to be more than 1MB most of the time.

I still need to speed it up more, but it loads a lot faster now.

Thanks for dropping in and for clearing that one up Andy. I think I have a pretty fair idea of what I need to do and why. Your concise explanation is very helpful.

Thanks to everyone for your comments and constructive feedback, which I've really enjoyed reading and it has given me some really useful information. .

For the short term, I have reduced the main page to six posts and enabled pagination so that at the foot of each page, you will now find links to older/newer posts.

I will implement more changes for future posts, gradually moving towards partial posts, whereupon I will be able to increase the numbers per page. I have a few long posts planned soon, and that, together with my similarity to Rob in terms of ranting, plus the benefit of speedier page loading, seems justification for a change in approach.

Hopefully, for those who told me you prefer full posts, you will not desert me in disgust - the majority of readers seem to prefer the "teaser" approach, so, we will see how it goes. A rethink is never out of the question :-)

Thanks again guys and girls, you're "Good People"