The Best Way to Sort Review Archives

Hi Ashley!

I just wanted to know your view on the best way to sort reviews. Should I do it by author’s last name, first name? Title? Rating?!

I would love to do more than one way but I honestly don’t have the time for that.

Thank you so much!!

Harman @ Little Bookworm Reviews

Hi Harman! I have a theory about this: I don’t think it really matters. If someone wants to find a specific book in your review archive, which is more likely:

  • They scroll through the whole archive in search for that book (in which case “by title” or “by author” would be best).
  • They do a quick CTRL+F and search for that book title?

I would CTRL+F that review archive!

If they’re looking for something specific, I’d say #2 is more likely. And if they’re just doing a CTRL+F search, it doesn’t matter how they’re ordered because their computer will find it regardless!

Now let’s look at the other side: when the reader isn’t looking for something specific, but just wants to peruse through your archives. Now, if they’re not looking for something in particular, surely the ordering doesn’t really matter? You could argue that by title or by author would be best here because even if they’re not looking for something specific, those ordering methods would make them more aware of when to expect certain titles/authors to show up if the person has reviewed them.

Do you have a preference for how review archives are sorted?

Tip: If you’re on WordPress, you can automate your review archive with the Ultimate Book Blogger Plugin

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14 comments

  1. That’s pretty cool to get that confirmed. I have been contemplating setting up different types of review archives, sorted by different things, but I haven’t been able to completely convince myself that it was worth the time. It is true that people would just do ctrl+f.

    Michelle recently posted: The Just In Case Book Habit
  2. This post was kinda lifechanging for me because I just totally reconsidered how I search archives! It honestly never even occurred to me to control-F search. Usually they’re organized by title though so it’s easy for me to just skip to the letter and see if it’s there. But control-F would save so much time, even if it is maybe only a few seconds. In terms of preferences though, I think title is my favourite because it’s the one thing I’d most likely remember. Author by last name is really handy as well and those are the two I use on my blog!

    Annie recently posted: Meant to Be by Lauren Morrill
  3. I just reorganized top navigation bar/my archives this past weekend! I separated my reviews into different pages, that I grouped together in a drop down menu (love this option with the Tweak Me theme!). So now on my header I have a tab that says Reviews, and then with you hover over it, it drops down to show two other pages-Adult Fiction and Non-Fiction, and then Children’s, NA and YA. When you chose one, it then brings you to a page where I have reviews listed by authors name, along with the book title and then what genre it’s in. I thought about categorizing by genre at first, but since some books fall into multiple categories, I decided to stick with alphabetical/authors name 🙂

    I did the same thing with all my features too-love how easy it is to find stuff on my blog now yay!

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