I’m not sure if I’m misremembering but my brain says there was a time when blog posts did not have “post titles” by default. Coming up with a post title is one of my least favorite exercises when writing a blog post.
Often how these things change on the internet is a bit hard to unearth (particularly in the early 2000s) but it could have been as innocent as some blogging software package requiring it to something more evil such as Google forcing SEO down our throats.
I don’t remember Movable Type requiring them but I do feel like most blogging software packages for the last decade have assumed per-post titles were required information.
If anyone happens to have some pointers to the internet archeology on blog post titles feel free to mention me on Mastodon (@soypunk@friend.camp).
Follow-Ups
Derek Powazek, who worked at Blogger, wrote:
“when we launched Blogger in 99, there were no post titles (or post pages, for that matter). But we added them soon after. They were a top request.”
Worth nothing that Derek authored “Design for Community: The Art of Connecting Real People in Virtual Places” - a book which radically re-shaped my approach to user experience and product management and I still think about to this day. I highly doubt we will ever see a second edition but if we did I would happily buy a dozen copies to hand out.
Jeff Eaton, also said:
“Yeah, Livejournal defaulted to the same when it launched - just a date and a message.”
(Since we are saying nice things aout people, Jeff was one of the early pioneers of making Drupal handle some seriously gnarly enterprise content management problems. His social media posts are always insightful and well-worth your attention.)
Both of these at least help to suggest that my usually failing memory might have logged this nugget correctly; blog entries with post titles were not necessarily the norm to start.