Bloggers, I need your opinion! I pose a question that is beginning to really vex me from a user experience standpoint. I’m talking about “previous/next” navigation. Riveting, I realize, but I’m looking for answers and who better to ask than bloggers themselves?

As an old school blogger who started off using MT 1.something, I’m accustomed to the front page of the blog being the most current entries, obviously, and the link for a previous or older entries/entry being displayed on the bottom right of the entries with an arrow or similar indicating “to the right”.  Like I’ve got on this blog.

Over the years, especially with the success of WordPress, I’m seeing it done in the opposite and it’s beginning to confuse me quite a bit while organizing client sites.  In my opinion, you view the most current entry, then “flip back” like a reverse book to read older entries.  And, to that end, the link by default would read something like “older entries” or “previous entries”, not next entries, which I’m seeing linked on the left with a left arrow.  This seems to be WordPress’ default setting.

Uh… this doesn’t make sense to me.  I’m not trying to be difficult… maybe that’s what the kids are doing these days. I don’t know. But if I’m looking at an individual entry, to me, the most recent entry would be “to the left” and should read “newer entry” or “next entry”.  And vice versa.  Why would I go to the right?

So, what do you think?  What makes sense to you?   What do you use on your blog?  I want to make sure the navigation makes sense to users, regardless of what I think.

Thanks for your input!