Tags Tags Tags
You may have noticed the ongoing simplification process in process here at davidseah.com. The one that's giving me trouble right now is just how to handle categories.
With the idea that fewer is easier to understand, I've dropped that huge list of categories that used to be in the sidebar. Now it says "Main Categories" and is comprised of:
- Design
- Development
- Freelancing
- Personal
- Productivity
That sums up a lot of what I talk about here, in a broad sense. Design is one I'm on the fence about...I tend to talk more about Design Thinking, and not so much about visual design. Misleading? Maybe.
There are dozens and dozens of subcategories attached to these main categories, and they're no longer being shown. What I'm wondering is whether I should merge them into these main categories now. I'd lose the hierarchy I have now. To make up for the loss of subcategorization, I'd switch to technorati tags. There are 600 posts in the system right now, which makes the task a little unpleasant.
Another solution would be to make each of these links into subpages, each with its own list of subcategories. That might be friendlier.
A couple of WordPress plugins that might come in handy:
Batch Categories 0.92 (WordPress 1.5.2 updated version) --- allows you to walk through all your posts and recategorize them more easily than editing each post.
SimpleTags --- Allows you to add Technorati Tags to each post in-line with syntax like this: [tags]Food, Cats, Bananas, Popcorn[/tags]. Nice and easy sounding.
I may use a combination of these. Maintaining my categories will allow me a little more flexibility in making subpages with customized content listing. In the meantime all this recategorizing might mess with Google searches.
The ultimate goal is to create a much nicer structure that's easy for people to navigate so they can:
- Find topics of interest easily
- Get an idea of what it is that's going on here
- Feel comfortable hanging out and talking
I guess that's my hosting instinct kicking in. In a way, this redesign is analagous to my pre-party prep routine:
- Clean up the house.
- Set up enough "activity stations" so people can gravitate toward what looks interesting to them.
- Make sure there's plenty of food.
