I’ve been a bit paranoid about the (future) structure of this site. As I have not come up with a fool-proof plan to semantically organize this site into categories that will make sense to visitors and to me as a developer, I formulated a few theories/questions.
Help me out.
Update. In attempt to draw out a schematic diagram, I solved all my troubles! Next week I have a break from school — you will see some riot for sure.
I am using WordPress for all content.
Categories
I want to keep the blog and maintain a working portfolio. Do I integrate the portfolio into the blog as an extra category, and display the blog on the blog part and the portfolio on the portfolio part of the site? Or should I make Pages with the portfolio? It seems like it could work both ways, but which one makes more sense?
Permanent Links
Since it’s all dynamic and I could have it to be whatever I want, does http://mtsix.com/archives/2006/02/site-structure/ or http://mtsix.com/archives/2006/02/site-structure.html look better? The latter one looks impressive (it’s like I spent time hand coding each static page & it’s probably better for SEO), but it’s longer.
As for the portfolio, if it’s kept inside the blog, it will have to have the same permanent link structure as the blog posts. Otherwise, it could be http://mtsix.com/portfolio/big-ass-site/. I guess that is cleaner than the long, dated url.
Rambling & Recommendations vs Archives
Another frustrating thing is the Recommendations thing. It’ll be a new category of content, but it’s hard to make a separate archive for that category. I don’t want to put Recommendations together with Rambling, because then it will be mixed and you won’t be happy seeing rants together with good movies to watch.
So what should I do with the two sections (by this I mean two items in the navigation and two completely separate pages for them)? They definitely need to have separate sections on the site, but separate archives as well? (If not, then there is the need for a whole new section of archives, which raises the question, what are the two sections Rambling and Recommendations for?)
Okay if they are two separate sections, they will have two archives. How should the permanent link structure be then? Each single entry will still keep the /archives/%year%/%month%/%postname%/? Or should I add a %category% in there as well, to make some distinction?
Tags
A pretty simple problem — what section should I keep the Tags (the tags on each post) section in? I don’t think they deserve a new section. But if there is not a specialized Archive section, where do Tags fit? Since there at least are two categories for the blog, the Tags won’t fit under either one because it will exclude the other category. What do I do?
Any suggestion is greatly appreciated. I really hope this doesn’t turn into a monster that can’t be fixed.
Wow, that’s quite a little conundrum you have there. I usually just lump everything into the “general” category out of laze, but it sounds like you’ve considered a lot.
For your problem with the portfolio thing, why not have a category for that in the blog and then cross-post it in the portfolio section?
As for the permanent links, just go with the .html, it looks better and it shouldn’t matter the extra 5 characters. :P
For the next one I’m kind of confused, but this is what I think you should do from what I’m getting. I’d make two separate sections and then have two separate category archives, but then double-archive (like put in two categories simultaneously) for the posts that cross the two. And then I’d include the category link in the thing itself so that it’ll show which one or whether you’ve put it in both. I hope that makes some small shred of sense.
I’m just confused about tags, so sorry, I’ll be of no help there, ’cause I’m not quite sure what you mean. @__@;;
Sounds like a lot of work. I wish you luck getting through it all!
Thanks a lot for your input Kris. I’ve decided to post portfolio entries separately as static pages, since they aren’t really updates or anything. You are right, permanent links look better with .html.
For the archives, you are suggesting I should have two separate archives? And have category name in the url? The thing is, “Rambling” is sort of a category for all the random stuff that I don’t have a category for, and “Recommendations” is actually a category. So having rambling inside the url is kind of weird. But I get your point, it does show under which category the entry is posted. I’ll think more about distinguishing the posts so it will be more apparent.
By tags, I mean the tags like “organization” and “mtsix.com” on this page (the sidebar to the right of the main entry). They are basically categories, but more dynamic. Clicking on the tag will return a page with all the entries with that tag. My concern is that this returned page doesn’t really fit anywhere, since it’s a general archive/search function.
Alrighty here let me take a quick stab at all your questions before I finish packing my stuff up for the move.
==Categories==
I’d make the Portfolio it’s own page for professional reasons. I’d also feed those entries into your main blog for extra exposure. But I’d make it almost it’s own entity, it just feels more professional to me.
==Permanent Links==
Chop off the .html unless you can find proof that it’s really better for SEO and such. People don’t need to know that your site runs off of any kind of files, it’s just generally cleaner and better looking if it’s a folder. Every commercial you see has links to the extent of www.corporate.com/taxes or something like that. They don’t include .html, and as such I don’t feel that you need to.
==Rambling and Such==
Might as well make seperate archives, or perhaps just dynamic archives where the user selects the category they’re searching for. That cuts out a lot of your guesswork. Though I would throw the %category% variable in there, just as a final measure for clarity’s sake.
==Tags==
I’m still getting used to the whole Tag thing exploding everywhere. I’m not entirely sure they need their own section or even a sidebar or anything. I think displaying the tags in the post and making the archives searchable by tag would probably be enough. Though I really don’t know and am not qualified to answer that kind of thing, that’s my feeling.
Regardless, glad to see you finishing it all up and making some good thoughtful decisions. Looking forward to the updates :)