Categories
When I started this blog I had just an idea of writing about what ever was on my mind at the time. In the beginning I think I started with roughly four or five categories under which I tried fit all of my content. Often hitting those categories was a stretch at best and lot of imagination in general. Overtime more categories were added, but those post that occurred a long time ago were more suited for one of the new categories. If one thinks about it though, in the beginning when are categorizing it is to come up with criteria that fits. As content grows, it becomes harder and harder to make things work out. Enter in WordPress 3.0 with its sub-menu capabilities and the answer is found.
Okay, I have to admit that at various times I have went back and forth on whether sub-category menu capability was something that I would personally use or not. However, after actually delving into, I have to honestly wonder how I thought I could I lived without it in the past. Fundamentally, the ability to group things is something that every CMS system needs. I will take it one step further though, and say the groups need to have the ability to be hierarchical. That is the part that I was missing in the past with WordPress, without truly realizing that was the case.
I think it is easy to do that when you start out with a fresh new blog. Each post can be its own category. Think of how easy it is to categorize and index a library if the library only has ten books. Increase that to twenty books and it still, your categories can be wide open and still cover the books uniquely. Increase that to a few hundred though and suddenly, you have some books that are close to others, but still different enough that maybe they should be categorized differently. You also have to consider those books that are about horses, but one focuses on racing horses while the other focuses on farming with them. And about the book that is about running a horse farm – where does it go?
So, I find myself with plenty of content here on Mephistos and in possession of the tools that will allow me to better categorize the content that I have here. I have, as we speak running through the organizational structure that I need. I apologize in advance as I do this, as the clutter on the menus will build up a bit and some post that are relevent to a category may not show just yet. Once I get a pretty firm grasp on the category structure I will be, once again, going back through all previous blogs and assigning them appropriate categories.
Once should also consider not only the ease with which a user can find like and relevent information on your site, but also the potential long-term for SEO. That is however another piece of information for a different blog sometime in the future.
** – Image from gnosis.cx
