Categories Are More Than Just a List
August 8th 2007The purpose of categorising posts is to organise your content. You group similar posts into sections, allowing readers to easily find all the posts on a certain topic. However, categories are more than just a list in the sidebar.
How Are Categories Ordered in a New Blog?
When a blog is new, naturally it will have fewer posts. Therefore, posts are grouped into rather broad categories. For instance; this post is currently categorised into the "Blog Usability," category. Usability in itself is a huge topic, encompassing many sub-sections. As the blog is still new though, there is no need to break into these sub-sections.
Small blogs have a small number of categories.
As Your Blog Grows, Your Categories Grow
Over time, you post more and more, and the blog becomes larger and larger. However, because your blog is virtual, viewable only on a screen, you don't see that.
Forget about the computer, and think about each post as a written document, and your blog as a filing cabinet. In the beginning, it may be suitable for you to use a separate drawer for each category, however, each page you add is filling up the cabinet. What do you do when there are so many pages that finding a certain one takes forever? You divide up the drawer. You take all of the pages in that drawer, and categories those, e.g. by name, by date or by topic.
Why should blogs be any different?
When a particular category is swollen with posts, you need to sub-divide that category into mini-categories. Otherwise, the category will be so bloated that finding information on a certain topic is too difficult to do, and the category loses its purpose.
How To Show Subcategories
You need to change your default list of categories, into a list with more structure. A great example of this is the category list at the Hong Kiat technology blog, which uses the following visual cues:
- Indented subcategories - This is the most effective technique. Your first level of categories literally come first, with the second level being in a second column. Furthermore, the relationship between categories is easy to see, as the children of a certain category are displayed beneath that category.
- Faded names on subcategories - This highlights the difference, and prominence, of the two types of category.
- Subcategories appear on the same button as the parent category - This further highlights the relationship between child categories and their parents.
Is Tagging the Answer?
Tagging has taken off hugely in blogging, without doubt. Tags are used to describe a post in just a few words, and these words can then be searched upon to find all posts which have been tagged as such. But are they the solution to finding content on blogs? What is your opinion?
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August 17th at 1:44 am GMT
Comment #1
I think categories are more useful than tagging. Don't get me wrong, it's still important to tag your articles, but when it comes to posting tag clouds or categories on the sidebar, always show your categories.
Sly from Slyvisions.com
August 17th at 12:57 pm GMT
Comment #2
Thanks for the opinion Sly. I'm the same. And tag clouds seem to be a lot easier to get wrong. The size of some tag clouds on blogs is just ridiculous...
August 26th at 5:23 pm GMT
Comment #3
I'm debating over the usefulness of tags, myself. The original idea was to get Technorati juice, and they became valuable for micro-categorizing your content, but how many visitors are really using tag clouds and such.
I'm working on ways to make tags become more valuable, such as the site search tags on a per post basis, such as those I create manually on my WordPress.com blog, but tag clouds - not working for me.
We need to do more to bring value back to tags.
August 26th at 5:37 pm GMT
Comment #4
Lorelle - I agree, and I think a large part of that responsibility will fall with Wordpress itself, and then the Codex documentation. I know they are implementing tags with the next version of Wordpress, which is good because it centralises tagging as part of the blog (It's one of the main reason I don't have tags here. I'll wait for the Wordpress setup, rather than use a plugin).
Good tag clouds all have a few common traits (Limit the number of words, little overlap with category names, different sizes etc.), and by setting those traits as the defaults for the tags tag, it could instil some best practices in users. The Codex can then reinforce that in some of the examples it always does so well.
With all that said though, I rarely like tag clouds either. Tags are at their most useful for me when used to dissect a post a little more, and then search for similar posts (like on your blog). It works brilliantly when done correctly, but it all depends on the blogger.
They need to use the same tags consistently, month after month (e.g they can't tag one post "writing tips" another "writing advice" and another "writing pointers" - They would have to choose one of the options, and stick with it). There is a level of self-discipline there which I know would be hard to keep up.
November 27th at 11:31 pm GMT
Comment #5
My next step now that I've got a full and working category tree ( instead of a list ) is to make certain branches collapsible and expandable. Under my Mountains category, I have: Rockies, Olympics, Cascades ... and I need to add Sierra Nevada. It's great that a viewer can hide all the categories ( or meta, or archives ), but it would be all the more useful to be able to hide all the subcats under my Travel category, and more easily focus on tips, or other types of content...