<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><?xml-stylesheet href="/assets/atom.xsl" type="text/xsl"?><feed
	xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0"
	xml:lang="en-US"
	><title>Sacha Chua - tag - information-architecture</title>
	<subtitle>Emacs, sketches, and life</subtitle>
	<link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="https://sachachua.com/blog/tag/information-architecture/feed/atom/index.xml" />
  <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://sachachua.com/blog/tag/information-architecture" />
  <id>https://sachachua.com/blog/tag/information-architecture/feed/atom/index.xml</id>
  <generator uri="https://11ty.dev">11ty</generator>
	<updated>2014-03-04T13:00:41Z</updated>
<entry>
		<title type="html">More notes on managing a large blog archive: 17 things I do to handle 10+ years of blog posts</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://sachachua.com/blog/2014/03/notes-managing-large-blog-archive/"/>
		<author><name><![CDATA[Sacha Chua]]></name></author>
		<updated>2014-03-04T05:46:14Z</updated>
    <published>2014-03-04T13:00:41Z</published>
    <category term="pkm" />
<category term="blogging" />
<category term="wordpress" />
		<id>https://sachachua.com/blog/?p=26972</id>
		<content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>I've been thinking a lot about how to manage a large archive to encourage discovery and serendipity, and to make it easier to fish out articles so that I can send them to people. I started in 2001-ish and have more than 6,500 posts. There's not a lot of information on how to manage a large archive. Most blogging-related advice focuses on helping people get started and get going. Few people have a large personal archive yet. I love coming across other bloggers who have been at this for more than ten years, because information architecture is fascinating. Here's what I do, in case it gives you any ideas.</p>
<ol>
<li><strong> I set up Google Chrome quick searches</strong> for my blog, categories, and tags. This means I can quickly dig up blog posts if I remember roughly where they are. (Gear &gt; Settings &gt; Search &gt; Manage Search Engines):
<ul>
<li>Blog (b): https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3Asachachua.com+%s</li>
<li>Blog category (bc): https://sachachua.com/blog/category/%s</li>
<li>Blog tag (bt): https://sachachua.com/blog/tag/%s</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><strong>I create pages with additional notes and lists of content.</strong> I use either <a style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/display-posts-shortcode/">Display Posts Shortcode</a> or WP Views, depending on what I need. See the <a style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://sachachua.com/blog/emacs/">Emacs</a> page as an example.</li>
<li><strong>I've started using <a href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/organize-series/">Organize Series</a> to set up trails through my content.</strong> It's more convenient than manually defining links, and it allows people to page through the posts in order too.<strong> </strong><a href="https://sachachua.com/blog/2014/02/wordpress-make-sequence-posts-easier-navigate-organize-series/">Read my notes to find examples.</a> I'm also working on maps, outlines, and overviews.</li>
<li><strong>I've also started packaging resources into PDFs and e-books.</strong> It makes sense to organize things in a more convenient form.<b><br>
</b></li>
<li><strong>I converted all the categories with fewer than ten entries to tags</strong>. Categories can get unwieldy when you create them organically, so I use categories for main topics and tags for other keywords that might graduate to become categories someday. <strike>I think I used <a href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/wpcat2tag-importer/">Categories to Tags Converter</a> or <a href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/taxonomy-converter/">Taxonomy Converter</a> for this.</strike> Hah! Similar Posts reminded me that I used <a href="https://sachachua.com/blog/2013/09/reorganizing-wordpress-categories-with-term-management-tools-and-other-tweaks/">Term Management Tools</a>. Awesome.</li>
<li><strong>I manually maintain a more detailed categorical index</strong> at <a href="http://sach.ac/index">sach.ac/index</a>. This makes it easier for me to <em>see</em> when many blog posts are piling up in a category, and to organize them more logically.</li>
<li><strong>I set up short URLs for frequently-mentioned posts.</strong> The <a href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/">Redirection</a> plugin does a decent job at this. For example, people often ask me about the tools I use to draw, and it's great to just be able to type in <a href="http://sach.ac/sketchtools">http://sach.ac/sketchtools</a> as an answer.</li>
<li><strong>I post weekly and monthly reviews.</strong> The <a href="https://sachachua.com/blog/category/weekly">weekly</a> review includes links to that week's blog posts, and the <a href="https://sachachua.com/blog/category/monthly">monthly</a> review includes a categorized list. I've also set up daily, weekly, and monthly subscriptions based on the RSS feeds. This is probably overkill (more choices = lower subscriptions), but I want to give people options for how frequently they want updates. The weekly and monthly reviews are also helpful for me in terms of quickly getting a sense of the passage of time.</li>
<li><strong>I use Similar Posts to recommend other things people might be interested in.</strong> There are a number of similar plugins, so try different ones to see which one you like the most. I tried nRelate and the one from Zemanta, but I wasn't happy with the way those looked, so I'm back to plain text.</li>
<li><strong>I show recent comments.</strong> People often comment on really old posts, and this is a great way for other people to discover them.</li>
<li><strong>I use post titles in my next/previous navigation, and I labelled them &#8220;Older&#8221; and &#8220;Newer&#8221;.</strong> I think they're more interesting than</li>
<li><strong>I customized my theme pages to make it easier to skim through posts or get them in bulk.</strong> For example, <a href="https://sachachua.com/blog/2014/02">https://sachachua.com/blog/2014/02</a> lists all the posts for February. <a href="https://sachachua.com/blog/2014/?bulk=1">https://sachachua.com/blog/2014/?bulk=1</a> puts all the posts together so that I can copy and paste it into a Microsoft Word file. <a href="https://sachachua.com/blog/2014/?org=1">https://sachachua.com/blog/2014/?org=1</a> puts it in a special list form so that I can paste it into Org Mode in Emacs. You can also pass the number of posts to a category page: <a href="https://sachachua.com/blog/category/drawing/?posts_per_page=-1">https://sachachua.com/blog/category/drawing/?posts_per_page=-1</a> displays all the posts instead of paginating them. These tweaks make it easier for me to copy information, too.</li>
<li><strong>I give people the option to browse oldest posts first.</strong> Sometimes people prefer starting from the beginning, so I've added a link that switches the current view around.</li>
<li><strong>I have an &#8220;On this day&#8221; widget.</strong> Sometimes I notice interesting things in it. I used to put it at the end of a post, but I moved it to the sidebar to make the main column cleaner.</li>
<li><strong>For fun, I have a link that goes to a random post.</strong> I used to display random post titles in the sidebar, which might be an interesting approach to return to.</li>
<li><strong>I back up to many different places.</strong> I mirror my site as a development environment. I back up the database and the files to another web server and to my computer, and I duplicate the disk image with Linode too. I should set up incremental backups so that it's easier to go back in time, just in case.</li>
<li><strong>I rated my posts and archived my favourite ones as a PDF </strong>so that I'll still have them even if I mess up my database. Besides, it was a good excuse to read ten years of posts again.</li>
</ol>
<p>Hope that gives you some ideas for things to experiment with! I'm working on organizing more blog posts into trails and e-books. I'm also getting better at planning what I want to write about and learn. If you're curious about any of the techniques I use or you want to bounce around ideas, feel free to e-mail me at <a href="mailto:sacha@sachachua.com">sacha@sachachua.com</a> or <a href="https://sachachua.com/blog/meet">set up a chat</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Do you have a large blog? How do you manage it?</strong></p>
<p>You can <a href="https://sachachua.com/blog/2014/03/notes-managing-large-blog-archive/#comment">view 8 comments</a> or <a href="mailto:sacha@sachachua.com?subject=Comment%20on%20https%3A%2F%2Fsachachua.com%2Fblog%2F2014%2F03%2Fnotes-managing-large-blog-archive%2F&body=Name%20you%20want%20to%20be%20credited%20by%20(if%20any)%3A%20%0AMessage%3A%20%0ACan%20I%20share%20your%20comment%20so%20other%20people%20can%20learn%20from%20it%3F%20Yes%2FNo%0A">e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com</a>.</p>]]></content>
		</entry>
</feed>