Back when I started this blog I imagined it was going to be filled with posts. To better organize all the posts I expected to later exist I created categories to assign to each post. This would keep posts organized and make it a little easier for readers to perhaps focus on the types of posts they found the most interesting while still following the entire blog.
But the categories I ended up creating were based on what content I had hoped might be on the blog rather than what ended up on the blog. There were too many categories and too much overlap between them. A post could fit into two or three or sometimes more categories. Viewing a particular category would return most of the posts from the site—not quite entirely useful behaviour. Categories were switched off many months ago while I figured out what to do with them.
It turns out I’d only done half—while also too much— of the work when I decided on the initial categories for the blog. The too much work part was making too many categories which could then apply to too many posts. The half of the work part was not using any tags after assigning a category—singular—to a post. Tags could be thought of as sub‐categories, but it’s better to think of them as themes. Themes transcend categories and can apply to any post while categories allow posts to be grouped together based on a broad organizational topic, regardless of each post’s themes. Words are weird. I didn’t understand how categories and tags could fully relate to the other until I thought of them as topics and themes—now the relationship is clear.
Now instead of eight to nine possibly overlapping categories there’s only three to four clearly defined categories. Blog is the default category. It’s where all the day to day entries will live, where the short and silly stuff will be. Writing is where the more formal posts will reside, a place for seriousness—but not all the time. And Photography is where posts featuring photos and image galleries will go. The last category, Scraps, is theoretically for posts which are too short and bloggy to be in Writing, but to much like writing to be in Blog. I don’t see why they can’t just hang out with the regular blog posts for added interestingness or be filled out with a bit more properness for inclusion with the other writing entries. Time will tell. Though I did create the category—with some embarrassing in retrospect fanfare—almost four years ago, and there all of four posts in the category. Maybe time already has. We’ll see…
But, that’s it for categories—except for going back through each post and categorizing it again. Adding tags to each post will be next. And to get the taggin’ train sailing, I’m tagging this post blogging because it’s a blog post about blogging, and pineapple, for obvious reasons. Ah—such clarity.