Mar
29
Blog Tagging
Filed Under DIY (Do It Yourself), Websites | Leave a Comment
Most blogs are sorted in time. The most recent articles appear on the front page, with the newest posts at the top. This makes perfect sense for blogs that are timely (news blogs, for example) and are centered around a specific topic.
My visitor logs show that most of my visitors come via google, and land on a specific page. Given the behavior of my user base, I got thinking about how WordPress is structured, and decided that the content I post on this blog is set up for a news site, but not an informational one.
Site Structure
First, I decided on the different pages I wanted within my site:
- Homepage - this would still have [tag]posts[/tag] stacked in time
- Individual page - these would be the permalinks for each posts
- Tag archives - pages showing all posts tagged with one or more tags
Key Ingredient: Ultimate Tag Warrior
Next, I installed the key to making this work: Ultimate Tag Warrior by Christine Davis. This is the Wordpress Plugin that makes this all possible. It also automatically creates cool things like a tag cloud with very little work.
UTW also allows for the creation of links to related tags and related posts. These are incredibly useful for users who stumble on a page via google and want to keep browsing related content.
Lastly, UTW uses a neat Ajax engine in the admin section to allow for one click additions of tags (much like del.icio.us does when you post a bookmark).
Conclusion
What I ended up with a was a blog that functions more like an internally hyperlinked set of posts and topics rather than a journal with archives by month. I think it'll make for a better experience for visitors to this site, who can now browse by their topic of interest rather than through the order of posts.
