Suppose I want to blog about three somewhat unrelated main topics: Money, Languages, and Information-Technology on the same blog. How should I organize things for the best user experience? How does would such a structure affect the default menu structure at the top
So far I found this: Category-manager and researching further. Apparently Category-Manager is a plug-in, I’m installing it now.
Hi @NealWalters:
This is obviously more of an opinion question rather than a technical one but here’s my opinion.
My advice: use no more than 10 categories. Those <=10 categories when viewed together should define the essence of your blog. Don’t use subcategories. Then use lots of tags to define the topics you are talking about for each post. So if for example you are writing a blog post in your “Money” category, you might tag it with “401k” or “stocks” and so on.
Viewed another way:
If you do it this way then your questions about your menu becomes easy; use a tag cloud on your main page for each category but filter the tag cloud to be specific to the category.
I have to agree with MikeSchinkel on this being an opinion question so here is my opinion.
I would go in a different direction:
Yes Use under 10 directories and use tags all over but do use sub-categories.
The beauty of WordPress build-in categories is their way of organizing posts in hierarchy,
and judging by geniustypes.com they use that same structure of about 3 main categories and there rest are subcategories.
To be honest I can’t say witch way is more effective user wise but in your case the management of the categories will be a lot easier and no plugin is needed because WordPress
category management that come’s out-of-the-box is more then sufficient for your needs.
Now again this is my opinion that i have picked up in years of experience but I’m more then sure that MikeSchinkel has (probably) more experience then me and I respect and understand the way he is suggesting.
hope I helped.