I think that using Categories is key to working with WordPress blogs. By using Categories (for example, drawing, painting, photography, the art world) it becomes possible to turn a single blog into a multi-blog.
This lets me turn my tagline on zipser.nl into a functional tagline. It is not only a description of the blog, but a set of links to the content of the separate categories. The basic form is inspired by Edward Winkleman’s tagline. [Steve Durbin also has a functional tagline much like the one I describe here.]
Arthur Whitman suggested that a blog is like a home; different sections (Categories perhaps?) could be like rooms. I think the metaphor is powerful, but I don’t feel quite, well, at home with it yet.
Any suggestions as to how to take Arthur’s idea further?
UPDATE . . .
One thing clear from the comments below is that people are interested in adding categories to Art & Perception. What categories do you think we need?
Here is what we have already (multiple Category trees):
across the arts
art world
— art and economics
— art education
— being an artist
— collecting
artform
— drawing
— frames
— painting
— photography
— sculpture
— writing
— — art criticism
— — creative writing
— — non-fiction
children
from photos
internet
— blogging
— website design
interpretations
— abstraction
— realism
landscape
materials
— bronze
— ceramics
— fiber
— paper
motivational
To be useful, the Categories should be organized into a single tree. If the main branches are chosen carefully, then the tree can accommodate a huge number of “leaves” while still being a useful tree. But without a good underlying structure, the Categories degenerate into a long list — the longer the list, the less useful it is as a whole.
Rather than adding “leaf” Categories, it would be more useful to think of what kind of tree we could build that would accommodate what we have already. For example, what kind of underlying structure would be necessary to hold “children,” “bronze,” and “motivational” (not to mention, “across the arts”)?
In the comments Steve says that Categorization is fundamental to our thinking. That must be true, but there is a lot going on under the surface that we are unaware of. The trunk and branches of the tree, which we don’t normally think about, must be just as fundamental to our thinking.
[This is not to say that our cognition of categories in normal life could be fully modeled by a simple tree structure, of course, but this is what the software offers, and is probably closer to our thought than a flat list.]
[“To be useful, the Categories should be organized into a single tree.”
Why?
Because the connections between Categories which provide structure to the tree indicate the relationship between the various Categories. If two Categories are not in the same tree, it is like saying they have no relationship to one another. If that really is the case, they probably don’t belong in the same blog, or even multi blog. A well designed tree, on the other hand, should be able to accommodate all Categories imaginable. A well designed blog could cover all topics without being cumbersome. An encyclopedia covers all topics, but an encyclopedia is not a blog.]
A functional tag-line may be a good idea for archiving. But I prefer the last few weeks of A&P not to be separately tagged.
At this time, we pretty much all like to comment on all posts. There are not that many posts/day.
Separate tag-lines from the onset would be a nuisance because it would require more clicking.
Sorry for creating a misconception. In a blog using Categories, the front page of the blog still looks the same. It is simply that the separate topics (Categories) can be accessed separately also. On Art & Perception we use Categories already. We don’t have a straightforward access to them, but it is not difficult: For example, here are similar Categories on Art & Perception (with more posts in each):
drawing | painting | photography | being an artist
Clicking on one of the above gives you access to the posts in the given Category. This is really the great thing about Categories as opposed to separate blogs for different topics — you can bring everything together on the front page of a single blog; you also can view the topics separately, as on separate blogs.
There is nothing difficult about displaying Categories, of course. Many WordPress blogs show them by default. The problem is that the Categories need to be chosen carefully in order to be useful. Many of the posts in Art & Perception belong to several Categories, and there are many many categories. This is logical because of post content, but it makes the Categories less useful than they could be (which is why we don’t display them in the sidebar).
The way we use Categories on Art & Perception does not give them the quality of “rooms” is a “home,” for example. By choosing a limited number of Categories (as I did for my site) and giving them a stable position (in the tagline), I think I get closer to the concept of separate spaces that people can visit jointly. This sense that people can easily get to the same destination is important, I think. To give a counter example, imagine you search for “drawing” in the search box. You will find a lot of posts, but you will not have the sense that anyone else has ever taken the same path to reach them as you have. You may have been one of the only people to ever enter “drawing” in the search box. Thus, the “drawing” search result page, as valuable as it may be for finding the posts, does not represent any sort of “social space.” “Rooms” in a “home,” in Arthur’s metaphor, have a social aspect to them. They are constrained (e.g., their position is fixed, as is their size), but they are places people can go and be social about different topics.
Here is an example. In my previous comment, click on “photography”. Several posts down is Steve’s post, “What else they might be.” I haven’t looked at this post in a long time, because it scrolled off the front page a long time ago. If I were searching in the archives, I might come across it, but I would not have the sense that anyone else had seen it. But if it were in a prominently listed “photography” Category, I would know that many people interested in photography who visit Art & Perception will have seen it, perhaps recently. This increases the likelihood of an interesting discussion on this post continuing after it disappears from the front page.
Does this mean that we can only have a handful of Categories if we want to have a functional tagline? No, not at all. On zipser.nl I distinguish between Categories to describe the posts and Categories to display the posts. The latter are restricted and small in number, while the former are rich enough to describe the content in detail.
Categorizing things is fundamental to our thinking, like language, and is similarly rich and difficult. Karl is right that use of categories can make our site much more useful. Especially as we grow, in addition to being a daily blog, it could become a useful resource for information on various topics. Categories give access to these. Instead of searching through the whole blog for information (like a houseful of books), we only have to look through the subset labeled with the category of interest (like a single room, e.g. the photography room or the painting room).
Now a single post may be about David Hockney’s work, which would be both photography and painting. No problem, labeling it with both categories effectively puts a copy into both rooms, so it can be found by someone looking at photography or at painting. Actually, each post can have as many categories as you want, and be selectable by any of them. The most power comes with combining categories, so one could select posts about photography AND painting, or painting AND technique, or painting AND history, etc. I don’t know if this can be done with WordPress or not.
We may want to have the most prominent categories in the tagline as Karl suggests. In any case, I think the categories should be much more accessible, i.e. listed in every sidebar. Probably at the bottom, as they could extend pretty far. I think it would also be good if category assignments could be made by anyone, so that the full burden isn’t on the author to think of every way people might want to label a post, and so that a category could be added if comments bring out a whole new facet of the topic under discussion which fits into a different category.
What categories to use and how fine they should be is one of those major issues that is perhaps best dealt with by making a first guess, seeing how it goes, and allowing it to adapt. It is not something to legislate like the Library of Congress cataloguing system, which stinks.
Steve,
The things you are suggesting seem to blur the boundaries between Search and Categories, as implemented by WordPress. Because WordPress is a fully programable system, it should be possible to make it do some of what you are describing for multiple Category selection.
Another option would be to keep a record of the Search keywords that are used. If we had a list of these, sorted by the number of times a given keyword combination has been used, then the visitors to the site could create their own category associations by “voting” with Search. An interesting implication of this is that it could help us identify topics that people are interested in but that we don’t have in our posts. For example, no one can at present select a Category called “printing photographs” because it doesn’t exist. If, however, many people searched for this category and we had a record of this, one of us with knowledge of the subject might be inspired to write on the topic.
There is much that could be done with programming. To begin with, however, we could go a long way with insightful use of the tools that WordPress provides already. As you say, “categorizing is fundamental to our thinking.” In a sense, the problem of how to categorize subjects on the blog IN A WAY THAT IS USEFUL is more of a language/thought problem than a programming problem. There are many approaches. It is by no means trivial, but for that reason, I think it is an interesting subject.
I think that Steve’s comment is important
..so that a category could be added if comments bring out a whole new facet of the topic under discussion which fits into a different category.
The category assignment would be a creative process that, presumably, now and then would need to be revised.
Birgit,
To be useful, Categories need to be more than a list of topics. They must form a system.
WordPress allows Categories to have a tree-like structure. For example, on zipser.nl I have this structure:
world
–art
—-art-form
——drawing
——–still-life
——–figure
——painting
——–landscape
——–imaginary
——photography
—-art-materials
——paper
——pigment
—-the-art-world
——being-an-artist
——art-and-economics
–internet
—-blogging
“Still-life” is a subcategory of “art-form” which is a subcategory of “art” which is a subcategory of “world.”
“Blogging” is a subcategory of “internet” which is also a subcategory of “world.”
This level of organization makes it difficult to allow people to add categories at whim, because if they add them in the wrong place, the system becomes disorganized and looses its power.
I think to make the most of Categories, it is necessary to allow everyone to propose them, but have a limited number of people adding them to the Category tree, in order to maintain organization.
So you see, when I have a few Categories visible in the tagline, I am hiding the full complexity of the underlying system. If I didn’t do this, it would make the tagline to difficult to understand. But someplace else in the blog the complete Category tree could be very useful to look at. Above is not even the complete tree, but it gives the idea.
This is what Ginger, a photographer friend, emailed me:
I need more information to be able to explore around on A&P blog as well when you have time…
How can we better help people?
Birgit,
Making websites that people can use is one of the great difficulties in modern life. It seems like it should be easy, but it is not. Businesses spend a lot of money on this. There is a whole industry called “Usability” devoted to this. Here is one of the gurus.
Here is an interesting article from that site which explains common web design errors. How do we measure up?
You know, I’m wondering if all of this web design is a waste of time or not. But when you say that people have trouble seeing our art and following our discussion because they can’t navigate the site well, I feel that getting it right is worth the effort. What experience has shown professionals in business is that getting these things right is very tricky.
I am confused.
(1) On today’s post, Rex said multiple categories on any post actually HARM the indexing that search engines use. It’s better to use just one. However, in this post, Karl is advertising the use of multiple categories. Does this mean that each of us has to decide whether we want a one-category post to be most easily picked up by outside search engines or a multiple-categories post so that we can search most effectively within A&P?
(2) How do I find out about all the categories after this post has receded into the past? I understand that we have already so many categories that we cannot have a button for each category on the front page. Would it be useful to have, on the front page, a button that, when clicked, gives a list of our categories?
(3) I understand that it is better to make art instead of web design. However, let us keep in mind that we want A&P accessible to new visitors and not just to the cognicenti.
Birgit,
I am saying that using multiple Categories gives you more power in using the blog. Rex is saying that search engines want you to use one Category per post.
My view is that I’d rather design a site for people to use than a search engine robot. Also, I’ve had lots of good results with search engines using a blog that didn’t even have Categories. If the one-Category per post rule was really important, WordPress could have been designed to enforce that rule and prevent multiple categories. I would say do neat stuff using Categories and don’t worry about the search engines. Rex is the head admin however, so his view is what we will end up doing here.
Imagine a post about a picture that someone makes. First they make a drawing, then they make a painting. What category do you choose, “drawing” or “painting,” or both? Or, do you make up a new category, “drawing-and-painting”? To force a post to be in only one category is to loose much of the meaning of categories. What if the drawing was based on a photo? What if the artist is a child? How can one category represent all of this? If we coin a new category for every category-combination, we would end up with so many categories, each sparsely populated, that they would be of little use to us.
Under the category ‘art form’ one may want to include textile art.
Ha, under materials there is the category “fiber.”
I like categories, as you can see. I see them as a system for creating a model of the site contents. The categories that apply to a post show how the post maps onto that model. The categories define a multidimensional space wherein each post is represented as a single point.
I know that there is ‘fiber’ under ‘material’. I already categorized my wall hanging as fiber. But under ‘art form’, a higher priority category, textile art is missing.
More importantly, when I put ‘fiber’ into the search box, I get Karl’s post on making paper but the post on my wall hanging does not show up.
If you want to build a tree, don’t begin with the leaves.
Here is a start:
world
— physical
— metaphysical
Add art, art form, and art materials:
world
— physical
— — art form
— — art materials
— metaphysical
— — art
Now add fiber in various forms:
world
— physical
— — art form
— — — quilts
— — art materials
— — — fiber stuff
— metaphysical
— — art
— — — fiber art
One tree holds it all. See, it’s easy. Your wall hanging post would be in categories “quilts”, “fiber stuff” and “fiber art” explicitly, if you discussed these in sufficient depth. They would also be in the super-categories “physical”, “art”, and “world” implicitly.
Now let’s do something for painting:
world
— physical
— — art form
— — — quilts
— — — painting
— — art materials
— — — paint
— — — fiber stuff
— metaphysical
— — art
— — — fiber art
— — — painting art
Now let’s add some artists:
world
— physical
— — artists
— — — Sally
— — — Joe
— — art form
— — — quilts
— — — painting
— — art materials
— — — paint
— — — fiber stuff
— metaphysical
— — art
— — — fiber art
— — — painting art
With a good display system, this would all seem very simple.
Karl, just to clarify my views on this, selecting one category is not opposed to your tree. Whichever category is selected implies all the twigs, branches, and trunk. There may be a software solution for that as far as making single category posts appear in searches that are defined further down the trunk.
In fact, I look at the way you’ve thought this through and presented it and I realize I am blessed with the inner workings of a brilliant mind. Impressive.
Organizing the categories in a way that encourages orderly thinking and creates a logical data hierarchy is far in advance of the “robots.” This is good. Carry on. As far as I’m concerned, this is your baby. Feel free to do what ever you think is best.
I’d like to propose the category “process”, which of course could relate to many of the existing categories but might often cross several of them without falling into any one.