I realized while creating the RSS feeds for the site yesterday (which by the way are not live yet), that I needed to also finish the archives for the RSS feeds to make any sort of sense. Out of all the things that I’m unsure of how to implement, it’s this.
The primary purpose of the archives is to provide simple, and easy access to all past data. It needs to be well organized to allow users to quickly, and seemlessly find what they are looking for.
In the past, I’ve always done this organization by date. This seems to be a common method amoung blogs… One that I’m finding less and less useful the more I see it. It seems to me, that I can’t remember when I read anything once it gets 2-3 weeks out. I can remember reading it, and where I read it, but not always when. It would seem to me, that the primary form of organization then would NOT be by date.
So what would be more useful? A search engine is one method, but it is not a good method for people just looking to browse, IE: people who don’t know what to search for. It will be something I include, but not something I rely on.
The only other method I can think of then is by category. The only problem there is the past 1000+ posts don’t have any sort of tagging or categorization. That could be a really long process to put it all together the way it would need to be… A long process that I don’t really want to go through.
So what does that leave me with? I do not know yet. Come back soon for whatever it is I decide! (Or post a comment if the comment engine is in place.)