As I am not a frequent blogger, and have over 130 posts, I am noticing that I tend to forget what I have written about in the past. This is a conundrum! I try my best to always have fresh ideas and ramblings, sticking to what I know best: my surroundings and my psychosis.
What I do need to figure out is how to categorize my posts into some sort of searchable database where I can literally search a topic and a date and go back to my blog and see what I wrote about. I know WordPress let’s you search by categories, but when I started this blog, I didn’t understand the categories or tags.
There is option number 1: go back through each and every post (mostly old ones) and re-categories and re-tag them. Then, make up my own personal user guide of how things are categorized and tagged.
This seems like a lot of work.
Option number 2 is to create an Excel database with PivotTables (corporate America, anyone??) and make a user-friendly worksheet that I can search and maintain easily.
This also seems like a lot of work.
So I pose a few questions for the blogging world:
- How do you organize your posts?
- Do I really need to do this; or are posts on multiple topics, differing for how I feel that day, really a bad thing?
I would use option one. I actually made that same mistake and I went back through and did it, plus it does help your fans, or readers.
Seems to be the best option available; now I just need to find the time!
Did someone say the ‘O’ word? Organization is my nemesis…and my brick wall. It defeats me, challenges me and stops me dead in my tracks. The only thing that keeps me repeating myself is the sudden paranoia mid-post that I might have written about this subject before. I then use the “search” engine on my site and after typing in the “key word” I check. But you are right in that the second option seems like way too much work.
Oh and don’t feel alone with the “not getting the category/tag bit, it took me aaggeess! LOL
By the by, thanks for stopping by my little blog and for the follow. As your site seems quite interesting, I’ve followed back.
Cheers mate! Hope your Christmas was happy and that your New Year brings wonderful things your way!
Thanks!
You too!
Cheers mate!
I actually learned about the categories and tags just a few months earlier after owning a blog for over a year. I went your Option 1 path. It is so time consuming but it does help organize things. Although, even now, I realize after I publish a post (within the next few days or weeks) that I forgot to put the right category. So maybe its not all that useful…haha But I do find searching up a post is easier with categories than tags.
Organization is not my forte for my blog…I really try. I still need to figure that one out during the holidays, in hopes for a better looking blog by 2013.
I forget what I categorize everything under – or I realize that I categorize almost every post under the same categories and I am still all confused!
I pretty much gave up on categories and just stick to tags. Tagging also helps your readers find you since so many folks use them while browsing. You can re-do or just start from scratch now. (PS, not sure many people read older posts anyway so repetition is not too terrible. If someone objects, you can always use the “it bears repeating” defense!) Good luck this year!
Interesting way of organizing – I always find myself using the same categories over and over and never creating new ones or removing ones that I don’t use!
Thanks for the tip!