Blog Categories
As part of the reskin we did of the Community site we restructured the way the blogs work, merging them into one.
The idea was to allow us to more intelligently present the blogs for people to read. This works on categorisation.
Check out the image attached. The area circled in green is what we call 'announcements'. Anything we categorise as an announcement will remain in this space. Orange is 'Tech News'. This we've relegated from the main strip to being a separate section so that it doesn't get in the way of PlusNet news/posts.
Now, the highlighted in purple is were we are running into trouble. At the moment, anything we categorise as being 'PlusNet News' appears here. However, that means that anything we don't consider to be news (the Festive Faults as an example) won't appear on the front page.
This presents us with a challenge: How do we get visibility of all of the posts that we don't want to call 'PlusNet news'? It gets worse when you add the End of Days into the equation as their frequency and current placement within the PlusNet news category means they very quickly push any other content out of view.
In fact, because we appear to be producing so much blog content (that we are reasonably happy with publishing) that having everything on the front page like a normal blog just doesn't work.
Our current theory is that we need to develop the categories to allow people to browse the content better. Like on the beebs news page, categories effectively direct interested readers to the content.
Our categories are currently a mess due to how we used to use them as tags. The upgrade to a more recent version of Wordpress has given us tagging functionality so I've been able to begin to clean this up, but it's apparent that we need to review the categories to allow people to find posts they'd be interested in.
Here was my first stab as a category/subcategory list:
This gives us 4 top level categories, with sub categories if people want them.
So, what do people think to that idea? Would you be able to browse those categories and find what you were interested in?
Each category and subcategory can be bookmarked/subscribed to with RSS/atom feeds so if you are only interested in one after, or some of the areas you could control that. We'd also allow a 'subscribe to all' feed as well.
The idea was to allow us to more intelligently present the blogs for people to read. This works on categorisation.
Check out the image attached. The area circled in green is what we call 'announcements'. Anything we categorise as an announcement will remain in this space. Orange is 'Tech News'. This we've relegated from the main strip to being a separate section so that it doesn't get in the way of PlusNet news/posts.
Now, the highlighted in purple is were we are running into trouble. At the moment, anything we categorise as being 'PlusNet News' appears here. However, that means that anything we don't consider to be news (the Festive Faults as an example) won't appear on the front page.
This presents us with a challenge: How do we get visibility of all of the posts that we don't want to call 'PlusNet news'? It gets worse when you add the End of Days into the equation as their frequency and current placement within the PlusNet news category means they very quickly push any other content out of view.
In fact, because we appear to be producing so much blog content (that we are reasonably happy with publishing) that having everything on the front page like a normal blog just doesn't work.
Our current theory is that we need to develop the categories to allow people to browse the content better. Like on the beebs news page, categories effectively direct interested readers to the content.
Our categories are currently a mess due to how we used to use them as tags. The upgrade to a more recent version of Wordpress has given us tagging functionality so I've been able to begin to clean this up, but it's apparent that we need to review the categories to allow people to find posts they'd be interested in.
Here was my first stab as a category/subcategory list:
| Category | SubCategory | Notes |
| News | Announcements | Appears in announcements section |
| General News | Appears on front page news section | |
| New Features | Appears on front page news section | |
| Residential Products | Appears on front page news section | |
| Business Products | Appears on front page news section | |
| Industry and Technology News | Appears in the Tech News section | |
| New Features | Appears on front page news section | |
| Inside PlusNet | End of Day Reports | Visible somewhere on the front page |
| Incident Reports | Reports of when we blow something up | |
| Life In Plusnet | General posts about working here. | |
| Customer Satisfaction Reports | Updates on our monthly customer sat results. | |
| Traffic Management | Specific category for Tommos pots. | |
| Guides and Tutorials |  | To cover things like this post |
| Web Technology | Innovation and the Internet | Covers the posts by Dean/Matt/Dan |
| Coding | Techie/geeky posts from our developers | |
| Web Design | Techie/geeky posts from our web designers | |
| ???? | more techie categories as necessary |
This gives us 4 top level categories, with sub categories if people want them.
So, what do people think to that idea? Would you be able to browse those categories and find what you were interested in?
Each category and subcategory can be bookmarked/subscribed to with RSS/atom feeds so if you are only interested in one after, or some of the areas you could control that. We'd also allow a 'subscribe to all' feed as well.
Guides and Tutorials - would this be a good slot to integrate all the tutorials on Usertools? Many of those need some reviewing!
How have you got it in mind to present these categories? I quite like the way Google Reader shows you one line for each post which expands when you click on it - just showing the first paragraph or so with a link to the full post. Perhaps four boxes with the latest post in each expanded by default and the latest 8 or ten listed.
I also think there is a case for treating regular posts such as EOD specially so that only the latest is shown with an easy link to get to the full list of EODs.
How have you got it in mind to present these categories? I quite like the way Google Reader shows you one line for each post which expands when you click on it - just showing the first paragraph or so with a link to the full post. Perhaps four boxes with the latest post in each expanded by default and the latest 8 or ten listed.
I also think there is a case for treating regular posts such as EOD specially so that only the latest is shown with an easy link to get to the full list of EODs.
*thump*
^^ That was the sound of Colin hitting the floor
B.
^^ That was the sound of Colin hitting the floor
B.
Chris, one of our web designers is playing with some ideas. Once he's got something he's happy with, I'll show you guys 
