Searching vs. navigating Oct26 '05

# (1 of 3): Jennifer Grucza » jennifergrucza.com

4 hours, 52 minutes after the fact. (Wed 26 Oct 2005, 2:34 PM CST)

Hmm, sometimes you just feeling like browsing, though...

# (2 of 3): Josh » joahua.com/blog

8 hours, 47 minutes after the fact. (Wed 26 Oct 2005, 6:29 PM CST)

Yeah, I'm with Jennifer on that. I've been thinking about radically changing the way my own blog is organised, too -- because it's a personal site, and I can get away with that kinda stuff (redesigning on a whim). I don't particularly want to sever links, though.

An essay could be (has been) written on this, but the value of the web is in its hyperlinking structures. Google got to be the number 1 search engine by, amongst other things, its PageRank algo that draws heavily from interrelations between sites.

You might have just meant eliminating internal links, but I think that means the same thing. It's just defining the boundary a little closer to home. Right now, I know that your "Base", "About", "Blog", "Music", "RSS", "Archives" and "Contact" pages are important because they're prevalently linked to sitewide.

Good usability architecture might dictate you trim that a bit. (Particularly RSS, in this era of browser auto-discovery thanks to <link rel='alternate'>)

Perhaps that also means getting rid of the "Archives" -- I personally agree this is a useless feature in light of the search-centric browsing habits we're just beginning to better understand.

Chronology has to play a part, though, if you continue to "blog". Your blog hasn't ever been unrelated articles -- for example, this piece was obviously foreshadowed by your entry, "Blog entries become history too quick".

What you failed to do here is establish a relationship back to the preceding piece in hypertext. There's your automatic "related" link in the sidebar, but that failed to catch on to what you were really talking about.

An anachronistic web log is kind of self defeating. If you were just creating standalone content/articles, that would be different. Maybe something like A List Apart's structure? Issues, with two or three featured posts? (Note its use of columns: in the present issue, 206, there are two new pieces and one "Editor's choice" rerun.)

I imagine this could slow your production of content, though -- and it would probably make you want to focus more, and each post would need to have a clearly defined point and parameters. Which is, IMHO, not a great thing for a personal weblog.

You're moving back more towards the idea of a 'zine, then, which is far more defined than the anarchous stream-of-consciousness blogs so often are.

So... I think its a good idea to challenge the accepted structure, but keep in mind users will still want to browse (heck, RSS will be chronological and there's nothing you can do about that!), and that it will probably influence your perception of your site (and hence posting habits).

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# (3 of 3): Matthom

21 hours, 51 minutes after the fact. (Thu 27 Oct 2005, 7:33 AM CST)

Josh, very good points.

In the immediate future, I'd just like implement a search feature, that searches through blog comments, as well as posts - because I also feel that valuable comments (like the one you just left) are just as important as my own content - for me to search through, that is.

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