Dumb Things I Have Done Lately

Monday, June 18, 2007

Undoing the Damage Done: Blogger's Labels vs. Technorati Tags

I've been untangling 6 months worth of stupidness with my blog categories (Blogger insists on calling categories "labels," which in my mind is only outstupided by Salon's insistence on calling comments "letters").

Ever since I switched over to the Blogger beta, I've been trying to figure out the best way to combine the functions of externally-oriented tagging (tagging content so others can find it, primarily through Technorati searches), with internally-oriented tagging (tagging or "labeling" to have discrete categories to organize my posts).

For a while, I tried to do both (the categorization via labels and the tagging through the Greasemonkey Technorati Tagging Script), but having two sets of tags/labels was ugly and inelegant. So I decided to stick strictly to the labels.

Boy, was that a disaster.

What I failed to fully realize is that Blogger creates an aggregator page for each one of your categories/labels. So when I started using labels for single-use, one-off tags ("stupid html jokes" or "hot and ugly"), I was also creating useless aggregator pages with lone entries.

This created a whole bunch of unnecessary pages, which greatly increased the number of pages that need to be updated whenever I posted or edited an entry.

In addition, it basically made the categories useless as categories.

So after an initial cleanup this weekend, I was left with 261 categories... and 218 of them had only one entry. (And of course, editing old entries pushes them back up into the DC Blogs feed, in case any feed watchers wonder why 6-month old entries keep popping up.)

Now, I'm down to about 80 categories -- the number will drop a little more as I do some final cuts, then rise again as I start categorizing old posts and making new ones, but keeping it under 100 should be manageable -- as long as I can apply a little self-discipline.

Yeah, that's another trainwreck in the making.

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Thursday, February 01, 2007

My Blog Month -- What My January Entries Say About Me

I don't have a "who am I/what's this all about" entry, and my profile is pretty bare, so I highlight entries I like in my sidebar.

I was going through my January entries for new links, when I started wondering: What kind of story am I'm telling about myself to someone who only saw my January postings?

Except for stupid sci-fi/HTML jokes, I have a sense of humor (or I think I do).

I chew a lot of gum, and I like flashlights and other types of gadgets, since I have a lot of them on on my keychain.

One of the TV shows I watch is '24', and I've been watching it for a while. I don't go to movies too often (though I have a lot of DVDs), but fancy myself somewhat knowledgeable about film.

I think and write a lot about blogging. I even talk about it, though I need some practice, even if I don't have a Philly accent.

I go out in Arlington pretty regularly, and I talk about my local goings-on (including the state of area strip clubs) and participate in the DC blog scene.

I'm most likely a Duke fan.

I carry my camera around a lot, and I take a lot of photos. Some of them don't even suck.

So that was my January.

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