Providing easy access to my blog history is an important service to provide for to my readers. I am changing how I do things on this blog and want to announce a change on Carrying Stones for the six or seven readers who stumble into my trap each week.
You may not realize this, but the code monkeys running WordPress.com provide two options for their bloggers to sort out their posts; categories and tags.
Categories are pretty inflexible and tend to grow like a topical stew. “Let’s throw a few tech posts in there, and another few about my kids. Tech may not be clear enough though. What about tech and mac and mac os x and iphone and apps and applications and word processing and schedules and desk and productivity…well, do you see the problem? No? Let me take it to the next level then, and if you’re OCD too, then you will certainly understand.
Every time I add a category it sits there in a growing list waiting for me to pick it again. At first I had 10 or so categories. This grew to 20 and is on the way to doubling again like a viral parasite at a rock and roll concert just spreading, spreading.
Anyway, speaking of concerts, tags are the laid back hippy cousin to categories. You enter tags in a box when you publish a post. Maybe you need one tag, Maybe you need 10, it doesn’t matter. Just type in a few descriptors and move on to the next work of creative genius.
Long story short? I have enough lists and things to prioritize and select in my life and trying to figure out which categories best describe the post I’m publishing is one decision I can eliminate (or do I need a new category? decisions decisions!)
The categories are dead. Long live the tags.
So I’m eliminating the list of categories and will begin consistently tagging my posts beginning with this one. I will not be going back and tagging prior posts so those will be floating in limbo, though everything is still searchable using that search box over there.
This post is way meta and really just something to help me think through this. I hope you’ve enjoyed this time in my brain.