Well, another week has passed, and I have sufficiently cooled off after being sick and missing my holiday. Although there’s still no news from the doctor (apparently, waiting for test results is slow because the hospital doesn’t have an online database, and must post results everywhere), I’m feeling much better and am only coughing a few times a day. It’s still pretty bad though, when I do cough, so it’s not over yet.

Anyway, I’ve been making some good progress on the SOP site, but have hit a wall. I’m tossing up between adding an archives page (basically an aggregator which will bring in posts from different pages, so that they can all go into one RSS feed) and ordering posts by date or month. Since you can already browse via categories using the drop-down menus, there doesn’t seem to be any reason to list all posts on one page in an archive - or is there? It does make things easier to overview all posts at once, even in category arrangement. But that seems a bit redundant to me. Another option is to list all by date/month, but also to allow a tag cloud. Personally I think tag clouds are pretty useless (investigation for an old job; I had to research tag clouds and discovered that whilst it was a new trend, people tend not to understand how to use them or don’t use them anyway), but could have its benefits for those looking for similar posts.

On the other hand, I am now showing tags on all posts on SOP (currently on PIM, tags are used, but are not visible to the general public. They’re used more as a hidden way of connecting related posts together) so people will be able to pick a tag anyway. Again, it seems redundant. 

I’ve happened across quite a useful web design site that discusses things like this in detail, and it mentions that archives are good in date order for blogs; but less useful for topic-based sites. Tags are better for archives which are large and diverse in topic. Which I’m not sure I agree with in my particular case.

Then I have the other option: site map. On PIM, I have a sitemap which shows each page, and then a drop-down list of categories with each and every post inside the list. This makes sense, but no one ever visits the site map, so it makes me wonder whether one (a sitemap or an archives page for that matter) is even necessary.

Still, I think a date-based archive might be useful. There’s a lot of ’stuff’ and even if no one bothers to use it, it’s kind of handy to see all the posts, on one page, in order. The other issue with the sitemap is that posts often get cross-categorised, which means they double-up in category lists. This distorts the true nature of the archiving, whereas if it’s done by date you immediately see a complete list of posts, no doubles and no fuss.

I’ve been taking a look at some good examples of archives, for which a couple have sparked an idea or two, but it’s hard to judge just how well it’ll all come out in the end. 

I can say though, that the migration is looking closer and closer. Each edit brings me towards an August launch date. And hey, last time I mentioned some new imagery: check out the new title on the soon-to-be home page… http://www.schoolofpuppetry.com.au/slam.php. Beatriz sent me a different header, with some green waves under the black wave at the top of the page, but it got a little much so I reverted to the original image she sent me. Actually, in her second draft of designs she sent me recently, the only thing I kept from the updates was the new logo at the top of the page. She mentioned - quite rightly - that the title of the page and the logo shouldn’t be separate to each other (Doc was on the right, the title was at the left), and that the text of the title wasn’t a good fit with the design. 

Other little things have been added, like a safety disclaimer, which has been on my ‘to do’ list for ages. I finally managed to resolve the search page - a javascript conflict that was trial and error to find. A few more things on my list, and then I can finalise the content and do the official reveal and start migrating stuff over.