smackfoo.com | I find your lack of faith disturbing.

Tyme over at the 9rules network asks a very good question, namely — What is your site about?.

I should be able to quickly find this out with categories (tags). Or something on the about page. Or something on the front page. If you have a tag cloud, that’s awesome (I’m putting one on my site) because that lets me know, at a glance, what topics you talk about most.

.. and the frustrating reality is that Tyme has pointed out the obvious reality, that is so easily forgotten in the midst of tagging nirvana — visitors cannot see the posts for the tags.

Problem..

Tags to bloggers, are like toys to children, we are driven to “collect the set”. The problem is often two fold when one blogs on many different topics. The tag set for one post, which made perfect sense at the time, has absolutely no co-relation to any other post, ever. Redundancy and confusion set in so that a single descriptive yet broad-ranging tag, is replaced by 10 highly specific and single-use alternatives..

Solution?

Having allowed things to get fully out of control¹ at the ‘foo, it was time to slash and burn..

As it turns out, it was never originally expected that anyone using wordpress would ever want to ‘merge’ several categories into another². With the advent of tagging, category counts can easily blow out to ridiculous proportions, with no easy way to reverse the process. However, there is hope, in the shape of the extended categories manager for wordpress.

Merge one category into another³ or rename categories with full prejudice.. extended categories manager does simplify the process of category weight loss⁴.

Of course, that’s just one facet of the ‘thinning’ process.. given my penchant for collecting tags like an obsessive compulsive kleptomaniac it was the turn of the ultimate tag warrior powered ‘foo tag collection to feel the loving embrace of the Delete key.

Results?

Having unleashed ‘the reaper’, I’m down to one third as many tags and categories. They’re far more generic, yet sufficiently focused to actually remain relevant. This will also massively improve entry relationships, as related posts will almost always invariably share the same tag sets, making the task of searching for, or following a topic thread throughout the ‘foo vastly more effective.

Recommendation? .. pick descriptive tags and settle on a maximum ‘top 10′ core tag set from day one. This allows for natural growth and shrinkage in the tag set, without impacting on core concepts in any one entry. Keep the core set and lesser tags can be pruned out without pain or injury..

1. .. you know it’s bad when scrolling is required to view the tag set. (↩)
2. at least without experiencing ‘default category’ pain.. (↩)
3. solves the ‘delete firing entries into the default category’ issue (↩)
4. as always with database work, make sure you have a backup first.. (↩)