A New Website for Harper’s Magazine: I’ve never heard of Harpers, but apparently it’s a magazine published continuously since 1850, which makes for a lot of content.
This article is from the guy who re-did their Web site. He explains how he organized all that stuff.
Harper’s is divided into two parts: narrative content, like the Features and the Weekly Review, and a taxonomy (or ontology, depending on your preferred term), called Connections. The taxonomy is a big list of interconnected topics […]
His description doesn’t explain the site well enough, so just go over to Harpers and click around. Check Howard Dean’s entry, and it may make more sense. It’s sort of like the keyword organization we’re trying on this site, just done better.
They have the added complication of having more objects that we do — they have events and facts, while we just have posts. That changes things a bit, but the concept is the same. Start with a good, solid taxonomy and “hang” content on it. It’s like putting sheetrock on a house frame (sadly, I suck at that too).
Here's the problem with taxonomies and content categorization schemes: no one will maintain them. You can set up the greatest content tree or grouping structure in the world, but sooner or later, content authors (yourself included) are going to get complacent. That's because the value-add is on the reader's end…
