What’s Hiding in Your Archives?

Eagle eyed readers will have noticed that part of what I did during the summer break was to revamp the Confident Writing site.

One of the things that had been on my mind for some time was to do more with the archive material here (it is one of the frustrations of blogging, that a constantly updated stream will end up burying your old, good, material unless you find some way of doing something about it).

I know that this topic is of interest to others of you who have been blogging for a few years and have (like me) around 700 or so posts lurking away in the background, so I thought it might be useful to share some of the process I went through.

1. Think about the kind of structure you want to create

This is where it really all starts - thinking about what kind of site you want to create, and how you want readers and new visitors to find their way round about it.  Some of that is about design and navigation, but a large part of it is re-reading and thinking about what you’re trying to say, and what you want to pass on.

This process will probably run all the way through a re-design - I know I ended up changing my mind about the categories I wanted to show off in the navigation bar right at the end - but you need to start thinking about this at the beginning or the rest of the process won’t work.

(If you’ve not been over yet the new nav bar highlights material on perfectionism, practice, confidence tips and a whole library of resources for bloggers - more on that below.)

2. Think about how a new reader reads

We tend to blog - create new content - for those who are already reading.  It takes a bit of a shift of mindset to think about where people might be coming from who arrive for the first time, and where they might be ‘at’ in their own journey (whether that’s about writing, or relationships, or how to make a collage, or travel the world, or become rich and famous, or make fabulous jam, or start writing poetry, or whatever it’s you’re blogging about.)

Some of the stuff that’s hiding in your archives might be precisely what they’re looking for - though not necessarily in a way that’s easy for them to find.

3. Create pages to highlight the most relevant content

This is what I did to get round the problem above (the material comes in fits and bursts and isn’t necessarily presented in a logical order).  I couldn’t find or think of a technical way to do this, instead I created pages on the main themes and issues and then linked to the content that seemed to me most relevant and useful.

Here’s an example of a page I created on improving readability when you’re writing on the web.

You can then use the pages to build the site.

4. Find a theme that will work for you

I knew I wanted the new version of the site to be able to highlight this kind of content, in an organised rather than streaming way.

(This, for example, is what the page ‘for bloggers’ looks like, using widgets to highlight the content.)

I ended up going with the Builder theme from iThemes.

A few people have asked me about the reasons and I find I can’t give definitive answers - it’s partly because I’m a bit of a rebel and if I see countless sites promoting one theme I’m rather likely to go off hunting in the opposite direction.

But I had also used some of their themes before for less-bloggy more site-like sites, and liked them, and found them easy to use (including instructions a non-designer could follow).

I also like the different frameworks I can use as prompts to work from (as I’m not a designer, and can only work out where the content should go once I’ve seen the possibility).  If you take a look at my creative work site The Art of Everyday Wonder, also built with Builder, you’ll see what I mean.

(NB the links to Builder are affiliate links.)

If you don’t want to do this yourself, substitute “find a web developer who’ll find a theme that will work for you”

5. Rework categories

The more you delve into your archives the more you’ll start to notice categories that are over-crowded or under-populated, topics you don’t need any more or new categories you need to introduce to make better sense of things.

This is your chance to add them and take them away.

(I know this doesn’t break links on this site because the categories aren’t part of the url, but you might need to check this for your own site.)

6. Ditch the popular posts approach

This is the opposite of what I’ve done in previous redesigns, where I used a magazine style including a space to highlight popular posts. I decided it wasn’t really working for me any more.

As we’ve discussed here previously, popular posts can lead to slightly random effects (posts on commenting for example generate huge number of comments, so if you use that as a measure that’ll be all you show off… also posts that were once popular and heavily read will keep coming to the foreground and getting read and commented on… which means they’ll stay there forever).

That doesn’t matter if you’re happy to let what’s been read be shown, but won’t necessarily make logical or thematic sense, or fit with what you’re trying to say.

I decided to ditch the popular posts approach and organise around themes and topics instead.

7. Drop material into the background - use a category excluder

If there are some things you want your readers to find easily, there are other things you probably want to keep out of immediate view. You can’t highlight everything without overwhelming people, which means making choices about what you put to the fore, and what you move to the background.

A really simple way to do this is to use a category excluder: basically it means you ‘hide’ certain categories from your archive pages or widget lists of categories.  The posts are still there and will show up in searches and so on (though you can adjust the settings on this to suit, for each category) but aren’t being actively displayed.

This in itself can suddenly and dramatically make your site look and feel a lot more navigable.

8. Delete posts that are of no lasting value

As well as excluding you might want to delete altogether.  If you find posts that are of no lasting value, why not just get rid of them?  It’s quite therapeutic, just digital de-cluttering.

9. Sort your tags out

I’ve never had a scientific approach to tagging which meant when I included a tag cloud in the archives (see below) I had hundred and hundreds of the pesky things.  I deleted a lot of them so it’s easier to see what some of the themes are.  I still don’t think this is very scientific but at least now it generates a nice tag cloud

10. Check broken links

Once you’ve done all that you’re bound to have a lot of broken links, so you’ll need to run a check.  (You’re pretty well bound to have broken links on an old site anyway, so this is really routine maintenance.)

11. Find a way to display your archives

The pages are my way of trying to organise and sign-post material; an archives page lets people rummage whichever way they want to.  I’m using the archives plugin (see below) which shows off the material by tag cloud, category, monthly archive, and last 15 posts (you can select the number you want to include).

12. Turn off comments on old posts

This is just a bit of tidying up really.  I decided to do it because a) the amount of spam is getting out of hand, even with akismet’s valiant efforts and b) it was taking up too much of my time to reply to comments on long-gone posts.  One in particular could have run for ever and a day… it had to stop somewhere

13. Turn off comments on pages

Again, it’s just tidying up.  I’ve never seen the point of comments on pages and they add to clutter (and things you need to respond to.)  Using a lot of pages to organise the content made this more necessary.

14. Learn from what you’re doing

Let’s not forget the really interesting bit which isn’t the geeky plugin options - it’s learning from your own writing.  Delve into your archives for a few weeks and think about what you’re really saying, and you will learn, a lot.

15. Take a look at what your blog is ‘about’

The learning (after the rummaging and sorting) will quite likely change your view of what your blog is ‘about’ or how you express that about-ness in your about page. You’ll probably want to come back and have another go at the about page when you’re done.

16. Accept this is only ever a work in progress

Yes, once you start blogging again it’ll start to get untidy, new ideas will emerge, new thoughts will occur, new categories will ask to be created, you will see different ways you could have organised something, and you will realise that come next summer you might just have to do some of this all over again

Ups and Downsides

The main downside is:

• It’s a lot of work

The upsides are:

• It’s much easier for readers and visitors to find their way around
• It’s much easier for you to find, remember, link back to and learn from your own material
• It allows you to create something that looks like a website to those who might still be baffled by blogs
• It opens up the possibility of bringing the blog to a close (some day) but leaving the content intact and readable

Plugins that I used

I’m listing the plugins here rather than in the body of the post as I know from experience that some of them will break or become defunct over time - it’ll be easier for me to refresh the list if they’re jotted down here.

The plugins I used were:

To exclude categories

I used RYO category excluder.  I’m afraid I can’t now remember why I went for this over others, other than that it did what I wanted it to.  There are others available - just check the WordPress directory.

To turn off page comments (easily)

I used page comments off please (does what it says on the tin!)

To check for broken links

I use the broken link checker.  Please note I find I can only run this every so often to check - I can’t leave it on or it slows the site down to a juddering halt.  But it’s still part of the maintenance you need to do from time to time.

To highlight the archives

I went with the archives plugin.  I did have to tweak it a little to display the wording I wanted, but I liked the way it provides the reader with the option to look at a tag cloud, category list, last x number of posts, or the monthly archive.

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