Expirimental Test Page - No Touchy

Please do not edit this page. If you want to use this as the basis for something, please make a copy of the page. Lots o' work and hours getting these proofs of concept functioning. 

Blog Search

Try searching with any term from this test blog:

Test Blog

Content Link - 1 (to page)

Content Link 2

In order to use this feature on the index page (and we probably need to), I would eliminate the image in the blog banner. The other compelling reason to eliminate this image banner is because of the amount of real estate it takes up at the top of the page. You want more immediacy with the blog posts (i.e. first post immediately upon page load). On mobile, the banner will take up the whole screen when the blog loads.

Category Cloud

(alphabetical)

This comment applies to both of these cloud examples. Cloud tags can be interesting and cool, but I see some of the same problems here with the way the tags appear under posts, which is that there is no control over styling, especially the lack of commas between words.

As you can see in this category mock-up, I have capitalized all the category words in a hack that is an attempt to add some styling to distinguish between category and tag hierarchy. This may be something you want to incorporate with your categories/tags to help users understand information organization.

Also worth noting - categories and tags are case-sensitive. I have noticed you have a mix of upper- and lower-case combinations with words (i.e. Titer, titer). This will fragment your information once you start getting into this indexing work and people search. This was part of why I had suggested working out this "information architecture" in a spreadsheet before you dug into blog posts, so you could see the big picture and use it as a point of reference.

Tag Cloud

(alphabetical, long-term problem limit 92 words?)

Archive

Blog RSS Feed

People who use RSS aggregators can pick up your link here.

Newsletter Subscription

(connected to temporary spreadsheet in your Gmail account)

I don't think this belongs on the blog index page. But I know it's something you already do with the emails. You could manage this more professionally with a service (i.e. Google sheets, MailChimp). I know you are also selective about who gets on your lists, right? The only thing to consider is that anyone can sign up here. We would also have to explore managing multiple lists / newsletters.

Gallery / Summary Block

I need to come back and experiment with this one.  This is a powerful tool and in the "Display" section of the settings, it allows you to add all sorts of filters, including filters for specific Categories and Tags. I suspect that this may be an integral part of the indexing and organizational solution we have been seeking. However, it also involves some complexity. We would have to link from the index page to additional pages where a specific filtered category or tag word appears. For example, we might have a text link for "RAW" and when you select it, you get a filtered set of blog posts only for that category. The other nice thing about this block is the visual treatment (see below), making it more friendly for the user. 

Currently the example below shows the last 30 posts in chronological order.

I just read that not all SS templates support this feature for blogs. I think we got lucky with this template.

Blog Index

This is more in line with what I was thinking when I talked about a "knowledge base," a real blog index for all categories and tags that is easy for users to employ to find any info and drill down at any level.

Remember, this is just a proof of concept. We can play with design, layout, etc. later and make it better. The important thing is the concept right now.

A few thoughts as I am working on the stuff below:

- Don't use ampersand (&), as sometimes with computers this character causes problems.

- Don't abbreviate anything. The "BB" for Boerboel will not have any value if users don't understand. You have plenty of space to spell out full names.

I think the 30-result limit with this approach below will be a dealbreaker. You will eventually have hundreds and hundreds of posts, meaning this doesn't offer a comprehensive search option for users.

Another thought - we could still offer this as an option, but put a disclaimer at the top of the linked pages stating that it only shows the 30 most recent results. You can sort the results on the summary pages in numerous ways, one of which is by date.
 

Text Links Created from Link Pages

This is a nice option to display the results of actual blog posts for a category or tag.

I actually think this is probably the best and ultimate solution. The summary blocks are nice, especially because they have a more visual treatment and show all the blog-post results compressed with a synopsis. But the summary blocks only show 30 results.

These links show all the actual blog posts for a category or tag, making it longer and more tedious to wade through the results. But it should allow the user to find all blog posts with a specific category or tag.

Category example:

BREED STANDARD

Tag example:

Puppies

Text Link - Test 2

Testing to see if the link itself is dependent on creating "Link" in the page section of the  SS account.

HISTORY

Index Page

In experimenting with this page, I think I understand why / how you were thinking about doing multiple blogs?

There may be options to combine this page with some of the other features on this page of experiments to get what you / we want. Thinking back, I actually thiink this is how that woman Cinnamon Wolfe, whose blog I sent you, was achieving some of the indexing for her site.

Index Page

Example Blog

Now I understand how this woman achieved some of the unusual (and sometimes) interesting and helpful organization on her blog. She is using a combination of most of the things I have listed on this page. It's interesting to note that her "Blog" home page isn't really the blog. She created a page that has things like my experiments on this page to link to different categories, etc. I don't think she was super successful, because I find wrapping my head around the larger organization on her blog a bit difficult and confusing. But I think we can work on distilling these options into something simple for users.

I need some time to digest all these options. I'm curious to hear your opinions. Right now, though, for my own blog I'm leaning towards something simple like:

• Search bar
• Text links created from link pages (see above, I would list all categories and tags this way)
• Archive

Cinnamon Wolfe

How to style categories and tags in blog posts???

TBD

The default styling is ugly and it looks like an ugly jumble of letters...