The issue of what to do with blog archives, or any archives really, reminds me of what to do with leftovers in the refrigerator. Do I want to relive Tuesday’s dinner, or make something new? Do I want to go back and read other stuff a blogger wrote, or just visit when their feed sends word they’ve posted something new?
Dave Childs is wrestling with archives. In Usable Archives – A Pipe Dream? he writes,
One thing you’ll notice reading almost any blog (or site running blog-like software) is that articles and posts vanish quickly. For some sites, it is a matter of days – for others months. The end result is the same – after a period of time, good posts vanish into the ubiquitous “site archive” – where posts go to die, often never to be read again.
What do you do with your old posts?
Awhile back, I wondered about the “nightmare” of archives in a comment at Performancing.com, in a discussion called The Real Blogosphere. This was picked up by Markus Merz, where he expanded on the archives usability issue with his Intuitive Navigation with Tag Clouds. He liked the clouds idea. I think other people do too. I had tried the tag cloud option on my old Blogger blog and decided I didn’t like it. It took up a lot of space. However, people did use it.
Since switching to WordPress, I’ve found my archives are read and found easily due to the categories. I don’t expect anyone to read what I wrote 3 years ago. I think many bloggers know they have to keep blogging to stay fresh because folks don’t go rummaging around for old leftovers.
That would just be scary.
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I must say I disagree. If you’re new to the neighborhood, as I am, reading into archives can provide volumes of insight. I’m glad that I can rummage for leftovers, or I’d have no starting point.
Let me elaborate. I’m pretty much up to date on about 80 related feeds, but my thirst for knowledge is not going to stop at just the newest information. If I want to get more information, the archives are a perfect place for it. Bloggers often do repeat themselves, but there are innovative ideas presented in old archives as well.
Thank you Tamar. You raise good points. I wonder how far back people are willing to go into archives? Days, months, weeks, years?
Depending on the quality of information provided and the frequency of useful information posted, it can be months back and maybe even years. I have only started digging through archives (I have a LOT of reading to do) and I’m beginning to see a lot of value posted in blogs from 2005 and 2006. I haven’t hit as many blogs that are dated 2004, but I’m just beginning my quest.
If things are tagged well, it can help, but great posts can be easily lost in the ether of old archives.
If you’re after specific information on a topic, there may well be some really useful blog posts out there. But it can be difficult to find at times. Unless you land on the right page form a search engine, it can be very difficult to find specific things within a blog.
As I commented on Dave’s blog, the same is true of forums. How many amazing threads have we had at Cre8asite that have mostly drifted off into the ether? And the way we’ve tried to keep them noted in stickied threads etc…
It was something I thought about when we setup the ‘new’ forums (2002 was it?!), about how we might collate good threads into a place for safekeeping etc…
4 years on, I’m still not sure how to solve it!
1st of all thanks for mentioning my article at p.com which started (!) about the attraction of tag clouds. And thanks for bringing up the question before!
2nd the thread on that article develops as my tag implementation on my local news site (link behind my name – be warned it’s German) developed. Yes, I am still using tags and tag clouds but I see the clouds more as a playground for uninspired readers seeking inspiration.
The most important part concerning tags (not the clouds) is the SE love which I already find a little too strong but I don’t have the guts to forbid SE access to tag search result pages as I am fearing the (unknown) consequences.
Right now I am using tags (beside sections and categories) as a kind of mini-index or mini-abstract for articles and headline lists.
My site structure has three main reading levels:
1. Homepage – only Headlines plus metadata below (section, categories, tags). I did this to make the page fast and deliver an overview. Beside that only a small percentage of readers come to the homepage (~10%).
2. Category/tag/fulltext search
The first two will deliver an excerpt list thus allowing a more in-depth view of the content. These pages receive huge SE love (40% to 60% of the SE traffic). Content is Headlines plus metadata (section, categories, tags) plus excerpt. As many readers might already take this for the real thing I have added huge ‘read more’ links if there is more
Fulltext search will deliver excerpts from the body where the search words are marked bold. Pretty effective.
3. Full article view
The full article view is the article body with all the whistles and bells above and below. Below the article I have older/newer navigation, I repeat the tags, I have related articles and I have an excerpt of the complete tag cloud only containing tags which have been used more then two times.
With this three level reading structure accompanied by the three level organizational structure (section, category, tag) I feel that that site can grow ‘forever’ without loosing transparency regarding the ‘one click’ research results.
What do you think?