I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to organise content on my website. I want you, my readers, to be able to learn about the different types of content to write – from poetry to technical blog posts to stories – and find the posts that may be most interesting to you.
There are several ways in which I organise my content:
- My homepage shows my most recent posts, and links to a list of all my posts.
- All posts have categories. Each category lists all posts in the category.
- My sidebar links to several of the types of content I want to highlight (i.e. moments of joy, my web articles).
- My search feature helps you find a specific post.
With that said, as websites grow, it becomes harder to find content unless you know for what to look. I find myself thinking about how to help you, the reader, find different posts that may have been published a while ago that you would like.
That brings me to playlists.
Playlists are collections of music curated around a particular theme: whether a mood, an artist, an era, or something else. Playlists don’t list every song by an artist or around a given theme: they are carefully crafted. Songs are deliberately included.
I am trying something new on my website: creating collections of content around a given theme, inspired by playlists.
I am starting with two collections:
Each collection includes a curated list of blog posts on a given theme. In the first collection, I have highlighted some of my posts that are more specifically about Taylor Swift’s music. In the second collection, I have included some of my longer-form reflections on running a personal website – the culture of having a personal website, if you will.
I have ideas to make more of these that curate posts by vibe, like stories to make you feel warm on a snowy winter’s day, or a collection on some of my web search experiments.
Of note, collections don’t include every post on a topic; for that, my category pages or search feature are more appropriate.
I need to decide where collections should be linked on my website. I may include them toward the bottom of my homepage, although I need more time to think.
Have you seen other examples of curating content by vibe, like playlists? If you have, I would love to learn more! You can email me at [email protected].
