[IxDA Discuss] categories, sections, tags

[Christina Wodtke]

As some of you know, I've been working with a developer to make a 
light-weight CMS/publishing tool. We've focused on magazines and other 
small publications, and we've run into an interesting conundrum.

Picture a webzine. You've got your stories, and you've got pages about 
writers guidelines, and how to advertise, and all that.

We will have both tagging and categories on any article/story. So far 
we've had "stories", which are time based, more or less, and scroll down 
the front page, and "pages" that are fixed in time, and are just in the 
"about" section. We realized one day they weren't all that different, 
and now we are looking at potentially combing them. My partner-in-crime 
suggested stories have categories, and pages have sections, and a page 
lives only in a single section.

But this raises other questions. Can a story live in a category *and* a 
section? Should a page live in multiple sections, one section, or a 
combination of sections and categories? Should we really mess with 
people's organizational mental models?

Moreover, should pages have comments, just like stories? 
Advantages/disadvantages?

Anecdotes, brilliant designs nixed by PM, and theories all welcomed, but 
real-life stories tend to trump....

And anything starting with the phrase "the simplest possible" is extra 
welcomed...

cheers!

-- 
Christina Wodtke
Principal Instigator

Magazine :: http://www.boxesandarrows.com
Business :: http://www.publicsquarehq.com
Personal :: http://www.eleganthack.com
Book :: http://www.blueprintsfortheweb.com

cwodtke at eleganthack.com