keeping blog posts, site updates, and project updates separate and organized

[Frost Sheridan]

hey all! i've been thinking lately about how i want to separate and organize blog posts, site updates, and project updates on my website. (this is just me thinking out loud really - rubber duck debugging i guess )

right now, i just have a single blog page on my site where i post all types of updates. this means that all site updates, tech project update logs, new artwork announcements, and any other misc blog/journal posts get mixed together into one single feed. there's no separation by project or post type (other than tags), so i can see this becoming cluttered and unsustainable over time and i want to address it before it reaches that point. excessive redundancy is also a concern with my current approach - right now my site has separate "artwork" and "project" pages in addition to the blog page. if all of my art pieces and projects are posted to both the blog page and their own separate pages, that creates a ton of duplicated assets and/or confusing links, making site maintenance extra difficult.

ideally, what i'd like to do is split up the blog into two separate feeds with minimal overlap - a 'journal' for miscellaneous, one-off posts, and a general 'site updates' feed where very short announcements for new art, project logs, etc. can be posted. (this would split my one RSS feed into two, which doesn't feel ideal to me for whatever reason, but it could be fine.) for more organization, i would then create separate pages for each project and post updates and logs only to the relevant project page. i may also expand my art gallery page so that each piece of art i make could have its own separate page (or collapsible section) for extra background info, instead of just having that extra info in a separate blog post that isn't directly reachable from the art gallery page.

how do you guys keep updates from various different sections of your site (project logs, new artwork/photos, journal entries, etc.) separate and organized? i'd love to hear your approaches!

[Melooon]

Oh boy.. this can actually be a really complex issue!

Don't forget you can also include things like forums, Neocities feeds or status.cafe - those are also different kinds of spaces you might use to share different kinds of information about you and your site - in fact this topic is a kind of interactive site update post since its capturing a moment of design for you!

If I count up all of my different blogs-feeds-pages-status sites etc.. its more than 10 (Although I use each one for a different thing and a different kind of post). The trick is that you start with one feed, then split it when it needs to be split, then split those feeds when you need to split them. You can keep splitting as long as you need too; but don't do it too fast, let the kind of things you wanna post guide your splits! (Now Im thinking of ice-cream splits :sad:smile:

You don't need to have a grand plan or get it right at first; you can let it evolve over time! It sounds like you've got a pretty good idea of what you wanna do right now; just remember you'll prob want to change it again in the future!

[Gans]

This is an RSS entry with a category (in this example "Computer":wink:

Code

  <item>
   <title>New old scrap!</title>
   <category>Computer</category>
   <description>Lots of new scrap available!</description>
   <link>scrapyard.htm</link><author>Gans</author><guid>scrapyard.htm</guid><pubDate>01.12.22</pubDate>
  </item>

Maybe you can work with the categories, if you don't want to split up the RSS feed entirely. My RSS reader QuiteRSS shows things like title, author, category, date. Although this isn't really practical for the user to filter. Also, it will look like there is more activity going on, when you only have one single RSS feed.
You could indicate things in the title as well.
[SITE NEWS] Fire in the server room
[NEW IMAGE] mah beautiful nieuuuw keyboard!
[UPDATE] v1.02 is out!
[ARTICLE] Why RSS is for pros
Maybe like that.