[thesite] Usability / Architecture Center

[Marlene Bruce]

Questions questions questions...

> hey marlene, what's cookin?  how were the holidays?
> 
Fine in the end. The one true bright spot was that I got to visit with an
old flame who was in town for the holidays, and there is still a spark
there.

> this capability has been part of the database for quite some time
> 
Yay!

> (as an aside, putting the article's category as part of the url is totally
> redundant -- the category is ostensibly used so that the dropdown list is
> positioned on the category of the shown article, but since the foreign key
> is part of the article, it can be gotten from the article and not the
> url.... at least, assuming i understand why the heck the category id is
> part of the url)
> 
I guess we're stuck with having the category in the URL at this point ...
given that other sites have already been adjusting their links to us.

> ~ do we really need it? [multiple categories]
> 
*I* think so.

> ~ how do we show an article's multiple categories on, say, the home page?
> stack them up under the date?  what good would that do for the site
> visitor?  what if there's too many of them?
> 
Perhaps we can list a primary category. The author, when submitting, would
pick a primary and a secondary if needed (limit two?).

> ~ when you "go" to a category, should articles be included in the index
> page if they have that category not as the "main" category but as one of
> the secondary ones?
> 
Yes.

> ~ what does it really mean that an article is in more than one category?
> would a site visitor be confused by seeing the same article listed in the
> Code and the Backend categories?
> 
An article in more than one category means it has significant relevance to
both topics. A site visitor *might* become confused, but I think the
improved categorization and exposure of the article outweighs such a
possibility. Dissenting opinions?

Perhaps we could include a line at the end of the synopsis which states,
"This article also appears in [other category]."

> > In the meantime, could we put up redirects for moved articles?
> 
> this won't really work, because the articles aren't actually moving
> anywhere, they would just have a different url -- so maybe you were
> suggesting we somehow keep track of the old urls, well that would require
> a
> new table and a lot more maintenance...
> 
Okay, skip that idea.

Marlene