Categorising posts on the Docs blog

I have created a bunch of Categories for the posts on our blog, and will
add more as we think of them. Please assign categories to your posts to
help people find them in future when we have a lot. You, or an editor or
admin, can go back and add, remove, or change categories on individual
posts later if necessary.

Things I've been looking at are:
* Announcement of new/updated books vs tips/howtos
* Which component (Writer, Calc, Impress....)
* For tips/howtos, user level (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced)
* LibreOffice release?

Or are Categories old-fashioned and Tags should be used instead? I'm not
sure. Indeed, I'm a bit vague on what the two are for. Not my area of
expertise, but I'm trying to catch up!

--Jean

Tags and categories can complement each other. No need to use one over the other.

L

Is one or the other preferred for particular purposes? Or is it more
that individual readers might prefer, or be more accustomed to using,
one or the other? Which would be better for us to use on the blog? Or
should we use both, to appeal to both user groups?

My ignorance on this subject is so great that I have difficulty even
asking an intelligent question! If anyone has a pointer to an
explanation somewhere, that might help.

--Jean

Sorry, that was a very abrupt answer, wasn't it!

I'm sure everyone uses these things differently, but on my own website, I use categories as a broad organisational structure, and tags as a more fine-tuned one.

For example, an article about using fixed rows/columns in Calc might use the categories "Calc" and "Help", and the tags "Calc", "Help", "Formatting", "Spreadsheet", and "Rows/Columns".

I present categories on my site as a list, and tags as a tag cloud. This gives two different methods of interaction for users. People can interact with whichever they feel most comfortable with, and it also provides two different ways of presenting the info to catch a reader's eye as they're reading the main text on the site.

Hope that helps!

L

It does help, very much! Thanks, Lana.

--Jean

What Lana said.

It's good that you're organizing this ahead of time. It will help keep
everything in order as the blog develops.

A good way of thinking about it is that tags might give a small SEO bump to
a post by repeating keywords, whereas categories make a blog easier for
users to navigate through content in order to find what they want. Tags are
less likely to be noticed by someone browsing the blog. And they really
don't need to be predetermined for the blog authors since the keywords can
be pretty specific to the article.

I will say, though, Lana's idea to showcase a tag cloud is definitely a good
one. You never know what will catch someone's eye. If you do add a tag
cloud, I advise against an animated cloud. That's a personal preference. The
flash graphics annoy me. :slight_smile:

~Elliot

I think we'll have to settle for whatever wordpress.org offers as their
widget. I'll put the cloud on the sidebar. We can decide to keep it or not,
later.
*John Shabanowitz
http://libodocs.wordpress.com
We're recruiting, come join us.*

It looks good John!

~Elliot

We also need a copyright statement (the CC-BY-SA, I think it is) and a statement that posts by individuals don't necessarily reflect official policy. Not sure of wording of the latter and don't have time right now to look it up.

--Jean

Are we going to use version 2.0 or 3.0? Is it good enough to cover the whole
blog? We can put the link in a text box in the sidebar with the posts are
solely the opinions of the authors and do not express official policy of The
Document Foundation nor LibreOffice.
*John Shabanowitz
http://libodocs.wordpress.com
We're recruiting, come join us.*

Are we going to use version 2.0 or 3.0?

3.0. I believe that is what is used on the LibreOffice website and the TDF blog.

Is it good enough to cover the whole blog?

Yes. That is, I believe, who it's usually handled. It's possible to put a different copyright statement in specific posts, for example a guest post.

We can put the link in a text box in the sidebar with the posts are
solely the opinions of the authors and do not express official policy of The
Document Foundation nor LibreOffice.

Yes.

Is there any way to have a template with the notices already included?

Are we going to use version 2.0 or 3.0? Is it good enough to cover the whole
blog? We can put the link in a text box in the sidebar with the posts are
solely the opinions of the authors and do not express official policy of The
Document Foundation nor LibreOffice.
*John Shabanowitz
http://libodocs.wordpress.com
We're recruiting, come join us.*

We also need a copyright statement (the CC-BY-SA, I think it is) and a
statement that posts by individuals don't necessarily reflect official
policy. Not sure of wording of the latter and don't have time right now to
look it up.

--Jean

Is there any way to have a template with the notices already included?

Yes, all of that goes into the sidebar so it shows on every page of the blog. No need to add any of it to individual posts.

--Jean

Hi Jean et al:

Are we going to use version 2.0 or 3.0? Is it good enough to cover the whole
blog? We can put the link in a text box in the sidebar with the posts are
solely the opinions of the authors and do not express official policy of The
Document Foundation nor LibreOffice.
*John Shabanowitz
http://libodocs.wordpress.com
We're recruiting, come join us.*

We also need a copyright statement (the CC-BY-SA, I think it is) and a
statement that posts by individuals don't necessarily reflect official
policy. Not sure of wording of the latter and don't have time right now to
look it up.

--Jean

Should we all use a common copyright and disclaimer? You can see the copyright and disclaimer used on the main TDF blog site.[1] It's on the right hand side block. I'm working on the http://libomarketing.wordpress.com blog setup.

Cheers

Marc

[1] http://blog.documentfoundation.org/

Exactly what Marc has suggested! Ya know, I never even noticed the legal and
impressum section on the sidebar.

*John Shabanowitz
http://libodocs.wordpress.com
We're recruiting, come join us.*