Unlike the real reorganization going on at my work, this one should have a minimal impact. As you know, I have recently updated Tod means Fox to the latest version of Wordpress, as well as updated the look and feel of the entire place. While I’ll continue to tweak the graphics, layout, and functionality, I think that I have finally finished reorganizing the content.
What did I do? Well, in the old version of Wordpress, I had no ability to add tags (without the help of a widget, which I avoided). I was forced to rely on categories instead. A single post might end up filed under multiple categories. In theory and practice, this isn’t a big deal. Many people do it, and there are many reasons why a blog post might fit into multiple categories.
But as I wrote more over 2.5 years, my list of categories began to grow in odd directions: Partially a result of bad planning and partially because my focus here on this website has moved away from software development and more into data management. The old categories were too restrictive in some places and too broad in others. But now, I’ve carefully thought about what I want to talk about, and I’ve created categories that reflect.
So instead of using categories to drill into topics, I’ll use tags. But I’ll be careful. You can be sure that I think about the tags as much as I think about the categories. The tags will be relevant, and consistent across my postings.
New Categories
The following new categories will now be used:
- Business & IT Issues
- Issues and topics that relate to business and IT decisions, information management, project management, and planning. Common tags: Marketing, Productivity, Security, Compliance.
- Data Management
- Data management comprises all the disciplines related to managing data. Common tags: Data Warehousing, Data Integration, ETL, MDM, Data Quality, Data Profiling, SQL.
- Decision Support
- Everything and anything related to business intelligence which is not covered in Data Management. Common tags: Analysis, Analytical Databases, OLAP, Aggregates.
- Events and Trainings
- Educational and informational events, sessions, conferences, and trainings that are worth writing about.Common Tags: Conference, Training
- In The News
- The postings in this category come directly from current events, dispatches, and other blog posts that I find interesting. Common Tags: Globalization, Green, Security, VFP.
- Personal
- These topics are of a personal nature and cover topics not included elsewhere on Tod means Fox. Common tags: TmF, Family, Twitter.
- Reviews
- My criticism of technology and business books and articles, in which I examine the book’s content, style, and merit. Common tags: Social Science, Open Source.
- Software Development
- This category includes posts having to do with the research, new development, modification, reuse, re-engineering, and maintenance of software. Common tags: Visual Studio, VFP, Codeplex, SQL, C#, Debugging.
Other tags exist in addition to the ones mentioned above. I’ll be installing a tag cloud a bit later to help navigate through the new structure. I’ll also be updating my sitemap.
Consequences
Changing a post’s category has consequences, I know. If you had linked to an old category either through the Web or RSS, your link will break. The best I can say is to either subscribe to one of the new categories, or use a tag if you want to read very specific content from me (e.g. BI, DW, VFP, MDM, SOA).
Thanks for reading!
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