I am in the process of wiping the category structure that I carried over from my old site.  The process of migrating to the new site has demonstrated to me that it is simply too difficult to maintain.  It also seems disturbingly anal.  Rather than using categories in the way I have thus far, I am deleting a large portion of them and changing the way the few remaining categories are used in the future.

The vast majority of posts will now be uncategorized.  Some categorization will be used to differentiate posts with photos attached or with audio or video content, posts with site news and updates, and posts about The Kids or any member thereof.

Simplifying the categorization will help me tremendously as I have of late been burning more brain cells than necessary trying to properly categorize posts across a myriad of related options.  For instance, some posts have been spread across Politics, Religion, Science and Space as the content touched each of those topics.  Some examples were worse.  I think that made for confusion since browsing the categories could result in seeing the same post in several different places.

It also smelled of an apparent desire to categorize for the sake of categorization.

In sincerity, the system was implemented when I was using PostNuke since it allowed me to display within the post a different photo for each category.  I am no longer using that approach, so the category structure is now pure overhead.

This will un-clutter the site a bit, me thinks.  It will also ensure that all content will remain normalized within the blog chronology instead of being available outside of proper context.  Narrowing the posts to those related to the site, The Kids, or with certain kinds of media attached are for convenience only.

I am also updating the side menu to compensate for these changes and will remove the category list and replace it with something more navigable.

Finally, I will update the site template to remove the categorization displayed with each story since it will no longer provide any useful information.

If, in the course of using the site, you feel this does not lend itself to ease of use and/or navigation, send me an e-mail or leave a comment on this post.

* Note that there will always be subcategories under The Kids.  At present there are five.  New categories will be created here as new pets come into my life, but no subcategory will ever be deleted.