Overcomplicating post types (and committing to more simple ones)

I used to have a section on my site where I shared a list of coffees I consumed. I was excited about this section because:

• (i) I had created a specially-designed form to create my coffee posts, designed to accept exactly the information I found interesting and;
• (ii) I wanted to log interesting coffees I was drinking on my site.

After having the section for two or three months, I recently decided to remove it. I have done the same with other so-called taxonomies, collections on my site that represent information in a certain way. I used to have a page that listed RSVPs but I rarely used it and the form that I wrote to let me write an RSVP to a site. I enabled myself to create many types of posts without realising that all of the forms and markup designs I had written were not practical for me. I over-complicated my itch: to share certain pieces of information.

I have just launched a new taxonomy on my site called "Notes." Wait? What? You are adding another section to your site? What happened to your overcomplicating the situation? You just admitted it! Well, I'm not just adding a new section, I am calling an end to my dedicated RSVP, coffee posts, TV and movie log posts, and am resisting creating other kinds of posts. Notes will replace all of these taxonomies and act as a single place for me to share short notes. I'll keep my bookmarks and likes separate, however.

I have already started using my Notes section to share some thoughts on my mind and to share movies I am watching or books I am reading. I am using hashtags (like #watched) to tag posts in such a way that one day (not today!) I will be able to collate posts by tag on my blog. Thus, I will still have a mechanism for looking at posts that meet a certain criteria (i.e. movies I have watched). Those pages will be tag pages, automatically generated, instead of manually-created pages with custom forms and markup.

I just wrote a post on keeping things simple with frameworks and this extends to adding post types to your site, too.

The IndieWeb community enables so many different ways to express content. But, I now realise I should have asked myself two key questions:

1. What content do I really want to share?
2. What is the easiest way to write, represent, and share the content I want to publish on my website?

I am glad I took the path I did where I had a few different pages on my site like my TV or movie watch log and my coffee posts. Creating these post types made me realise I didn't need them. A simple text note would do. Now I intend to use simple text notes to express my shorter thoughts. You can see these notes on my new Notes page. All of my notes will be syndicated to Twitter so you can follow me there to get the same content. But, of course, I recommend you follow me on this site because I write more content here!

Also posted on IndieNews.

Tagged in post types.