Sunday, October 23, 2011

about navigating within Nature ID

view from home of the Monterey Bay
October 23, 2011

I just finished revamping my labels and categorizing them... again. This will likely become an annual blog maintenance duty. As I post new IDs, I invariably end up with new categories.

At the bottom of every post, there's a series of highlighted labels near the share buttons and comment section. These link you to only Nature ID blog posts (unlike WordPress blogs) with the same label.

I've again added the grouped label lists in the sidebar. I have 4 basic groups:
~ shortcut
~ what
~ when (includes seasons, current weather, and hiking/observations dates)
~ where.

A nifty trick of hiking/observation dates (aka archives), is you can click on a year, a month, or a specific date to see all the posts for that time period. I publish entries in a specific order, with individual IDs first and then usually a step-back, look-around habitat post. I've found clicking on specific dates to be very helpful, e.g., Pinnacles on June 10, 2011, where the habitat is shown at the top of the page and specific IDs follow. Scroll down to see all the posts.

I prefer having grouped lists, because I often find it difficult to locate past posts for my own nature journal needs. I've included search widgets at the very top left of the blog and towards the bottom of the sidebar. They don't always effectively locate items. Until I figure out the coding to automatically update the grouped indices, they will often not be complete or have nonworking links. If you want to see the most updated list, check out my complete index to Nature ID page.

As I've said before repeatedly, Nature ID does not follow the usual blog format like a daily diary. I generally post to the date of the pictures, regardless of when I happen to be online to work on this blog. I'm still behind on backdating posts and haven't even completed July of this year. Until I get caught up (haha, nature keeps going even though I have other plans), there will be an occasional feature at the top of my blog titled "newest blog entry" that will link you to new posts that are backdated.

Also, I'm testing to see how LinkWithin works with thumbnail pictures shown towards the bottom of every post. I haven't decided yet whether it's a good thing for my blog or extraneous visual stuff.

Check it out. Thanks for following my blog.

ps - The coast Douglas-fir tree that I'm featuring in The Tree Year project can be seen with its brown cones in the lower left of the photo above. Dreamfalcon has kindly included me in her latest post.