I’ve solved a nagging blog issue that’s been floating around in the back of head, thanks to an incredibly generous blogpost by Jon Udell yesterday, in which he clarifies the process he uses to tag and categorize his blog postings. Many people do this, and many blog platforms (WordPress, Blogger, etc.) have facilities for tagging a post as you’re posting it. I’ve found Django apps that plug tagging facilities into my db schema, making it almost seamless…yet I’ve wrestled with setting this up for some time. I haven’t quite been able to put my finger on why, but I’ve resisted. It seemed somehow like too much work for not enough reward, but I couldn’t quite explain why, even to myself.

Jon’s approach makes it clear to me, though…once I saw his workflow, I was on board. He uses del.icio.us to tag his OWN stuff! I use the heck out of del.icio.us, but it never occurred to me to point it back at myself…*smack*. This closes the loop; I can use tags to personally organize my posts, yet also push metadata about my posts and their tags into the rich cloud soup that is del.icio.us. Brilliant. Simply brilliant. Thanks, Jon!

So expect my del.icio.us feed to look rather self-indulgent for a bit, whilst I catch up…