website organization

[isiscolo]

nopejr's questions about story headers on his website reminded me that I have been thinking about personal archive organization lately. So, first a poll, and then my thoughts.
Poll

Comments

[diluvian]

I prefer groupings of sequential fics, and then the stand-alones listed separately. So if there is a series, I *don't* want those mixed in alphabetically with the unrelated fics.

[isiscolo]

Oh, that's a very good point! And even date-organization messes with this, doesn't it. Let me check what I do for this...

Aha. I only have two stories which have actual sequels, and for each of them I reverse the date order so that the first story is listed first, and then the sequel...even though the other stories are in date order of newest first.

But these series stories (well, only two per series) are not listed in any separate section - they're listed with the other stories in that pairing (as both series are in HP).

[diluvian]

I'm down with that.

I was recently burned by some author's personal page where *all* the fics were alphabetical and the headers had something like:

Apple
(sequel to Greenbean)

Artichoke

Banana
(sequel to Ruby)

Cantiloupe

Cherry
(sequel to Apple)

Danger
(AU sequel to Banana)

DingDong
(sequel to Banana)

...and so on, . Arrrgh. Chasing up & down the page, trying to find the *beginning* -- I very nearly bailed.

[buzzylittleb]

Holy fuck. That's brain melting, and reminds me a good deal of automated archives and how they sort by date or title within a certain author and not much else.

[buzzylittleb]

Personally, I've got everything split up by fandom and then subdivided by "pairing" (or at least with the dS stuff it's like that, the x-men stuff is divided by pairing/character/microfandom as appropriate) and then that is chronologically aranged. And I have a top of the page "new" section for the curious (hmm, I really should code the franniefic). I'm not sure why I went for chronological arrangement within the pairings, besides to point out the passage of my moral decline *giggles* from rather sweet pg-13 stuff to threesomes to godknowswhat in one and a half years. Go me! *giggles some more*

[isiscolo]

I took a look - but I can't tell, is your chronological order most recent first, or most recent last?

And I have difficulty with splitting my stories into pairings because some of them are ostensibly one pairing but have others implied.

[buzzylittleb]

Okay, most recent last. Hence f/k starts with Gooseberries (pg-13 schmoop with a slightly ooc!Frobisher) and runs to Five Epiphanies of Stanley Raymond Kowalski, with the more recent f/k (Sunbeams Out of Cucumbers) being at the top of the page in the "new" section.

That's a really good point. I still managed to shoehorn 3x3 Angels into f/k, which might suggest that my bag of marbles has a substantial hole in it. (I am currently less than enamoured of the fic anyway). And I break my own rule when it comes to series.

[isiscolo]

which might suggest that my bag of marbles has a substantial hole in it

Oh, like that was ever in doubt.

[nopejr]

I much prefer date order, because writing-wise it requires less effort to update (stick things on the end!) and reading-wise for fandoms with active canon (TV shows, book series, etc.) it makes it easier to avoid accidentally spoiling myself.

*continues to fiddle endlessly with own site*

[nopejr]

Although I don't really read for specific pairings so I guess that biases things in the other direction. Hmm.

[isiscolo]

Oh yeah, much easier just to stick things on the end! Or on the beginning, rather.

And I also don't read for pairing, mostly, so I care less about that, but I am aware that most fen in my newest fandoms do.

*fiddles right along with you - hey, it's a duet!*

[nopejr]

You could make it all database driven and let people re-order the listings by date/length/character/whatever. I mean, not like a full on search page, but just "order by" links and regenerate the page. Which I guess is sort of a search page, come to think of it.

Except the whole thing would be fuckloads* of work, so, hah, that's not going to happen!

*Technical term. :)

[malnpudl]

In general my preference is to see things listed by date within pairing within fandom. But if I had to choose between date and pairing, then pairing would win.

[malnpudl]

Afterthought: The alternative would be to display pairing info clearly in your summary/link info, so that I don't have to click on each individual story to see what the pairing is.

[isiscolo]

Well, I consider pairing to be necessary summary info - I don't bother reading stories that don't give at least character information.

Do you think I need to separate out the F/K from my DS, and the McKay/Sheppard from my SGA? Or is it sufficient as stands?

[musesfool]

I imagine listing by date would make updating a lot easier because you don't have to alphabatize (the indices on my site are the bane of my existence), but I do have the posting date of each story listed in the index, so the information is there.

Of course, I haven't updated since, um. July, so...

[isiscolo]

Yeah, as nopejr pointed out, all you do is slap the new stuff on the end. (Or the beginning, rather.)

I definitely agree posting date should be in the index regardless of organization! But scanning a big list (like yours - I mean, you are so prolific that for your site I would want your stories split in every single possible way so I could find my way around!) is hard.

[musesfool]

Yeah, I don't have the energy to reorganize it, but it does need reorganizing, it's true. I have the pairings on rollover, and the date, and there's the big huge chronological index but that's not split by fandom. It just never occurred to me to do it any way but alphabetically, and now I feel kinda stuck with it, because the amount of work to reorganize ... I'm not sure it's worth it.