Korea IT Times Blog

One of the problems in migrating data from the old web site to the new web site was the large number of categories into which the old articles were divided.  There were actually 240 different categories, or Kickers, for the 2,934 articles that were hosted at the previous web site.  That’s only about 12 articles per category.  At that slim rate, categories really lose their meaning.  So, the first thing I did when looking over the old web site’s database is to do some Excel spreadsheet work to consolidate these categories into something more manageable.

I got it down to 30 different categories.  There were some synonyms, a few misspellings, and a lot of different ideas that could be consolidated together.  For instance, most of the old articles about different expos and events had three types of Kickers – the first was some variation on Event Preview, the second was the event’s name, and the third was some kind of variation on Event Sketch.  It was pretty straightforward to group those all under Events.  

On the new ProsePoint web site, categories are called Channels.  After setting up the web site, and creating different channels for all 30 Kickers, the menu area started to look a little cluttered.  Today I experimented with creating different section pages on the test site, similar to the New York Times web site or CNN.  I grouped all the channels into three categories: Opinion, Business, and Technology, and then set it up the channels to only be accessible from those pages.  It seemed to be even more confusing, however, and I realized that I even think that the New York Times and CNN’s pages are confusing.  Too many sections, too much stuff not viewable from the front page.  So I wiped the test site and went with the second solution for a cluttered menu – more channel/Kicker consolidation.

After some consideration I managed to consolidate some underused channels and have the number down to 21 now.  It’s one row less in the web site layout, and looks better.  Also, each section will be more populated with archive stories (as soon as I work out some kinks with archive importation) and everyone will be happier.  

I’d like to get some feedback on the header area of the web site.  Is it too long?  On my standard screen the title, search bar, menus, and breadcrumb bar (that black and white picture panel underneath the menu) take up about 50% of the screen real estate, and readers are going to have to scroll down a lot to see the rest of the site.  Is this good, bad or does it not matter?