Organizing Posts at Personal Blogs

(This one was written specifically for Blogjob, where the posts for which I received payment can still be seen and exploited by advertisers at https://blogjob.com/priscillaking . Tags: features of hosted blog sites, finding posts on certain topics at a blog, indexing blog posts,organizing posts at blogs, poems by Elizabeth Barrette, poems by Suzette Haden Elgin, posting different types of content at one web site, posting different types of content at separate web sites, science fiction poetry.)

(Topic credit: @jessica discussed the idea of having multiple blogs for different topics at https://blogjob.com/freelancewritingwhisperings/2016/02/25/one-blog-or-many-blogs/ .)

(Amazon ad image credit: The blogger known as Ozarque wrote books published under the name Suzette Haden Elgin; the blogger known as Ysabetwordsmith writes books published under the name Elizabeth Barrette--and yes, despite some radical differences, they were e-friends. Click on either of these "copyrighted images" to buy the book from the bookseller who posted the picture.)

Some Blogjob bloggers maintain eight or ten separate blogs, with completely different URLs and formats, because they feel that people who want to read their food posts won't want to read their sports posts and so on. This probably works for some people. Most of the things on the Internet that I find inconvenient seem to work for some people. However, if I read a blog, I'm probably interested in the blogger as a person; I'm likely to skim or skip some posts, most especially at one blog that I follow for the humor pieces but that more often contains horoscopes, but I do appreciate at least knowing that on the days when the blogger wasn't posting one type of content s/he was busy writing something else.

My role model for blogging was https://ozarque.livejournal.com . (It's still online as a memorial to a great blogger.) That blog is a hodgepodge, and so are mine, but they don't have to be read as a hodgepodge. Those who are interested in only one of the topics discussed at a personal, mixed-topic, general-focus blog can track that topic through the blog, without having to wade through the posts that don't interest them.

Suppose you're looking for only the poems your favorite blogger wrote. (And you want to see only the poems, fast, because you're looking for a line you want to quote in an article you want to finish in two hours.) Some independent blog sites aren't indexed and have to be searched by search engines, but all the major "hosted" blog sites have an indexing feature. Serious bloggers learn, right away, to use this indexing feature for readers' convenience. (Those who aren't using a "hosted" site need to build in an indexing feature.)

If it's a Live Journal blog, like Ozarque's and like the graphics-free version of mine I've promised to build (in my so abundant online free time!), the indexing feature there is called "Tags." Go ahead, please, and right-click on the link to Ozarque's blog or to https://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com , or both, to open them in a new tab. Scroll down (or click back to "previous posts" page, if necessary) until you find "Tags: poem" (Ozarque usually used just one tag) or "Tags:...poem" (Ysabetwordsmith often uses lots of tags). Click on "poem." Zap...you're reading only the poems that have been posted at these blogs over the years.

If it's a Blogspot blog, the indexing feature there is called "Labels," and works almost identically. To see how this works, please open https://priscillaking.blogspot.com . Scroll down, if necessary, to the title "Blog Post Bilingue." That post contains one of my little song parodies. Below the lyrics you'll find a link to https://igg.me/at/frugalgraciouslivingchallenge/x/997637 , which you should use, of course, right away, to fund my project. Below that, in tiny print, you'll see "LABELS: BAD POETRY..." Click on "BAD POETRY" to see all the poems and parodies I've posted at Blogspot.

If it's a Blogjob blog, the indexing feature is called "Categories." Not every blogger uses it, because Blogjob offers the option of putting material in different categories on what appear to be different blogs...but you'll see the "Categories" in the sidebar on your left. Because Blogjob posts are supposed to contain at least 300 words, and most of my poems, songs, and parodies are shorter than that, I don't have a Blogjob category for poems. 

Whether bloggers choose to post on different pages, or use a system like Live Journal "Tags," Blogspot "Labels," or Blogjob "Categories" to index their blogs, probably depends on their readership and their own experience reading other people's blogs. However, all bloggers are motivated to make it as easy as possible for readers to find the posts that interest them.