[wp-hackers] Some Thoughts/Enhancement Ideas In And AroundTheCategory Side Of Things

[Hikari]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Otto" <otto at ottodestruct.com>
Sent: Thursday, 11 February, 2010 12:51 PM


| URIs are not path structures. They are distinct identifiers. They do
| not inherently have hierarchy. The URI of /category/whatever is not
| some kind of subclass of /category, and just because
| /category/whatever works doesn't mean /category is a legitimate URI.
|
| URI paths are distinct. They are whole. You don't slice and dice them
| as if they were some kind of series of independent things. They can
| *look* like a hierarchy, and they can be *mapped* to a hierarchy. But
| /category/whatever is a single whole entity, not a series of two
| entities strung together.


Well, in old times (:P ), when CMSs were not available yet, each string between 2 '/' meant a folder name.

If a URL finished with a '/', it used to mean mean it was a folder URL, and the Web Server should search for a "index.htm", which
would have links to all resources inside that folder, that's why it's called "index" isn't it?


Only later, when time passed, "index" started being synomym of "home", since each folder had its homepage in the index.html because,
since index.html was automatically called when a folder was passed as URL with no file explicitly used, index.html (or the homepage)
was called.

Also remember what all those permalink consistence redirectors say about the same page being linked with and without the '/'.


Only when CMSs came out and pages stopped being stored as files in the HD and started being stored in a database, that this folder
structure (also remember URL path is the same as local path!) started meaning nothing, because everything was being loaded from a
database.

Then, since we didn't have anymore the consistence of a file system to stop 2 different pages having the same URL, that we started
using things like database IDs and dates together with slugs in the URL to avoid conflicts.


So, yes, if a see a page being referenced as http://domain/2008/06/05/post-slug/, I feed http://domain/2008/06/ will give me some
kind of index to all articles posted in 2008-06.

But of course that's something hard to implement. If http://domain/category/my-neat-cat/ listing a specific category index would
require http://domain/category/ to index all categories, then http://domain/category/parent/ would be required to index all
subcategories that are children of parent. And that could be troublesome for Wordpress to accomplish and not conflict with other
permalink structures.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mike Schinkel" <mikeschinkel at newclarity.net>
Sent: Thursday, 11 February, 2010 4:40 PM

| Duh! Nobody links to it because it's broken!  You'd find people would
| link to it if it provided meaningful content. Such a page could logically
| default to being an entry point for the list of categories on a site. The
| fact that isn't obvious to you is what I find sadly amusing and
| misguided.

Exactally. I also never linked a date page in my 2 years of website owning, but I have an archive.php files to present these 
resources, and they are indexed by Google, which links them to visitors.

"nobody" or "people" is a large term. I have the calendar widget linking dates and a category widget listing my top categories, and 
a Google XML Sitemap plugin listing all these resources. This last plugin could list also a category page too, automatically without 
I moving a finger.

Indeed, when I have the time I'm gonna make a Category page to be friend of my Archives page, and probably use Collapsing Categories 
plugin to print them. I have so many categories that I don't list them all on the widget, so a page is becoming necessary. Use cat 
base as its name is perfect :D


---------------------------
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http://ConscienciaPlanetaria.com

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