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[Bernard]

Did you make your own category structure? Are your categories all aligned by subject or do you mix categories by type of site (forum/blog/directory/etc.)? Do you use symbolic categories? Do you believe that these are important questions?

Let's get some quality discussion going here. I'll add my own comments on the questions after people have had a chance to respond.

[George]

We use a main category one must select from a list which is usually quite short. They can then use 3 more fill in the blank categories and when people put crap like their url, phone or multiple categories in one blank.. their listing goes to /dev/null

[Bernard]

Anyone else want to discuss this? I was hoping for more responses before posting my view.

[Dan]

I would expect more responses too. I believe that it is better to list by topic rather than by site type.

e.g. Lumping together all forums (a site type) to me is a weak way of categorising. Some will be about gardening, others about automotive, others about computers, none of which are related topics, thereby rendering that category irrelevant.

I know that DMOZ use symbolic categorisation, to address sites who may belong to more than one topic. Many people might not know how they work though Bernard, maybe you could give them a simple explanation?

[Catfish]

I don't use symbolic categories, but I do find a lot of submissions going into regional categories that I really want to see in the topic-specific categories instead. So I built an "additional local results" thingy on my British directory that lists some of the topic-based listings under appropriate regional categories as well.

I don't list by site type at all. I think if people are looking for information they aren't going to want to specify first that it comes from a blog, a forum, or a news website, so long as that info is reliable. The exception is ecommerce websites, but that's what the Business category is there for anyway.

[Bernard]

Excellent. We are kindred spirits in this thread (so far!).

One of my pet peeves about directories are "type" categories (forum, blog, directory) that are not topically focused. For example: Health > Chats and Forums

While this kind of categoy is appropriate for some general topic health forums, directories with these kinds of categories often don't include the "type" categories under the more topically focused subcategories (like each individual health condition). These types of categories are not helpful to visitors looking for forums on specific subjects, they aren't helpful to webmasters who want to link to useful references on specific subjects and they aren't helpful to search engines looking for hubs of topical associations.

*If* you are going to include "type" categories, they should be topically focused IMO!

Symbolic categories are very much underused IMO. How many of you get upset when people don't submit listings to the correct category? Symbolic categories can eliminate duplicate and redundant categories and guide visitors to the correct category.

For example:

Business > Software
Computer > Software
Shopping > Software

This is confusing! Better to pick one of them as the main category and use symbolic categories for the others to redirect to the main category - like so:

Business > @Software (links to Shopping > Software > Business)
Computer > @Software (links to Shopping > Software)
Shopping > Software

This is also good for improving the internal link structure of the directory.

If you want to see a good, live example of symbolic categories, spend some time browsing around dmoz.org. They have a very well defined category structure with symbolic categories (have an @ symbol at the end of the sub-cat names).

For example:

http://www.dmoz.org/Business/

lists Software@ as a sub-cat which,if clicked, takes you to:

http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Business/

[henry123]

HI,


Your post its very useful thank you for your information..



Thank you...

[BobP]

My directory design and template included a dozen main categories and 900+ sub categories and I created about 50 more to flesh out some areas. Blogs and forums have their sub categories. As I am also a submitter I find objectionable some directories have about a thousand sub categories just in Arts and Entertainment alone many of which are duplicated in the other main categories. BobP