learnandteachonline.com

Jeff Jarvis is calling for blog template reform. He wants to see categories in sections like a newspaper and all that sort of thing.

I have a field day with Expression Engine, the CMS I use at work, which has the most flexible and complex templating systems I've ever worked with. Infinite hierarchical categories too!

One example:

Check out the bigger screenshots of one blog that's sent in full as a weekly HTML email newsletter. Plus, headlines are displayed with links in a member area, and on the public site you get heads with no links. All the same copy. (The council is supported mostly by company and organization memberships so a lot of web content is just for members.)

In another mindbending case we do nine newsletters for special interest groups. The readers don't know it, but it's all one blog with nine categories. Each category has its own template complete with nameplate and rendered as a separate newsletter.

I have feed and search tricks in mind and wish I had the time to do them all.

[Jarvis piece discovered by way of Scripting News, my third aggregator. ;-) ]