Letter From #1 Son on SurvivalBlog Publishing Structure Suggestions

Dear SurvivalBlog Readers:
We are in the early stages of transitioning to new content management software for SurvivalBlog. I’d appreciate input from any of our readers who have experience in content design, on making the site even more useful. For our general readers, don’t worry, there won’t be any major changes in the blog. You will still have the same daily posts.

In the seven years that SurvivalBlog has been running, we have built a massive archive of nearly 17,300 posts. This includes many daily items, such as notes, odds ‘n sods posts, and quotes of the day. Then we have the bulk of the blog’s content–the articles by my father, our regular contributors, and our readers. Some of these items were time-sensitive (about then-current events) but a lot of the material can still be extremely useful.

My question for content management experts is this: How can we make the archives as useful as possible to our readers?

At present, we have a basic date and category-based system, and a pretty primitive search function. There’s a lot of valuable content in the archives, but it’s currently a bit hard to access. We need to make it easier to get to the “good stuff,” the relevant, useful information. What strategies and methods might be most helpful?

We are looking at building the new site in Drupal 7. It would be great if I could get some recommendations and suggestions for specific modules and projects to look at.

You can contact me directly at jonathan@rawles.to. We will really appreciate your experience! Thanks, – #1 Son