The category archives are, in some cases, not loading. This is because, despite going to Excerpts, some of them are just frelling too big.
Possible solutions:
- Create more subcategories, break up largest categories into them. Pro: better organization of the blog archives. Con: it will take forever to do (and just short of that to get to).
- Add in one of those funky MT plug-ins to paginate archives (e.g., to restrict an archive page to 60 entries at a page, or something. Pro: relatively easy, I think. Con: no way to do a search within a category (which, to be sure, I cannot do right now).
Still pondering.
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I’ve had the same thought while working on my redesign. I think I’ll do the first X number of entries in full form, but then perhaps only titles for the rest, not even excerpts. Dunno, though. Still trying to figure it all out. 🙂
I guess part of it comes down to why one keeps category archives.
To promote reading (or reviewing) just a slice of your blog? Okay, that’s fair, but that works much better with full text, not excerpts.
To allow searching beyond what the search box allows? (Sometimes I try to find a post that way, when I can’t find it with actual text, but I know I lumped it under Category X). That’s of value, too, but really should have full text as well — and a single page.
An archive of just excerpts (let alone titles, unless one is intentionally informative in titles) doesn’t seem of much value.
Pondering … 🙂
Just out of curiosity, what’s the largest number of posts you have under any given category. My largest is “links”, which are small posts, but number upwards of 650+. After that is Falling Down with 450+… neither seem to be giving me problems at the moment, so I’m curious about when the cutoff hits.
Are you building these archives dynamically? Could that be part of the issue?
Yes, I am building them dynamically, and absolutely that is one of the problems.
But that was one of the problems before I went to dynamic archives, to wit, rebuilds were taking forever because of the size of the archive files that needed rebuilding.
In particular, the Media and Geopolitical Brouhaha files are pretty large (700+ entries and 500+), with several others in the 400+ range. The average monthly archive has about 150-250 entries, by way of comparison.
So, yeah, I should probably break at least those up. Next time I have a week off …