Evolving Navigation

Emergent information architecture in need of new structure

location Raleigh,  NC,  US

The point of starting this digital garden, almost a full year ago now, was to get in the practice of regular writing and publishing on my own time and in my own way.

To that effect, since the beginning of 2025, I've published over one hundred journal posts, five articles, six portfolio links, my strengths, skills, and for hire pages, seven some newsletter posts, and 1.3k links of things I've read, bookmarked, and findings during my purposeful meanderings and wondering wanderings.

In addition, I've built a variety of small tools and explorations in vibe coding, including:

  • a progressive web app to help collate my /links into one place;
  • a .csv exporter of post data (right now, just for /links as that needs the most data wrangling and normalization and such).
  • a prototype Flywheel Generator to draw and build flywheels to facilitate communication;
  • multiple color palette generators, exploring light/dark mode color generation with semantic sets of 3/5/7/9 from lightest–mid–darkest, grounded in accessible color contrasts and color theory; a contrast grid palette refinement tool for fine-tuning a palette set;
  • the /tags page

All that said, it needs a bit of a clearer structure.

The design itself, and front-end, need simplification.

First thing to do: organize the information in a way to display.

So:

  • / will be my about portal
  • /garden will consist of anything I write with category markers, filters, and sorts. This consists of: /journal, /essays, /articles, /books, etc.
  • /soil will consist of documenting things I'm researching, reading, and masticating. This consists of: /links, /library, etc.
  • /about will be filled with things about me, so: /strengths, /skills, /for-hire, /experience, /endorsements
  • /work will be documenting my labor through /cases, /portfolio, /talks, /archive
  • /wayfinding would be ways of navigating my site, through /tags, /search, /random
  • /communities would house /webrings, /feeds,

Each of those would keep their original slugs, but the architecture of their relationships—navigation-wise—will be structured so.