I came across a great tip a while back, which I think was on Matt Cutts’ site: set up a directory called “How To” and dump in text files on individual how-to-do-this items.
I wish I had started this years ago, but at least I have finally started it. My first use for it was a tip I picked up from Paul Stamatiou’s site, from his “On the bleeding edge” article about his use of WordPress 2.3 alpha:
In the snapshot above, Paul is responding to my question of whether upgrading to WordPress 2.3-alpha, which uses tags in addition to categories, would result in any directory changes that would require me to use Apache 301-redirects (to keep people from landing on a “404 – Page Not Found” page when they looked for a category that had been “replaced” with a tag). I saved his response because Apache redirect coding is something I am just learning, so I will save every example of good coding of it that I might need to use in the future.
I will probably use my How To folder mostly for technology tips, but it could also be used for other how-to information. Also, one does not have to limit the contents of the folder to text files: you can store web pages, snapshots, and other info there. I would say the key is to label each item really well. I prefer text files because they can be searched easily, which could be important when I have a thousand or so how-to’s built up. (It seems to me that Matt mentioned that he had several thousand such files.) By the way, I saved Paul’s info into a text file using TextMate, my favorite Mac text editor.
How about you? Do you have a neat way of organizing information so that it is easy for you to find when you need it?