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?
This sounds like the perfect use for a wiki. I also like having plain text files in order to be portable and searchable. A wiki also allows a more seamless linking and displaying images, etc.
A good way to have your cake and eat it too is to use a wiki that stores files as plain text and then use a text-based markup language to write the content. My favorites for this are DokuWiki [1] as the wiki and Markdown [2] as the markup language. This allows you to keep the How-to docs in plain text and in any directory structure you desire and also makes viewing pages with screenshots and linking easy. DokuWiki also has built-in search, so you get web-based search for as well. Markdown is great to read as text (even in email) and the plug-in for DokuWiki generates the web-based view for you.
[1]: DokuWiki – http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:dokuwiki
[2]: Markdown – http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
That’s some fine information, Thomas. Thanks for the links on these. I have heard of Markdown, but had not done anything with it, yet. Had not heard of DokuWiki, and I will give it a try as well.
Thanks for the great info!
Another good text-based markup language is Textile, but it is more for generating web pages and is more feature-rich (at the expense of plain-text readability). Another EXCELLENT wiki is Confluence (by Atlassian), but it requires Java and a database, but even supports things like WebDAV to edit your wiki as a mounted directory (via drag and drop). But, that is beyond the scope of what the Wiki/text markup would be useful for in this case…
I think I’ll just go with your initial suggestions … the more simple I can keep it, the more likely I’ll turn it into a habit.
Great input, though. The latter tools you mentioned may be just exactly what someone else is looking for.