Information Architecture Question

[KeriMorgret]

I've got a site architecture / branding / SEO question for my own site (http://www.strikemodels.com/). In brief, the site sells kits and accessories for model warships that shoot and sink each other. My husband (Stephen) runs the business, and makes many of the parts we sell in our workshop/garage.

Stephen wants to have a section where he talks about the equipment he is building/ using, and give updates on each of the pieces. This is equipment we use to make products, not equipment that we sell. For example, he's building an EDM machine, and getting a plastic injection molding machine and an ultrasonic welder up and running.

We have a blog section where we post about updates about items that we sell, how to use our products, etc. This is more of a place for him to talk about what he's doing in the shop, and would also serve in future years as something he could point people to regarding his skills as an engineer if needed.

I'm looking for opinions and options as to where to put this. Is there a way to use a different category in the blog and have items in the blog show up under a different page if they're in the "Stephen's Corner" category? Other options would be a separate site just for that, or to do threads on the a forum dedicated to the hobby. I'd prefer to keep things on our own site to keep all of the benefits together.

Thoughts on structure or ways to make this work? Things I hadn't thought about?

Thanks!

[sexnmetal]

Hi Keri,

I personally have done something simillair with my site. I have a ecommerce store and a blog for talking about our craft/skills. I put up a wordpress blog on a subdomain and done the very best I could to keep everything uniform so transitioning through sites you would not necessarily know you have changed URl's and the user can easily get back to the store.

Michael

[EGOL]

I believe that most people who have a blog should stop thinking about it as a blog and instead use the blog as a content management system for posting short (or very long) articles.

The method of posting remains the same.  However, the format of presenting to the visitor has an additional type of category page that allows you to move away from the chronological list and towards presenting in a format that prioritizes on the basis of popularity, profitability, usefulness or whatever you think is important.

Those pages might look like this...  http://www.nytimes.com/pages/movies/index.html

Use your imagination and present your content with style.

[KeriMorgret]

I am leaning towards using the existing blog and having a specialized category; it's nice to have that validated.

I think my next step is to see what can be done with WordPress and Thesis as they are, and then see if I need a plugin to make my life easier in splitting the blog entries over multiple pages or sections.

Any suggestions for favorite tools for using WP blog more as a CMS and less as a straight blog? The entire site as it is uses the WP framework -- the majority of the content is in pages, with just the one dedicated section (currently) for a blog.

[PROTEST39]

test ignore

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one more test... please ignore.