Hmmm. Interesting, debateable and provocative category hack at Stupid Stuff. Ionut categorises his blog posts by changing their publication dates once they fall off the front page so that they appear in the archive for a day/month of his choosing. He has hard-coded links to those archives in the sidebar, and they're labeled as categories. "Hall of Shame" posts, for example (including a classic series of photographs in which two recovery cranes follow a white car into a harbor) are all made to seem as if they were written on January 1st, 2001.

Upside: This is all happening within his blog, and is very possible w/ existing blogger features.

Downside: (You're already screaming them at your monitor, aren't you?) Permalinks get broken / reset when the posts get moved, Archives & chronological navigation through the blog is lost, & the site structure that the reader expects is not present when they visit. When is a blog not a blog?

Conclusion: This might work for you if your blog is a "scrapbook" and having your posts dated / consecutively ordered is not important. It might work if you want categories / chapters to be your only means of navigation. It might also work for you if people read your blog but don't link to it as often.

Anyway. Addressing the broken links / main page problem, Ionut wonders if it is possible to write a script that will allow him to control which posts are on the main page. That way he could "archive" everything w/ the appropriate pub date at time of writing, and then pick some "greatest hits" to appear on the homepage. Thoughts?

Filed in: blogtech, webtech, categories, blogger-hacks