EI-3.6 — Navigation & Discoverability
Status: COMPLETE
Date: 2026-08-08
Objective
Make the EI-3 content model visible to readers and remove legacy WordPress/Jekyll taxonomy from primary discovery.
Primary navigation
The global navigation remains intentionally compact:
- Home
- About
- Teaching
- Writing
- PTIR
- CV
- Contact
Writing is the editorial hub. PTIR remains a separate publication. Historical and specialist destinations are reached through Writing and contextual links rather than expanding the global menu.
Writing discovery
/writing/ is the primary discovery surface for authored work. It exposes:
- Featured
- four canonical subjects: Technology, Teaching, Computing History, Journalism & Media
- History
- The Loudmouth
- Journalism & Media Portfolio
- PTIR as a distinct publication
- Archive
The legacy Blog concept is removed from this discovery model. /blog/ remains only as a compatibility redirect to /writing/.
Subject browsing
/categories/ is retained as a compatibility URL but is redefined as Subjects. It no longer enumerates arbitrary historical Jekyll categories. It presents the four canonical EI-3.2 subjects and uses normalized subject metadata.
This keeps old inbound links viable while ending the semantic role of accumulated WordPress categories.
Featured
/featured/ remains metadata-driven using featured: true and importance. Display labels prefer canonical subject metadata rather than legacy categories.
History
/history/ becomes a curated discovery surface. It uses subject: Computing History for normalized writing and links separately to The Loudmouth historical collection. It is not a synonym for the chronological Archive.
Journalism & Media
The consolidated /portfolio/journalism-media/ page is surfaced from Writing and Subjects. This gives the retained professional-history material a discoverable home without restoring the eight disconnected legacy portfolio pages.
PTIR
PTIR remains separate from authored Writing. The PTIR landing page supports the EI-3 content model (series: PTIR / content_type: briefing) while temporarily retaining category/title fallbacks for editions that predate metadata normalization. EI-3.7 will validate the remaining legacy metadata and production ledger.
Archive
/archive/ remains chronological and follows the EI-3.5 published-vs-legacy archive boundary. It is a preservation/discovery surface, not a catch-all taxonomy.
Terminal and footer
The BBS terminal help/navigation is aligned with the same information architecture. blog is retained only as a compatibility command that points readers to Writing. The footer replaces Categories with Subjects and exposes History as a curated secondary discovery route.
Closeout
EI-3.6 makes the site architecture consistent with EI-3.2 through EI-3.5 while preserving compatibility URLs where inexpensive and useful.
Next sprint: EI-3.7 — Editorial Validation & Series Closeout.