How We Organize the Archive: A Guide to Tags

Every piece on Palimpsest is filed by tag rather than by section. This guide explains how the system works, how to browse the archive by topic, and how the tags also drive the layout behind the scenes.

One flat system, multiple tags per piece

We use a single, flat tag system — no nested categories, no departments. An essay about the typography of gravestones is criticism, design writing, and cultural history at once; a strict hierarchy would force it into one drawer. Tags let a piece be filed under everything it actually covers.

Tag a piece essays and it appears in the essays archive. Tag it essays and fables and it appears in both archives at once, so readers find it whichever subject they came for.

Each tag gets its own archive page, its own RSS feed, and its own cover image. If you only care about one subject, you can follow that tag’s feed alone.

The primary tag

Order matters. The first tag on a piece is its primary tag — the label the front page displays when there is only room for one word.

essays, criticism, field notes, typography

This piece is presented as an essay on the front page, while still appearing in all four tag archives. Choosing the primary tag is an editorial decision: of everything the piece covers, which subject does it cover most?

Internal tags

Some tags are for the production team, not for readers. Any tag starting with # is internal — it never appears on the page and never gets an archive, but the template can still detect it and act on it.

essays, criticism, #wide-images

Readers see an essay filed under criticism. The template, meanwhile, reads the internal tag and gives the piece a wider layout for its photographs:

if post has tag "#wide-images"
    ...use the full-bleed layout, edge to edge...
else
    ...use the ordinary column...
end

We use internal tags for layout variants, series groupings, and editorial workflow states — production notes that travel with the piece without cluttering the page.

To see the system in use, open any tag from a byline or the front page and browse its archive. Each archive page describes what the tag collects.