MILES to GO || before I sleep

I'm finally getting around to working on Indigo Ink, my portfolio website and online resume. I've been tinkering with it in various small ways for a while, but a recent decision to re-watch and actually DO the tutorials in a Lynda.com lesson, "Building an Online Portfolio with WordPress," got me actually working on the project.

The Lynda.com lesson uses an example chef to build the portfolio, making custom post types and taxonomies for recipes, photos, and videos. These post types make sense for a chef, but what about for me? My portfolio has three different types of content: writing (the biggie), graphic design, and website designs.

I made three custom post types to reflect this, but now I'm struggling with the taxonomies. Whereas regular blog posts have categories (hierarchical sorting) and tags (non-hierarchical), what would I use for my three new custom post types?

For the example chef in the Lynda.com lesson, the recipes, photos, and videos all have some common ways of organizing, such as meal type. Then it can be further sub-categorized--hint hint, this would be a hierarchical taxonomy, e.g. a CATEGORY--into things like breakfast, dinner, dessert, and so forth. And even those can be further sub-categorized, into things like meat, vegetable, and so on.

But what about my writing?

Well, I have articles--ones I've written for university publications, and ones I've written for GamingDead.com. I have essays. I have fiction. There might even be further ones. But are these categories? Can I break down the writing custom post type into a category of articles, and then further into specific KINDS of articles? Or would it be better to have something like a "purpose" category, which can span across multiple custom post types? That way, I could say, my reason for writing this article, or designing this website was "school assignment."

I'm trying to find example portfolios that have custom taxonomies that might provide an inspiration as to the architecture or structure of how I should organize my content, but so far, no luck. Any suggestions?

Long time no write--at least, here. I've been trying to keep up with writing 750 words (about three pages, which is the suggested amount from Julia Cameron's famous "The Artist's Way," except she called them "Morning Pages"), and I've been semi-successful at that, though November has been all kinds of crazy.

I tried to do NaNoWriMo too, and though I've got an explosive opening for my first original novel (set in a fantasy world that my BF David is developing for a roleplaying game), I do not have a full and complete novel by any stretch of the imagination.

In the meantime, I've been trying to set up my sites as WordPress sites now, since learning Joomla! was just too damn difficult and time-consuming, even with a Lynda.com membership. I've been using WordPress off and on for years for various other sites, and it makes sense to use the biggest, easiest-to-use CMS for my own personal fandom sites, too.

Now, it's not (currently, as far as I'm aware) possible to integrate WordPress with every other script out there--I'd love it if there was eFiction and WordPress integration, but there's not. I'm keeping Dragonfayth around as the Azureshipping fanfiction archive, but I'm considering not making Epiphany, the archive I was going to use to gather all of my own fanfiction, using eFiction.

I was considering WordPress, since I'm planning to make all my fandom sites using WordPress as well, and it seemed appropriate (maybe) to make individual sites for my particular epic fanfics, like "What Doesn't Kill You" (especially since the PLANS for that story involve at least two sequels), and "Wax and Wane" (formerly "Only 16").

A quick Google search reveals that plenty of people use WordPress (the self-hosted variety OR the WordPress.com variety) to post fanfic, much as people use Dreamwidth and/or LiveJournal. The thing is, a blog-style format for posting fanfic ISN'T a great idea. It's timeline-centric, and the whole point of fanfics is that they can be found and read by anyone, at any time. You'd need to take extra steps to make navigation so people can get to all your fics, make that navigation obvious, and make it uncomplicated--which is why "Pit of Voles" or not, fanfiction.net is the repository for fanfics on the web. It categorizes everything by type of fandom, name of fandom, world/universe, author, rating, genre, characters, language...you name it.

I could probably very easily post fanfics as "Pages" within the WordPress schema, and have another "Master Page" that I update regularly with new chapters, edits, or whatever, but I'm just wondering if anyone else out there has taken this approach or has suggestions for another.

My main WordPress projects now are getting the non-fanfiction material from my fandom sites up on my new network of WordPress sites, and for those sites that might be specifically fanfiction related, there's a ton of other content to include: ideas, Easter eggs, edits, fanart...stuff like that.

Every time LJ does something stupid -like removing interests, changing strikethrough to boldthrough, suspending users for "bad" interests, removing the Basic account level, etc.- I want to leave.

I remember when I was on Greymatter, and while it was a pain to maintain because of all the coding, I liked it because I could do whatever I wanted. Now, I'm very tempted to switch to Wordpress-- they even allow an easy-import for LJ entries and comments.

Problem(s)?
* I can't find any way of embedding user icons (userpics, icons, avatars, WHATEVER!) into posts. I don't want them up in little headers. I don't want them in footers. I want them either in the upper left or upper right of EVERY post I make, preferably with my name underneath said image. I don't know why this is so infeasible. Maybe it's just me and my lack of knowledge about WP, maybe it's theme-specific... but so far I have found nothing that does this, and it REALLY irritates me. I see user icons as a BASIC function of blogging anywhere.

* Sure, anyone can have a "blogroll" (friends' list), but having to go to different sites, have different sign-ins (assuming OpenID isn't used), etc. is a pain in the neck. You'll end up forgetting to read the various blogs on said blogroll. Plus, the concept of "communities" disappears entirely. As the mod of several, still-active communities on LJ, I'd find parting with them the hardest part. Actually, I wouldn't do it. I'd insist on keeping an active LJ account just for that purpose.

Those are the two biggies, and I'm sure there are others. See, on a daily basis, you take certain elements of LJ for granted. Some of them are found, one way or another, on other blogging platforms, but frankly, it's a bit like switching from automatic to stick or caffeinated to decaf-- getting used to a new way of doing things is pretty difficult at first. So while yeah, I'm thrilled to be able to customize themes and add "widgets" to my WP blogs, I don't like this SIMPLE issue with icons/avatars, and I'm sure there's a ton more that would irk me if I played around with it enough.