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Architecture: Homelab Journal Site Structure

Author
Mario
Security engineer by day, homelab tinkerer by night. Building self-hosted infrastructure and documenting the journey.

Overview
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This site uses a hybrid content structure that combines the best of wikis and blogs. Instead of choosing between “everything chronological” or “everything by topic,” we get both:

  • Wiki sections for evergreen reference content (organized by topic)
  • Blog posts for journey updates and lessons learned (organized by date)
  • Tutorials for step-by-step guides (standalone, searchable)
  • Series for multi-part deep dives (linked learning paths)

Content Architecture
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Content Architecture

Directory Structure
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Directory Structure

Why This Structure?
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Problem: Wiki vs Blog Dilemma
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Most homelab documentation falls into two camps:

  1. Pure Blog - Great for following someone’s journey, but hard to find specific info later
  2. Pure Wiki - Great for reference, but loses the narrative and lessons learned

Solution: Hybrid Approach
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Content TypeOrganizationPurposeExample
WikiBy topicQuick reference, “how does X work?”“Keepalived VRRP basics”
TutorialStandalone“How do I set up X?”“HA Pi-hole with Keepalived”
PostBy date“What happened? What did I learn?”“The day DNS failed”
SeriesLinked sequenceDeep dives that build on each other“Building a Proxmox Cluster”

Content Lifecycle
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Content Lifecycle

Design Decisions
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1. Topic-First for Wiki
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Wiki content is organized by what it’s about, not when it was written. This makes it easy to find related content:

  • All DNS stuff → /wiki/networking/
  • All container stuff → /wiki/infrastructure/

2. Year-Based for Posts
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Posts are organized by year to:

  • Keep URLs stable and predictable
  • Allow browsing by time period
  • Avoid overly deep nesting

3. Flat Tutorials
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Tutorials live in a single /tutorials/ directory because:

  • They’re meant to be found via search/tags
  • Nesting would add friction to publishing
  • Tags provide the categorization

4. Tags + Topics Taxonomy
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Two separate taxonomies serve different purposes:

  • Tags: Content type (tutorial, lesson-learned, lab-note)
  • Topics: Technology (proxmox, docker, networking, dns)

This allows queries like “all lessons learned about DNS” or “all tutorials about Proxmox.”

Trade-offs
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DecisionGainCost
Hybrid structureBest of both worldsMore complex to maintain
Flat tutorialsEasy publishingLess topic grouping
Year-based postsStable URLsManual year folders
Dual taxonomyFlexible queriesMore tags to manage

What’s Next
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  • Add more wiki reference content
  • Create first tutorial (HA Pi-hole)
  • Build out series for cluster setup
  • Integrate with homelab automation for auto-posting