Improving and Expanding My (Cultural) Diet

Since launching it back in March 2022, the “Cultural Diet” has arguably become my favorite part of Opus, allowing me to quickly jot down thoughts and impressions of the movies, TV series, books, etc., that I experience. To date, it contains over 500 reviews, all of which represent a slightly different approach to blogging (i.e., more succinct and off-the-cuff) than what I’ve traditionally done on Opus, while still indulging my pop culture obsessive-ness.

It always bugged me, however, that the Diet felt like a site-within-a-site that wasn’t really connected to the rest of Opus. Some of that was due to the quick way in which I built the section; it was initially an experiment before coming into its own. Still, I never quite liked the idea that Cultural Diet entries were off on their own little island, isolated from everything else on the site. If you look for my reviews of a certain director or author, for instance, then you should see all of them, regardless of whether they’re in the site’s review archive or the Diet. (A distinction that probably doesn’t matter to most readers.)

Thankfully, Craft CMS has some really robust taxonomy capabilities, so I spent some time earlier this week using them to integrate the Diet into the broader site. Now, when you view a Diet review of a movie or book, you’ll find links to all of my reviews of that particular artist — for example, the recently deceased Corey Yuen — with Cultural Diet reviews flagged as such. Similarly, if you visit one of the site’s other archive pages — like the tag page for Fist of Legend or a monthly archive — you’ll find Cultural Diet reviews there, as well.

Hopefully, this update makes Opus feel a bit more interconnected and consistent, and makes it easier to find everything you’re looking for.