Change "Recommendations" Sidebar Layout

Site Development
10

With the forthcoming addition of a Social Networks recommendation page, I thought this might be an opportune time to pitch my suggestion for retooling the layout of the left sidebar.

Providers

I think that this category is useful in defining a category of privacy tools which are thought of as a service first, not necessarily software first. In other words, I can expect most, if not all, recommendations in the Software category to provide download links (CLI tools included), while this is more often not the case for a handful of tools in the Provider category.

  • Cloud Storage
  • Cryptocurrency
  • Data Removal Services
  • DNS Resolvers
  • Email Aliasing
  • Email Services
  • Financial Services
  • Pastebins
  • Photo Management
  • Search Engines
  • VPN Services

My reasoning above also explains why I suggest moving the Cryptocurrency and Pastebins pages to the Providers category.

Software

Tech Essentials

  • Multifactor Authentication
  • Password Managers
  • Real-Time Communication
  • Encryption Software

My reasons for including these tools in this category are as follows:

  1. The articles “Introduction to Passwords” and “Multifactor Authentication” are grouped under the Technology Essentials category in the Knowledge Base. This forms the basis of including the MFA and Password Managers pages here.
  2. One consistent through line / theme of the website is to encourage readers to prefer end-to-end encrypted instant messengers over email and social networks for sensitive communications.
  3. The inclusion of Encryption Software in this category is a bit more tenuous because while the idea of encryption as essential seems like a no-brainer, the actual use of the tools in the category may not reflect this sentiment — particularly OpenPGP. It may belong in a different category (perhaps Utilities).

Productivity

  • Calendar Sync
  • Document Collaboration
  • Email Clients
  • Language Tools
  • Notebooks
  • Office Suites

Document Collaboration, Language Tools, and Office Suites were all on one page at one point; they were split into separate pages almost a year ago, so grouping them in this category seems like a no-brainer. The other pages listed here were placed based on what I think of as “productivity.”

Media Consumption / Media Sharing

  • Social Networks
  • Frontends
  • News Aggregators
  • File Sharing and Sync

I think that the Social Networks page and Frontends page pair well together—one page suggests alternative social media platforms, while the other suggests alternative ways to access social media content on mainstream platforms. The only page here that may be out of place is the File Sharing and Sync page—it’s admittedly a stretch to consider these tools for media sharing. Perhaps this page belongs in Utilities too.

Utilities

  • Health and Wellness Apps
  • Maps and Navigation
  • Data and Metadata Redaction
  • AI Chat

As defined by Merriam-Webster, one of the meanings of the word utility is as follows:

a program or routine designed to perform or facilitate especially routine operations (such as copying files or editing text) on a computer

I think that the pages listed in this subcategory reasonably follow this definition.

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