How to create an effective directory taxonomy?

choosing a good hierarchy

[Fribble]

I'm planning a niche directory to compliment a project I'm working on.

So far I've collected a looong list of information in the current niche, and organized it into several possible hierarchies. My sources for these 'types' of info are keyword research, active sites and directories, forum posts, and non-electronic mediums (books, magazines, classes, etc). Did I miss any potentialy good sources?

So I've got what I belive to be a complete picture of the niche as it stands currently, but there's so many different perspectives that a user could approach the directory from I'm not sure how I should classify and structure it to benefit them all - or if I can..

I'm leaning towards defining the most common purposes people would have when searching in the topic and then creating and organizing catagories based around them. i.e. "widget building", "widget buying and selling", "widget reading", "widget discussion" etc. This would also allow for easy expansion as the niche evolves and grows.

What are your experiences with planning a useful and scalable directory structure? Are there any rules of thumb?

Fribs

[hutcheson]

(1) Flexibility. When you figure out what you're doing, you'll know how badly you did the first time around, and you'll redo everything anyway. So be prepared.

(2) Crosslink. Does the surfer look for Ceramic objects that are widgets, or for Widgets that are ceramic? It shouldn't matter, both should show up at the same place. And have you forgotten that widgets are used in the traditional Gaelic game of widget-hurling? If you don't have more crosslinks than categories, you aren't taking this seriously enough.