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Every operating system has a built-in facility to store information, the filesystem. Technically this is a full blown database, and it has a great and often overlooked advantage: It is compatible to almost every program. The filesystem allows to effectively and universally store, retrieve and exchange information, but often this is not done very thoughtful. An example for the universality of the filesystem is ClipCollect's ability to convert and export the contents of its database to HTML, which has the side effect that you can build a website not only from ClipCollect's Data directory, but from arbitrary directories of your hard drive.
To make ClipCollect really useful, it is necessary to first think of a suitable hierarchical structure of directories in your Data directory.
One possible idea is to have directories categorized by your projects or interests at the first level, directly below "<top> Data". This way your whole memory structure is "project-driven" which will strengthen your focus on them. If you have difficulties to find a place for some info, it may not belong to any of your interests or projects, and you may ask yourself: Is it worth saving it at all? Forward it to what should be the best friend of any computer user - the trash bin. At least you will become used to view information more directly from the perspective of what you can actually do with it.
The number of subdirectories in any directory should be either 0 or (very roughly) 5 to 15. This means, only one subdirectory wouldn't give you a real choice, and to have 200 of them wouldn't let you find the right one. In the former case you should think of deleting the single subdirectory or finding some sisters for it. The latter case is a clear candidate for grouping these 200 directories and moving them one level below into these newly created group directories.
Don't be lazy while saving and put a file in a parent directory, when it already has subdirectories! You should be able to think of where it belongs to precisely or you may have to rearrange these subdirectories.
Don't be even lazier and save everything to [Log file] so that you don't have to think of the right place and name for it. [Log file] makes sense when you want to save something very quickly, that you probably will never need again in the long run. E.g. a confirmation code from an online operation, a text to backup quickly or a piece of information that is only important for the next few days.
The filename, to which you save a text, should consist of a few key words, and it should start with the one that describes the contents most generally. At the beginning of the filename you should use key words, which are common to you regarding the contents of the chosen directory. This will ease the search for the file later. Key words can be separated by capitalization: KeyWord or with dashes: key-word.
With a good file manager (e.g. Total Commander) you are able to "flatten" the contents of a directory and all of its subdirectories, so that it looks like one big directory. This way you will have for each hierarchical level a virtual list of files, which you can sort chronologically or alphabetically (general key word search). Alternatively you can search any directory and its whole tree of subdirectories for files having your search phrase in their filename (special key word search) or text contents (very special key word search).
To make the chronological order work, a once taken piece of info should be considered "as is": it shouldn't be altered anymore. If the information has changed or you now think differently about it, save it as a new version. Think of it as a diary, where you wouldn't delete older entries just because they are similar to a newer one either. You can use the same filename: ClipCollect will append a version number silently.
If a file is described best with the same set of key words you already used as a filename, don't worry, that is intended. The version numbering will avoid filename clashes, and you will see similar files grouped together in the alphabetic list.
Essentially you build a data structure of 2 dimensions using ClipCollect this way. One dimension is the time - ClipCollect as a Diary. The other one is your personal world of projects and sub-projects and their specific needs, ideas and so on, all compiled into a hierarchy. Having this two dimensions in mind, makes a huge difference compared to saving only sometimes some data somewhat arbitrarily to here or there. Part of ClipCollect's value is that it automagically enforces this project-hierarchy-diary.