Better Catalog organization

The catalog for Codecademy has gotten quite large over time and has now gotten to a point where you could scroll for several minutes looking for a new course to try. While it does have different filters for Languages and Topics, it still gets lengthy in certain areas, while being woefully short in others. My suggestion would be to allow additional filters, such as:

  • a custom search filter, ie: a search box that filters the current page based on terms (if a user is in Python and searches “Data Science”, the current page would dynamically update to only show courses with Data Science in the title or summary)

  • a filter/sort for difficulty: When viewing a large catalog, allow a drop-down for users to see only Beginner or Intermediate courses (In addition, add some more Advanced courses)

-related to the above: reclassify some into Intermediate, especially for languages that are harder to grasp for beginners. Languages like C++, which is in the Roadmap, or Java, shouldn’t be a beginner’s first experience with programming, and should start at the Intermediate level, given the fact that Python and many other languages allow a beginner to more easily grasp programming mechanics and philosophy without struggling with the complexities of individual languages. A developer looking to expand their knowledge doesn’t need this distinction, but for Codecademy’s target demographic, it matters.

  • A filter to remove certain types of courses from the view: maybe I don’t want to see Skill Paths, or I only want to see Career Paths, allow these kinds of multi-option filters.

  • A user-editable saved fitlers or default filters: what if I want to never see JavaScript courses, no matter which view I’m in?

  • Sorting! Sort by date released, or “percentage of users completed”, or other metrics.

Search functions like this are commonplace in e-commerce sites (go look at Amazon or NewEgg), and would greatly enhance the ease-of-use for those of us who like to window shop for new courses to try. Default filters would also speed up the website’s responsiveness, which tends to get pretty sluggish when viewing larger topics, and especially the full catalog.