FreePress Blog

Dan

That was my idea for the header. You can have it though.

There are 3 reasons why I don’t think you should use categories as tags (all can be fixed with a plugin though):
1. Adding tags would be a pain, you would have to go to manage, add the tags, then go back to the post admin and check the boxes.
2. Technorati, I think doesn’t take categories as tags. 50/50 though, not positive.
3. You cannot add functionality, like relational tags or even better have logged in users change your tags.

Dan

Yeah, I understand that you can create any plugin you want to. And it is a matter of preference; if you care or not; if your tags go into the cat. table or a new one. It really doesn’t matter.

One thing I know about you is you rather create your own plugin to use on your blog then use someone else’s plugin, that’s cool. That is your prerogative, and I don’t care if you use a plugin I use and prefer. And I wouldn’t want to convince you otherwise, it would be like convincing Dave to admit that Bush lied, it would go on forever.

Did you look at this plugin? It would help with the adding of tags on the post interface.
And this one of the things I see wrong with how you are going about tagging because what you are doing is not tagging. You are creating a bunch of categories that are just a little more descriptive. Just because you have more detailed cats doesn’t mean you are tagging. Because you already created those “tags” before you started tagging/writing your post. And if you wanted to get another ‘tag’ you would have to go back to the manage screen and enter a new one, then go back to the post admin and check the box, limiting your time to actually tag your posts “correctly”.

Tagging is limitless; it describes the post in such detail that a broad description like Movies, Microsoft, and Entertainment cannot be considered enough of a tag. When I see tags I see a lot of words that detail the entire post. For example post, you have it “tagged” as Entertainment, Movies, and Comics could it have not been described a little more? I would consider a real tagging of this post would be Entertainment, Movies, Comics, Batman, X-men, Spiderman, Nathan, Dan…It could go on forever but its preference so if you wanted to tag the post the way you did then that’s the way you tag. But it won’t get a searcher anywhere.

Searching is the main reason to tag. Say a person comes to your site and clicks any one of your tags, they would be greeted with so many posts, not matter the tag. If I clicked “movies” I wouldn’t find any specific at all, it would be the same if I clicked on your movie category, of before. Getting the related tags going would help but would I be able to find post on a certain movie, like Batman, I know they could do a search but that defeats tagging.

So, right now when I upload my pictures of Avery to flickr and I tag them all as “Avery” is that really a tag. Or am I just categorizing all the pictures to a group called “Avery”, whether she is at the pool, park, movie, running, singing or skydiving?

Now this is, like I said, a preference and if you want your posts categorized the way you are doing it now, go for it.

JB

Yes, I understand how tagging works and what it’s for. The broader range of categories I’m using now is just a first step towards narrowing it down do that I can go back and add more specific tags later (once I add the capability to create new ones on the post edit screen, since, as you mentioned, it would be a pain to go back and forth adding categories as you go), at which time I’ll get rid of the older category style labels.

My main point is that there is no need for both categories and tags, so why not just make categories into tags? I also already have plans to support adding tags on the fly (as you post) that aren’t already in the list, but at the same time I do like being able to select from an existing list as well, so that you don’t have to type it in the same way every time. I’m sure there are already tagging plugins that do this, so I will have to check out what their interfaces look like.

Just wait until I actually finish and release my plugin (you will notice I didn’t offer a link to download it yet), then you can have a look and see if it measures up to the others.

You are right about me preferring to code my own plugins; one reason is because I enjoy it, and another is because I obviously trust my own code more than others. I’ve gotten to the point where I usually don’t even look at other plugins that are out there (although I may in this case just to get UI ideas), because a lot of them involve “hacks” (modifying the WP files in some way) or a bunch of additional installation instructions that many “average” users will mess up and therefore come back an nag you for help with. All the plugins I write are aimed to be just dropped in and work just by activating them.

Anyway, I am getting off on a tangent now, but suffice it to say that I’m with you on the concept of tagging, but just remember that what I’ve got right now is just an early first step, mostly just to test the UI stuff (”tag clouds”) and prepare to gradually transition into tagging and away from categories.

nstryker

on a less involved note: the background word “tags” reminds me of those annoying t-shirts from the late 90s…

Anonymous

:D.

I like the background.

I trust that you thought of it by yourself but a long time ago I thought the same thing. For me I thought of floating the tag over my header, but I knew it would look stupid so I never followed through. But I know I talked to you about a blog where the index was just a tag cloud but decided it wasn’t a good idea becuase the user wouldn’t see the newest posts. Defeating the purpose of a blog. I still think it would be really cool though. And displaying the posts could be solved with an rss feed to the right or left that would display the recent posts. Just a concept that will never happen.