Tag!

You may have noticed something new along the right-hand column and at the end of posts lately. Or maybe you didn’t, in which case you really should be paying closer attention. I added Movable Type’s tag functionality to the website to see how I like it, then went back and tagged last few dozen entries. Tags are very chic right now, very de rigueur for any self-respecting Web 2.0 buzzword spouting mover and/or shaker. And me.

At any rate, tags are just mini-categories or labels that can be attached to an entry. They’re usually very granular and often specific to that post and maybe just a few others. I already have major content categories like “Samantha” or “Books,” but think of those as the table of contents to the blog while the tags are the entries for the subject index. If you click on the link for a tag (either on the right-hand column or in the “Tags” list at the bottom of a post) you’ll go to a page listing all the other entries that share that tag.

Brilliant, no? No? Well, maybe not brilliant. But kind of neat, and a good way to get people to look at the long tail of the site and visit some of the older content that’s just sitting around. There are 731 older entries on the site. And counting. I just find it amusing to think that someone will glance at the list and note that there was at least one entry related to dead penguins or hobos.

Update: Meh, I didn’t like having a ginormous list of tags on the right-hand menu, so I added links to separate pages. One with an alphabetical list and the other with a nifty tag cloud thingie.

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3 thoughts on “Tag!

  1. I installed the new MT a few weeks ago and have been experimenting both with tags and sub-categories. It’s tough to know when to use a proper tree of categories (Photography > Gear > Lenses) vs. just sticking posts into a category and using a tag to further define the contents.
    Toss in keywords and you I think SixApart have created a categorical mess! (har har!)
    I do want to make it easier to make connections to related, though perhaps differently categorized entries. Tags seem to be the solution but add a whole new level of complexity to navigation and organization.
    SixApart tries to address it here:
    http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/beta/2006/06/everybody_loves_tags.html

  2. Thanks, Zero Boss. It’s nice here. A little cluttered, but nice.
    Todd, Yeah, I think trying to use categories, subcategories, keywords, and tags would be a huge mess. I’m just sticking with categories and tags at the moment. That seems to give me the granularity that I need while making meaningful distinctions between types of content. And actually, I think one could get by with just tags and no categories at all.

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