With the announcement of the built-in tag feature in the upcoming release of WordPress 2.3, I’ve been waiting for WordPress.com to get tags as we are the beta testers of the WordPress World. Well, today they arrived.
At the bottom of your Write Post panel’s editing box, you will see a new form for Tags. The instructions say to list the tag words in the box, separated by commas. This allows you to include keyword tags and phrases such as wordpress tips, wordpress, i like wordpress, etc.
The process, tips, and answers to questions regarding these new tags are found in the WordPress.com FAQ – The Difference Between Tags and Categories, which basically sums up these points:
- Your categories are fine. Think of tags as micro-categories.
- Nothing has gone away – only been added to your WordPress.com blogs.
- Tags are optional. Put nothing in the box, get no tags on the post.
- The tags will
link to your sitelink to WordPress.com blogs with the same “tag” and generate a category-style page view of posts with that “tag”on your blog. - Tags are not hierarchical like categories. You can’t have a “parent” tag.
Here are some things you might not want to hear:
- According to a few who have first had the tags appear on their blog’s WordPress Theme on WordPress.com, the tags link to WordPress.com, not your blog. If you don’t want tags to send visitors off your blog, like categories in the post meta data section do, then let your voice be heard and tell them.
- There is no global tag list. To change a tag, you have to edit the post(s) with that tag.
- There are no “easy” methods of coming up with tag words. No recommendations or tag list to choose from. You make them up as you go.
- The built-in spell check feature for Firefox, and possibly Internet Explorer, do not spell check the tags in the box. Make sure you spell them right the first time!
- WordPress.com users have no control over where the tags appear on their blog, though those with the CSS Extra option have some control over how their tags look.
While tag links will keep visitors on your blog, post categories in the meta data section will continue to link to ALL WordPress.com content using those same categories, inviting reader to leave your blog, something I’ve long opposed. The categories list in your sidebar will link to posts within that category on your blog.
I’ve already included tags on several posts to test them, but I cannot see them in this WordPress Theme. I’m still looking for them to appear, but I presume they will be in the post meta data area. Each WordPress Theme on WordPress.com must be modified to include the new tag features, so it may take a while to get around to the Sandbox Theme or your particular Theme.
For a long time, I’ve been using a manual browser bookmarklet with my site search tags, and I’m not going to go through and remove them. If I like how these look and work, I’ll use these new tags. If not, I’m happy with my manual method.
For those using my Tagging Bookmarklet for WordPress and WordPress.com Users, I will be updating that with tips on how to change the site search link to the new tag link, once I get a handle on how the new tags work.
Tags for Full Versions of WordPress
The new tag feature for full version WordPress users is in the upcoming release of WordPress 2.3, due this weekend. A couple of good tutorials on how to add WordPress 2.3 tags with the new tag sample tags to your WordPress Theme include How To Add WordPress 2.3 Tags To Your Current Theme by Rich Gilchrest and WPDesigner – WordPress 2.3 Beta Review and Checklist.
If you are currently using a tagging WordPress Plugin, your tags may not be “lost”. There are tag importer utilities in the new version of WordPress that covers Simple Tags, Jerome’s Keywords, Ultimate Tag Warrior, and Bunny’s Technorati Tags. I’m still waiting for news on tips and techniques for not using the new native tag feature, replacing it with one of the better tag WordPress Plugins, since the built-in version is very limited and there are better tagging Plugins available.
There are new WordPress Plugins to add functionality and features to the new tag feature. Advanced Tag Entry WordPress Plugin and Click Tags WordPress Plugin improve the functions of the tags, and the WordPress 2.3 Related Posts Plugin uses the tags to create a list of related posts.
The best part of finally seeing tagging on WordPress.com is that the 1 million plus users will be putting the tagging system through the ringer, testing it from all angles and trying to break it on their blogs. Even though it is just a few days before WordPress 2.3 is released, hopefully the feedback will help WordPress developers make sure that the new tag system will work better for everyone.
Things to Know About Tags and Categories
I’ve written a lot about the differences and similarities of tags and categories. I’ve listed some references below to help you understand them better.
Categories are your blog’s table of contents. Don’t remove them, thinking tags are a better option. They aren’t. Your posts must be categorized. Remove them and they will be categorized as “uncategorized”, something you do not want, trust me.
Tags are like your blog’s index. They are keywords that represent the micro-categorization of your blog’s content. To work effectively, they need to be words that people search for, called search terms.
Categories are automatically marked as tags in WordPress. Theoretically, your blog doesn’t need tags. But many like the notion of breaking down the words that describe their content beyond categories, and tags offer that ability.
Here is more information on tags and categories:
- Tags and Tagging in WordPress
- Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One?
- Categories versus Tags: Defining the Limitations
- The Problems With Tags and Tagging
- What Do You Blog About? Check Your Tags
- Tidying Up Tags – A Technical Review
- Tags Are Not Categories – Got It?
- Putting Some Thought Into Blog Categories and Tags
- Tagging With Emotions Not Common Sense
- Keywords Versus Tags
- Link Referrals – Linking to Site Search Tags
- One Year Anniversary Review: Tags, Tagging, and Categories
- Are You Abusing and Misusing Tags?
- Blog Post Category Trauma: How To Help Bloggers With Useless Categories
- Blog Post Category Trauma: Suggestions for Useless Categories
- Blog Post Category Trauma: Fixing Those Useless Categories
- Blog Post Category Trauma: Changing Your Categories in WordPress
Site Search Tags: wordpress, wordpress news, wordpress tags, tags, categories, post categories, post tags, tagging, tagging posts, tags and categories
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34 Comments
Yeah, tags are now in wordpress.com but the themes aren’t ready yet. at least Sandbox.
Oh yay! I’ve been waiting for them on WP.Com. For my mini blog.
It would make a lot more sense just to use subcategories to provide “microcategorization” rather than deal with the numerous limitations of this particular implementation of tags.
I saw a list of plugins that play nice with the newest WordPress. Is that list all inclusive or just the ones that they tested? Because there are a few of my plugins that I use heavily that I don’t want to lose just to get tags (something I’ve been thinking about for a while).
What about those using categories provided by plugins like UTW… Are the going to be compatible with 2.3?
The Ultimate Tag Warrior WordPress Plugin does not provide or create categories. It only deals with tags. As said in the article, there is a utility to import tags from that and other popular tagging Plugins into the new native tagging system, converting the tags for each post but losing the features that made UTW so wonderful. As of now.
As WordPress evolves, it may improve its tagging feature, and there are new Plugins that will help add more features to the tag feature.
What would be really nice, that I feel is missing from that new interface, is a checkbox that says something like ‘insert category names as tags for this post.’ Meaning let it grab all the category names you’ve assigned for the post, insert them, and then you can edit or add to that list.
They tend to operate like categories in that they only call up posts with the exact same “tag”. I wish they functioned like the bookmarklet/greasemonkey “search tags”. As bad as the WordPress.com search feature is, it does enable people to find some similar or related posts, whether formally “tagged” or not.
“The tags will link to your site and generate a category-style page view of posts with that “tag” on your blog.”
The tags that I’ve created do not keep the user within my site, but work exactly like categories by taking the user to the WP page for that tag. What gives?
PS– As you say, there would be an advantage, if one had “tags” which duplicated the “categories”. Then readers clicking on the formal tags within the post would find your stuff and not everyone’s.
But then, Occam would scream and KISS his razor goodbye.
“While tag links will keep visitors on your blog, post categories in the meta data section will continue to link to ALL WordPress.com content using those same categories, inviting reader to leave your blog, something I’ve long opposed.”
Me too. I think it would make much more sense if instead the new tags linked to all WP.com content, and category links in the metadata section were restricted to one’s own blog.
Brian: Are you talking about categories or tags? The categories from within the post meta data or byline data (depending upon your Theme’s design) go to the WordPress.com matching category – listing other blogs on WordPress.com which use that word or phrase as a category. The tags “should” be only your blog content. To access your post categories, the visitor must click on the link to your categories in your blog’s sidebar.
Yes, this sucks.
The rest of you, make sure WordPress.com knows whether or not you like the method of linking to the rest of WordPress.com blogs through your categories. Insist upon changing or being given a choice, and they will listen…if enough make the request.
I’m screaming as loud as I can, but a crowd shouting the same thing reaches further than a lone voice…most of the time. 😀
I’d much prefer that categories loop back to your own blog content while tags would take you to the WP.com “find similar” and not the other way around. Anyway, as it is right now, everything goes to WP.com content.
Brian: Are you talking about categories or tags? The categories from within the post meta data or byline data (depending upon your Theme’s design) go to the WordPress.com matching category – listing other blogs on WordPress.com which use that word or phrase as a category. The tags “should” be only your blog content. To access your post categories, the visitor must click on the link to your categories in your blog’s sidebar.
Lorelle: Tags and Categories in the post area point to WP pages and take users away from my blog. Tags and Categories in the sidebar keep them on my site.
Another weird thing I’ve discovered is with the tag cloud widget. We now have a tag cloud and a category cloud. I have one default category called “Personal” that all of my posts are in. I’ve been going back through all of my older posts and tagging them. My tag cloud shows “Personal” as my most popular tag, even though none of my posts are tagged “Personal”. Also, clicking the “Personal” link in my tag cloud takes the user to inrepair.net/category/personal instead of inrepair.net/tag/personal. One would think that categories should not show up in the tag cloud or vice-versa.
Okay, I see on your blog that the tags do point to WordPress.com stuff. The FAQ says that they would not. This sucks. I don’t want them. Do you?
If your new tags point to WordPress.com content and not to your blog’s content, let your voice be heard!
They haven’t turned on up this Theme yet. But I am keeping my eye out for them. I’ll use
display:noneif they link to WordPress.com blogs. Seriously.As for the issue of Personal category, I clicked it and found a ton of articles you have marked in the Personal category. Change them to something else and uncheck the personal category. Maybe you have Personal set to be your default, instead of “uncategorized”. If so, if they are not categorized, that is what they would fall into.
Thanks for pointing out the issue of the tag links. Let’s let our voices be heard loud and clear that the tags do not link to our content and we don’t like it.
Lorelle,
I would also prefer that the tags & categories pointed to my own blog rather than WP pages, but I doubt they’ll listen.
The other problem that I was having cleared up sometime during the night. My default category no longer shows up in my tag cloud. Yay! 🙂
Glad you solved one problem, but don’t doubt WordPress.com won’t listen. They listen, when the voices are united and loud enough.
Tags currently work the same as categories, in that the post links are external but the sidebar widgets are internal.
Quite apart from the post links throwing people out of my blog without warning, this is a big usability issue: if I have a link to the ‘design’ category on my sidebar and another one on my post, then naturally my readers are going to expect both links to lead to the same place. People have been complaining about this for a long time now (a forum search on ‘global tags’ turns up multiple unhappy campers), and Automattic had a chance to fix it with this upgrade by making categories blog-specific and tags global, but instead they just perpetuated the mess.
Thanks for the article, Lorelle. I was a bit confused about the benefits of tags last week, and your article(s) cleared it up.
I agree with you on tags and categories leading people away from the blog, and I’ve registered my opinion with wordpress.com. I do understand their desire to point people to wordpress.com, though.
Is there a compromise that would satisfy everybody? Maybe the cats/tags lead to my own content, but a special sidebar showing wordpress.com content appears (only!) on the results page in addition to the standard sidebar(s).
The biggest problem with the current system is that it isn’t consistent. Categories and tags attached to a post lead to a different place than the same (as far as the audience is concerned) categories and tags found in the sidebar.
It’s terribly counter-intuitive. I’ve had to use my back button more than a couple times, and I almost know what I’m doing!
(BTW, this post is now showing tags leading to wordpress.com content.)
The best option is to allow the user to choose where they want their tags and/or categories to go. Forcing our readers to leave our blogs without a choice, for them or for us, is inappropriate and restrictive. Also, not intuitive.
Tags? On this post? You can see tags? I haven’t found them yet. Only the categories in the post meta data section, which leads to WordPress.com stuff – sometimes crappy stuff. The “site search tags” are mine, created manually, and they link to my site’s content.
If you are using a non-hosted version of WordPress, there is the auto-tagging/linking widget at jiglu.com that automatically links all of your content together. Naturally, we’de love to see that arrive on WordPress.com as well
I’m afraid so. Link to a screencap. The one with the arrow leads to ‘wordpress dot com/ tag/ post-categories/’ Maybe I’m misunderstanding. (It’d hardly be the first time.)
Also, while hope springs eternal, here’s the response I got from Mark at wordpress. I guess we’ll have to keep up the pressure.
Those are the categories that have always been there. That area is the post meta data section.
As for Mark’s assumption, while there may be a basis in truth, it confuses the reader and does lose you traffic as there are some very sharp web users out there who do not want to see other blogs when they hit a tag link. They want information on your blog because you have teased them enough to know that they might find the information they want here.
I was hoping to give up my tagging bookmarklet, but now I won’t. So sad.
Still, I hope people will push through to make this an option, not a forced choice.
I got the same answer when I first noticed that the categories under each post did not lead to my categorized posts.
I’m not sure if anyone mentioned that some readers of a scientific blog looking for posts under “sex” may not want to find non-scientific blogs with “sex”.
Without some way to standardize tags and spellings, it’s not very social, either.
Can anyone provide the data to show the traffic increase to one’s own site, instead of WordPress.com?
Data? You mean tips? I’ve got a whole book of them. 😀
Honestly, the best way to increase traffic to your blog is to write keyword-rich content that includes search terms that help your blog be found when people go searching. Before that, make sure you have a body of work that makes people know they’ve found the right place, and the answers to their questions, and give them a reason to hang around.
The better quality, linkable content you write, the more traffic you will attract naturally from search engines, and the more likely someone is to write about what you’ve posted and link to you, a guaranteed traffic driver.
And if you don’t like the built-in WordPress tag feature leading your readers away from your blog to unknown and unpredictable content, then use the Technorati Tag Bookmarklet for WordPress and WordPress.com Users like I do. It ain’t perfect, but it helps for those who like using tags to find related content on your blog – or elsewhere.
Trust me, tags are not the answer to traffic trouble. They do not get you “more” traffic. They get you some, but I can’t remember seeing technorati tags listed in my referral stats, though I rarely look at my stats any more. But when I do, they aren’t there. Yet, everything I publish, just like you, gets listed in Technorati within hours of publishing. All WordPress.com blog posts do.
Mark at WordPress type of data–
I used to use the Technorati greasemonkey script but a smart redhead WordPresser convinced me otherwise so I only use the site search one.
Ah, Pam, just goes to show that I should look at the blog URL a little more closer. I would have recognized a very smart and brilliant friend instead of just “another” commenter.
I know brilliant when I see it, I just have to look. I know you know what you is blogging about, and you do great work. It just takes time.
Remember, I’ve been doing this since 1994. I didn’t arrive two years ago on WordPress.com without some kind of built-in audience that followed me. It takes time, and you are on the right track, “kid”. 😀
But there is the larger issue which you have mentioned before (why blog) which seems to hit head-on with some WordPress.com extras, the “tags” being but one.
If one’s objective is to bring in viewers, then tags leading out to another website may work.
If one’s objective is to make it easier for readers to find what they want to (and incidentally maybe find new readers) then the tags and the poor search function (and the preview in a new tab to make sure I haven’t confused readers) are not good ideas.
My choice in priorities for WordPress.com to develop would be for accessibility and not traffic (mine’s bigger than yours?) 😉
Pam, you’ve inspired me. I’ll have a post on this very subject next week. Thank you!
@Lorelle,
The way the introduction of the tagging system has impacted the former categories system at wordpress.com has not sat well with many bloggers. I can attest to this because as usual when bloggers have something negative to say they do not take their complaints tot the top. Instead they direct their unhappiness at unwitting forum volunteers, who has no more information than the other bloggers do about the implementation and effects the tagging system would have on the way categories are treated.
Below are just 2 examples of the kind of responses received. (Note that I chose ones where the bloggers were not rude or acting like drama queens.)
http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=16171
http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=15206
@timethief:
I’ve been following these discussions. I do hope developers and WordPress.com are following them, too. This is why I wrote this post.
I do believe the administrators of WordPress.com will listen – if we talk to them and not at them. The Support Forums are a great place to let your voice be heard, but you are right. Direct it towards the administrators. The volunteers are not responsible. Nor should they take on the responsibility, which I have also seen. Volunteers should forward pertinent comments to the admin and then wait and see. The rest of us need to let our voices be heard on how we want tags on WordPress.com.
Great new resource. WP tags will give a more targeted direction to search content.
Lorelle, thanks to your explanation on the difference between categories and tags , I think I now actually understand the difference. I would like to copy your explanation into an Edublogs manual I’ve put together for teacher trainings. If I have your permission, how should I credit you in the manual?
Gail Desler
That’s right, I can see my tag in wordpress, but I didn’t get much benefit using the tag…
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