Tag, You're It!

Sunday, November 25, 2007 11:51 pm Daniel J. Summers

You may notice something new in the header of each post on this blog. Native tagging support is new to WordPress 2.3, but most themes didn't support it. I have added it to the “NightLight Idea” theme, and 2.3 added it to the “WordPress Default” theme. Clicking on a tag will show you all posts that have been tagged with the same tag. Of course, since it's new, most of my old posts aren't tagged. I've tagged the ones back about six months, and I'll get to the others as I have time. Enjoy!

If you don't care about the difference between tags and categories, you can stop reading now…

One reason it's taken me so long to add tags to this theme is that I had a hard time wrapping my head around the concept of a tag versus a category. It may not be scientific, and there was no one moment where a light bulb went on above my head and I said “wow - that's it!” But the way I understand it (and the way they'll be used in this blog) is this; categories are broad and should be few, while tags are narrow and may be many. Basically, a category is where you would file the post, were you to print it out and put it in a filing cabinet, or make a card for it in the card catalog of a library - for this post, the category is “Site Info”. A tag is more a collection of keywords or topics that may appear or be referenced in a post. Look at the tag list for this post, and you'll see what I mean.

And, by the way - I know I have some readers who are WordPress bloggers. Here's how I did it - it was a piece of cake!