Post tagging
As you probably noticed we have replaced the category list with the brand new Tag Cloud on blog sidebars. We just launched the ability to classify your posts into multiple tags or labels. This replaced the old category-based classification mechanism. In the sake of simplicity, we moved existing categories into tags, and removed the interface for category classification.
Tags work like keywords. You can classify a post with as many tags as you like and you can edit them later. We tag posts in a search engine friendly fashion, so that search engines like technorati pickup your posts and assign them to correct tags.
Try it out: Post about a movie, and fill out the tag input with: “movie; drama; scarlet; de palma”. Naturally, if you wish to use those exact tags, you’ll need to go out to your local theater and watch The Black Dahlia if you wish to write something interesting.
This system is great your personal information, allowing you to later retrieve your posts by combining tags. It also allows you to posts by other authors that use the same tags. It’s also great for finding out about people with your tastes, also writing on blog.com — for example other posts about The Black Dahlia). We’ll be working on some new browsing pages that will allow this feature.
If you didn’t enjoy this new tag cloud you can switch to the old tag listing system in the Sidebar section in the editor, just click edit in the tag cloud line and choose list. You also can order these blocks alphabetically or by number of posts.
One last note: in the tag cloud, the bigger the tag name the greater is the number of posts under the tag.
Does this mean I can’t assign a particular post to a catagory anymore?
Bring it back!
Robin, it works the same way but now you can assign a post to several tags instead of just one like before.
I use my blog to communicate my association. The customers to my site are not going to understand what a “tag” is and may get confused or turned off. Can I rename it back to “Categories”, or “Pages in this site”… or something other than the criptic word “tag”?
Tracy, I’m very sorry but that is not possible. We are sticking with Tag.
Why not allow users to name the block? You already allow us to choose the name we prefer to given blocks so also allowing for a different name than ‘tag cloud’ in the tag cloud block is a no-brainer for you guys that have proved to be doing a great job
Zii Blogerrrr,
You just broke my heart! Shot down without any consideration. I love your blog site and appreciate how easy, user friendly, intuitive, flexible, and forward thinking it, and you guys are, and I can’t believe how quickly you (collectively, I am assuming) decided that “tag” is some superior word that must be used in the form of a “cloud” (what ever that means) or “list” (THAT I can understand!). Even the first commenter wants the old way back. “Tag” doesn’t mean anything to regular people. Why be so adamant?
To me “Tag” is not intuitive and has no meaning except to only hard core ‘bloggers’ or computer people (of which I am, and it still doesn’t make much sense to me). I am very disappointed with your decision.
Thanks for your response.
labels! aren’t tags labels? so why the enigmatic name?
hell! why not call them categories (who said categories are exclusive?)
This doesn’t explain why the font sizes in your new “tag cloud” side bar on my blog have gone crazy. Also, all the titles run into each other. I can’t judge if I like it until I can read it. And I’m assuming no one else can either. What should I do? Thanks.
Hi all,
I understand your questions about the naming of tags, and I will forward this thread to the development team. In the meantime, let me present our rationale:
As to whether we should call it Tag or Category, we went with Tag because of the multiple classification. As Harry puts it, there is nothing to say that categories are for single classification. However, historically on the web, tags are associated with multiple classification systems. Moreover, tags are associated with shorter terms, which are a lot better for post-processing blogs and finding out what people are writing about, what groups of interest form in blog.com, etc.
On the issue of Tag vs Label, it is again a historical reason. Tags are labels and labels are tags. They’re synonyms. However, on blogs the term tags is the one commonly used, as you can check on Technorati. There is no reason for blog.com to be different from all blog providers and introduce noise in communication.
Anyhow, I believe it shouldn’t be hard to allow all sidebar boxes to be manually titled by authors. I’ll send a Request For Enhancement to the dev team.
Thanks for all the feedback!
Bistromath Captain, Thank you!
It states breifly here (the very last sentence): “One last note: in the tag cloud, the bigger the tag name the greater is the number of posts under the tag.” And if you change “cloud” to “list” in the side bar tab, then your posts will list regularly. I hope that makes sense.
I found the lack of communication about the changes challenging. I didn’t know they were going to happen, I didn’t know why they were happening, I didn’t know how I could fix the reader usability issues of the messy blending of lines and oversizing of words and I didn’t know that it wasn’t a failure but an intended change.
I found out about it when I had the chance to email support about the changes for help on how to fix the mess - and got the link to here.
I’m not confident that the development team has clearly heard the desire to have choice about which words are used for display. Yes, the new functionality of the tags for search engines is good but surely that can be kept without being forced to use exact words like cloud.
What about being able to choose the heading of Category list instead of tag cloud while retaining the improved search results? I’ve worked in IT and understand this has been achieved in previous developments so am confident that it can with blog.com
I wish you all the best with making the best come out of this development.
Speaking of upgrade and changes…..I would VERY much like to see a “spell check” and a “grammer check” type offering within the blog. Is this a possible?
Nature Lover, we are planning to add this feature.