I know I've seen discussion about this before, but I thought I'd bring a fresh discussion to this matter. Why? Because this is one request that I really would like on my website. Search engines seem to like "tags," because it lets them know what the underlining content is about, if not in full, at least partially.
This is what I'm looking for in a tagging system:
I would like to see a tagging system where the user sets the tags (i.e. keywords) for the thread. Commenters would also have the option to add tags, but by default, tags are left blank for them, unless they fill them in. This would be good if the discussion begins to change directions and a commentor can add his own personal tags. Or if a commentor believes the original poster forgot to include a tag, he could additionally add how own.
This extension within Vanilla would display a "tags" tab on the top navigation bar. When the "tags" tab is selected, it would display a "tag cloud" similiar to del.icio.us where larger text links indicate the more popular, and small text links indicate the lesser talked about or tagged items.
Since I am very specific on what additional features I'd like to appear on my forum website, I am willing to work with anyone here to develop these add-ons. I am actually a beginner when it comes to PHP, but years ago in high school, I did advance through a couple comp. programming languages. I do have a more than basic understanding of html, xhtml and css coding.
I would also like this feature because it could help some people find some discussions that met their needs faster and easier. One thing that would be cool for it would be to also add it to the search pages of the site, like searching for specific tags woudl return whatever discussions had that tag. or like you said have that one page like del.icio.us has with the most popular tags bigger. Maybe having them as a link to the search page to show all the discussions with that.
I am willing to help out with it, but I dont know how much help I would be. I do have a good understand of xhtml and css, and basic understanding of php and mysql. I'm just not any good with writing or working with classes in php.
I would be guessing we would have to add another column to the comments table to have all the tags in it, and for better preformace to index that column. Maybe having a little tags box below the actual comment box here for what the user could put in for the tags. It would be nice to see what tags are associated with each discussion too somewhere within the discussion page, either on the side menu or above the whole discussoin.
A possible way to do this would be to integrate delicious into the forum itself. For instance, when I update my site the latest posts are sent directly to delicious including the tags I have added. Because of the advanced delicious API this info can then be fed back into my site any way I deem fit (category search, tag clouds etc). It also has the added benefit of giving every tag an RSS feed courtesy of the delicious system.
Just an idea, might make things easier and more functional without programming everything from scratch.
A tag cloud in the panel should be really cool. A nice implementation of tags (and the way they are added by anyone) can be seen at Wordpress Support Forum (you must be registered and logged to see how it works). Btw, great idea, I hope something will come out from this.
@Obvious - I like your idea of integrating with del.icio.us. Do you have any ideas of how we would go about it? I'm not too familiar with the del.icio.us API or PHP (though I'm learning).
@Trey - I definitely like your idea about making it search-able. What would be the point of having them if the users couldn't search through them, too? I mean, it might help the search engines index one's forums a little bit better, increasing visibility to people outside the forum. But tags are definitely useful to locate subjects you want to know about.
Who's willing to work on this tagging system? Though I lack an adequate amount of PHP experience, I can definitely try and learn as I go to help further this project.
I've got a keywords extension that I ported from a WP plugin. Mark helped me resolve the final problem with it. Now I just have a usabilty concern with it. If you would like to try it out, please let me know and I'll email you the file and instructions on what needs to be changed for your site. Email me at jwurster at comcast dot net.
I just had an interesting thought... If delicious was integrated into any future tagging ext then all Vanilla tagging forums would instantly show up in delicious. This means that if by default every vanilla post was tagged with 'VanillaForum' then searching for this tag in delicious would give you an overview of the entire Vanilla Tagging ecosystem.
It would be a basic way to combine Vanilla forums into a larger community and allow people to discover topics of interest via the relevant tags in delicious. Might be pretty special.
This guy has implemented a clone of delicious onto his own server. I think its freesource, but better check. A vanilla delicious tagging community? Maybe:
Thanks for this Obvious. I'll definitely check this out. Maybe it will help or inspire me to create something or team-up with another developer on here. In the next few days I'm going to work on (hopefully) an extension where it adds an "Add to del.icio.us" link for forum users to add a particular comment or discussion to their del.icio.us bookmarks. I have something like this on my US Homes Today web blog for every post.
The coding I think is a little too advanced for me right now. If another developer here kinda coached me or helped me out, I might be able to produce this with their assistance. I would love to see this extension an actual reality one day soon.
I like the tagging in the open source bookmarking app Scuttle. Tags can be sorted alphabetically or by popularity (always with bigger text=more popular) as seen here.
I think subcategories add confusion, as discussions can often belong in multiple categories. But, with either tags or subcategories, there will always be the problem of misclassification.
Unfortunately I don't have the expertise to help with this, but I for one find that often, a combination of both categories and tagging is best. In my mind the category is automatically set as a tag.
People speak of tagging in several different ways. The one extension I converted creates a list of keywords from the information in the comments and discussion items. That is one definition of sorts. I am also working on the category tagging aspect to display the category titles with the number of items in the category with a link to the list (like the keywords). This third way of tagging, if I may paraphrase, is adding a tag in the post to identify your own keywords (the tag code be [tag] [/tag]). Or adding a field to the comment form in which to enter your keywords.
And then you have the delicious or other tagging systems. Do I have it right?
There is a tagging plugin for FCkeditor that integrates with technorati, flickr, del.icious. and wikipedia. Once you tag ur comments you can browse them from del.icio.us ofcource
Someone from that one forum (yeah that makes sense) that was found has a tagging extension. I believe they said it was proprietary though. But I am sure you could ask some questions.
@ JimW: very much like your Aug 31st suggestion of marking tags within the text as bbcode. Very elegant and not intrusive in the editing process.
I've been considering the use of 'fixed' tags (limited set, pre-defined) as an alternative to true subcategories. I'd prefer a fixed set to avoid the usual clutter that results from 10 people with 10 different vocabularies and tagging preferences.
In my case these would be tags indicating the type of post, (e.g. event, art, social, business, free/cover, etc. etc.).
Possible approaches:
- modify the bbcode toolbar (which I love) to insert custom BB-Codes which are then replaced with icons. (+) can encapsulate content, can be interpreted, can be indexed by search engines
- modify vanillacons to insert new graphical tags (+) easy to add more tags, allows for different tag categories (-) not easy to explain, tags canot encapsulate content
- modify 'transmogrifier' to do the same (+) easy to add (type custom code) (-) easy to make mistakes, screw up vanilla
Anyway, no posting to delicious mechanism is proposed/envisioned here, but I do plan to test all three of the above approaches this weekend.
haaa, but what about this one ... modify search, "find anything with these words (in bold)" & just mark keywords with bold
tags = by definition something important that describes the text and bold is by definition something so goddamn important that others HAVE to see tags= bold
p.s. build appropriate defense mechanisms (if >10% bold then skip)
As a user? BBCode tags are visible even when you edit, so just edit the text and or tags I guess. As an admin? Ditto, or database-wide there are tools (e.g. export all records containing [event] or [/event] etc.)
Personally, I'd like to see a tagging system using a drop down menu. That drop down menu would have about 4-5 options of what to tag. Basically, the customer manager install I am using, I have one topic per customer in the "Technical Support" category, which is whispered to them and anytime they have an issue, they just post a comment in there.
It would be nice if when they go in that category to add a support request (comment), they can also choose a "topic" in a dropdown menu above their text area which they could use to more define their issue such as support for: email, vanilla, statistics, shopping cart, etc. Then, their text area, they would post the exact problem.
That would be my exact use for this, but obviously, I think that is outside the box of the normal need.
i.e. tags would remain inside post text. If administrator wants to change tags he should do some search-replace operation in mysql (change "Conferences" tag into "Conferences & festivals" tag)
IMO, tags are useless if you can't use every/any word you like. Being limited to a drop down list is like having to jam your company into one of those broad categories.
I'm liking the [tag][/tag] idea though. Ideally, you'd have a text box which automatically adds the words you [tag][/tag] which also allows you to add tags that AREN'T in the text you're typing. :)
I've updated my WeightedWords extension to display all "words". I haven't yet uploaded it, but will do shortly. If you want to see it in action, please visit my forum. I've also included the amount of time it took to generate the list. This should be good for other forums which are heavily used. It's like the houseblogs forum from which I borrowed the idea.