Yo dawg! ... hehe Ok, I know you know that I know you know I'm a lot closer to "nerd-core" than "Hard-core" so I'll spare you my lame attempt at ghetto-speak. I'm going to start blogging a wider range of topics and I'm setting my sites on some blogging related topics up front! Today: Tagging.
If you use "blogger", you've seen the "Labels for this post" blank below the editor window. But, do you use it? Uh, no, What's it do? Glad you asked! The labels are stored with your blog as a list of words that you choose to describe the content. Different internet sites have started using this system to give users yet another way to drill through the ba-zillions of giga-bytes of stuff out there to find what interests them. Sounds simple, but is something to consider before you start tagging: what type of style of tagging do you want to use. There are basically 2.
"Cloud Tagging" (my term) involves tagging every key word or idea in a blog. Every blog is different and you'll quickley end up with a LOT of tags across your blog. This can be good if you want to be able to get really specific on a "search" but bad because the list is too long to really browse. Yahoo does a lot with the cloud style to make it easier to use.
Blogger is friendlier to "Category Tagging" where you pick a defined list of tags and limit yourself to those. Because Blogger lists them (with counts) it makes for a manageable list. It also gives you essentially multiple blogs. When people click on, say, your "pets"category (posts that you tagged "pets"), they see only those posts. It's like a mini blog!
Whatever you choose, stick to it! It is hard to change later! I do the second style - categories. Take a look at my "tags" list on the side for an example. Have fun tagging - don't tell the police I told you how!
If you use "blogger", you've seen the "Labels for this post" blank below the editor window. But, do you use it? Uh, no, What's it do? Glad you asked! The labels are stored with your blog as a list of words that you choose to describe the content. Different internet sites have started using this system to give users yet another way to drill through the ba-zillions of giga-bytes of stuff out there to find what interests them. Sounds simple, but is something to consider before you start tagging: what type of style of tagging do you want to use. There are basically 2.
"Cloud Tagging" (my term) involves tagging every key word or idea in a blog. Every blog is different and you'll quickley end up with a LOT of tags across your blog. This can be good if you want to be able to get really specific on a "search" but bad because the list is too long to really browse. Yahoo does a lot with the cloud style to make it easier to use.
Blogger is friendlier to "Category Tagging" where you pick a defined list of tags and limit yourself to those. Because Blogger lists them (with counts) it makes for a manageable list. It also gives you essentially multiple blogs. When people click on, say, your "pets"category (posts that you tagged "pets"), they see only those posts. It's like a mini blog!
Whatever you choose, stick to it! It is hard to change later! I do the second style - categories. Take a look at my "tags" list on the side for an example. Have fun tagging - don't tell the police I told you how!
