» posted on 4:35pm - January 09 2009 | posted by Lev

As I've already mentioned previously in the staff forum, I've rolled out a "new" feature which will not only help TT find related items, but will also increase traffic to all of your items!

The feature is "tagging" items with keywords to make them easier to pinpoint, find and relate other items to.

Well, it's not entirely "new", as you may remember it from many years ago. It was dropped due to it's lack of use, possibly by an overall lack of understanding as to what it does, or simply because people were too lazy. Nonetheless, it has returned since Theia (the software that runs TT) is not going to be only used only by myself, but other people, and this is a pretty commonly used thing these days.

What are tags, and what are they used for?

Tags are keywords that summarize an item's purpose, subject or relevance. The idea behind giving items keywords, or "tags" is to make it easier for search engines to find these items. Tags are thrown into the meta content so search engines will find it much easier to locate your items when people use search engines and use terms you enter as your tags.

Tags are also going to be useful for another feature which will be unveiled shortly: related items! TT will contain a new area, when you are viewing any item, which will show you a list of items that it thinks are related to the one you are currently viewing.

How can I tag my items?

Whenever you create or modify an item, there will be a new field, reading "tags", which will give you 255 characters to write in all the keywords you want. As the site does state, each new tag should be separated with a comma (,). It is not necessary to put a space after each comma, but if you desire to, you're welcome to (it doesn't make a difference). If you do not separate your tags with commas, then you will end up with one very long tag which no items will find relation to.

You can also tag your items when you are viewing the item itself. In the "Item Management Shortcut", there is a new area that allows you to quickly update the item's tags without needing to process the whole item form.

Section operators also have the ability to update an item's tags through either of these two methods, and are encouraged to do so, as it will not only increase traffic to the items, but the site in general. Plus, it will make finding related items possible.

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