So what really is the difference between WordPress categories and tags?
Posted on August 31st, 2008 by Richard Catto 1,061 views
When version 2.3 of WordPress was released, the WordPress World got something they had been wanting for for a very long time – tags.
Prior to this watershed release of WordPress, which is still considered the best recent release of WordPress by some, tags were not implemented in the WordPress core code, instead individual bloggers had to rely on third party plugins developed to fill this gap, such as Ultimate Tag Warrior.
Version 2.3 made all these third party tag plugins obsolete. Finally, at last, WordPress had tags built right into the core code! It truly was a huge advance and many WordPressers raced over to download it.
However, before all this happened, many WordPressers (including this one) misused categories as tags, and the number of categories ballooned out of control. SEO plugins also encouraged WordPressers to adopt this malpractice.
Since then I’ve never taken the time to tame my WordPress categories and put them to the use they were originally designed, until now, that is.
So what really is the difference between WordPress categories and tags?
First of all, I’ve read a lot of posts which tackle this subject and still come away scratching my head and not fully comprehending.
Until I got stuck into playing with them directly and setting up a coherent browsing strategy, I never understood the BIG PICTURE that would allow me to just create them on the fly as I blog.
If you’ve never sat down and focussed your attention on just analysing your categories, you have probably missed what I always did.
The fundamental difference between categories and tags is this:
Categories are hierarchical structures whereas tags are flat.
That is the power that categories have that tags will never have. Categories form groups and super groups and super super groups etc., whereas tags just form groups.
If I have a category structure of World->Africa->South Africa->Cape Town and I place a post in the Cape Town sub-sub-sub-category, that post is included not only in Cape Town, but also in the South Africa sub-sub-group, the Africa sub-group and the World group.
People (your site readers) can use a coherently structured category list to drill down to exactly what they want in ONE CLICK or back up a bit, up the hierarchy, and take in a larger group of posts.
Categories are structured with the most broadly encompassing container at the top and the most specific container at the bottom.
In other words, a person can take in Africa as a whole or zero in on a particular house in a street in a town in a region in a province in a country in Africa. That’s the power and directness of categories.
Categories are not meant to be loosely structured and lying all over the place. They are meant to be tightly organised and logically put together under each other to give you the structure you need.
On the other hand, while categories represent order and logical structure, tags represent anarchy and chaos.
There is no structure or hierarchy to tags. Tags are one long list of attributes, that you assign to posts as they relate to them.
I have heard some bloggers opine that tags should represent keywords that are NOT present in your post. WRONG, oh WRONG WRONG WRONG. No, no, no, no! Do not do that!
Au contraire, go find the juiciest most important keywords in your posts and tag your posts with those. This will allow people to quickly zero in on exactly those posts where those important concepts are discussed.
To enhance your archive pages which list posts in the various categories or tags, there is a useful WordPress plugin, WP-SNAP!, that will alphabetize your posts and give you a clickable A – Z index at the top of each page.
To conclude this post, I will add that if you make it easy for visitors to browse your site by category or tag, you will retain their readership longer by giving them a more satisfying experience.
This site is in the process of optimising its category structure.
Tags: Categories, Tags, Ultimate Tag Warrior, WordPress, WordPress plugin, wp-snap
Filed under 2.3, Categories, Tags, wp-snap | 2 Comments »
My idea for a cool WordPress Plugin: tracking comments on external blogs
Posted on March 9th, 2008 by Richard Catto 2,351 views
The Scenario
You come across a blogger that you enjoy reading. It’s easy to read their posts and follow all their comments on their blog, simply by browsing around their blog or subscribing to their posts and comments feeds.
However if you want to follow (stalk) their comments on other blogs, it is not so easy. In fact even remembering where all you last commented yourself is not easy to keep track of.
Many of my favourite blogs have now installed a “subscribe to comments” plugin (some at my suggestion) which emails me whenever a subscribed to thread gets a new comment. This is a huge help to me and it has resulted in a lot more comments being made on blogs which have this plugin installed.
Now I wish to propose a new comment tracking plugin: the ability for all my comments on external blogs to be listed on my own blog so that my readers (and I) can easily follow my activities around the blogosphere.
Architecture
As I comment on another blog, I want that blog to send an external comment pingback to the url I supplied. The external comment pingback should include the following information:
- comment author (the name I supplied)
- comment author email address (the email address I supplied)
- my url (the url I supplied)
- their url (the url of the blog post I commented on)
- comment title (WordPress currently does not support comment titles)
- full text of the comment I made
My blog should receive this into an external comment moderation queue and, depending on what options I have selected, be either held privately for my eyes only or be published for all to see. Each individual external comment could be either deleted from the queue, marked private so that only I can see it or published for everyone to view. Editing should not be an option for obvious reasons.
I should be able to publish my list of external comments on a sidebar widget, in a page, in a post or in an RSS feed.
The above situation would require a plugin to be installed on both my blogs and all the external blogs that I comment on.
Effects of this proposed plugin on the blogosphere
I think the benefit of this plugin would be that all the blogs I comment on would receive additional readers and comments because it would enable my readers to easily hop on over to see what I (and others) had said on the blog post I had commented on.
I feel I have addressed the potential objection that some would raise around privacy issues by giving the blog owner the ability to decide which external comments to publish.
Non-WordPress blogs
Any blog platform should be able to write a plugin to dovetail with this external comment pingback protocol by inspecting the WordPress plugin open source code.
It would be desireable that as many blog platforms as possible implement this ability so that it was universal no matter what kind of external blog I leave a comment on.
Implementation
I’ve never written a WordPress plugin before, so I don’t know how to do this right now. I would have to find out. I know that many technical people read my blog, and if you would like to write this plugin, I would be happy to work with you on this project.
Tags: external comment pingback, Plugin
Filed under Plugin | 5 Comments »
Yahoo’s brand new WordPress plugin is being shown the finger by bloggers
Posted on December 16th, 2007 by Richard Catto 1,913 views
Yahoo very recently announced the beta release of their new Yahoo shortcuts plugin for WordPress.
This I got to know of via shoemoney’s rather scathing review of it and of various WordPress personalities.
Jeremy Shoemaker’s blog is a joy to read because he isn’t a suckass uptight wannabe pseudo intellectual blogger who spends 90% of his day kissing the asses of his online buddies and the other 10% trying to sound all intellectual by using obscure words that have most people either reaching for a dictionary or clicking the back button.. This I see too much of in the South African Blogosphere. Pretentiousness. It’s a creeping disease amongst the weak and spineless. Don’t go there. Be yourself. Be normal. FFS!
The Shoemoney blog was listed by Adii as a must read for Web 2.0 professionals, whatever the hell that is. I’m just an ordinary blogger. Web 2.0 is just yet another meaningless buzzword, although not the worst. The most pretentious and most inane phrase I’ve heard in connection with bloggers is "New Media Evangelist".
What the fuck is a new media evangelist!? Do these people go around knocking on doors asking if they can pray with you for your web shite, that it may be saved?
"Let WordPress In! Let Him In! Oh Mighty Laawd, let WordPress In!"
I think I’ll take a hot cup of cocoa with a gaggle of Mormons anyday over that bullshit.
Now cunning Yahoo has dumped this oh so impressive plugin on the WordPress blogging community obviously with the hope of getting rave reviews and… the reverse has happened.
Why?
Because they’re pulling moves, and their ulterior motives are so blatant, that it has led to many bloggers taking offence. So far, most of them seem to be American bloggers. I just bet the many obsequious South African bloggers are already laying out their prayer mats so they can get down on their knees to kiss Yahoo butt come Tuesday.
Yahoo enlisted one of WordPress’ famous developers, Alex King, to write their Yahoo shortcuts plugin. He has done a pretty good job for Yahoo. I’ve installed the beta release on this blog, and I’ve used it to add pictures to many of my blog posts, including many older posts in my archives.
That is the one feature that HAS received the thumbs up from most bloggers. The plugin does an excellent job of integrating flickr into WordPress so that one can find a suitable image which is hosted on flickr, and insert it into your blog post without much fuss at all.
It is what the rest of the plugin does that is not so kosher. Yahoo analyses your post for keywords and then automatically links them to various Yahoo resources, many of which appear to be commercial in nature, WITHOUT REMUNERATING THE BLOGGER.
They’re offering a T-shirt to anyone who installs the plugin. And you have to be resident in the United States. They must be insane. Yahoo’s plugin effectively inserts text link adverts into the blog post without paying the blogger. Sure, you can remove them, but what the fuck was Yahoo thinking?
Yahoo must own an enormous pair of BRASS BALLS to risk offending bloggers like this. They’re already down in the search game – I mean, I like NEVER use Yahoo to search for anything. Yahoo is so stupid. What is it that most bloggers want most of all?
MONEY from their blogs.
Google understood this and gave bloggers Google adsense adverts. It has not been smooth sailing for them. Google has alienated many bloggers with their harsh policies around alleged click fraud. So there is an opportunity for someone to step in and save the day for bloggers by giving them a cool new blog toy that helps them make some money from their writing.
Instead Yahoo has come in and low-balled bloggers with their "free plugin" and offer of a T-shirt, but no money.
SHOW US THE GODDAMNED MONEY, YAHOO!
Or go home.
Don’t try and take advantage of us. Show some respect for bloggers. We put in a heck of a lot of hard work, spilling our sweat and blood and tears into our writing, and many of us would like to get something tangible back from that.
So, still no white knight for bloggers has appeared on the horizon. But surely, some day one will come for us? Surely?
Tags: Alex King, monetize blogs, Plugin, WordPress, yahoo
Filed under Plugin, yahoo | 2 Comments »
wp-useronline hack
Posted on October 22nd, 2007 by Richard Catto 1,458 views
I use the wp-useronline plugin by Lester Chan to show who’s cruising my site at any given time. I make this information available to guests and registered users alike, because I think people like knowing that they’re not alone on here. It’s nice to be able to reach out and touch others, so to speak. 
For administrators, the plugin is also supposed to show the IP addresses of those on the site. However it never did that for me and I dismissed it with a shrug. Then I did the new site for Candy and discovered that I could see the IP addresses of browsers there. Wtf? Why was she so damn special and me not? I was mildly miffed. So I set out to discover the reason.
And I did find the problem too! 
In Lester’s useronline.php file, there is a check_ip() function. On line two of that function is this statement:
$user_level = intval($current_user->wp_user_level);
Please edit this statement to read:
$user_level = intval($current_user->user_level);
Then IP addresses will display. wp_user_level is actually the name of the database field, PROVIDED, you have not chosen a custom prefix, which I had done for this site. user_level is the correct name of the variable which tells Lester’s plugin whether or not the logged in user is an administrator or not.
That’s it. Make this fix and your IP address not showing problem is fixed.
If you would like to display country flags next to each user, then install the ip2nation plugin. You also need to manually install two mySQL database tables, and populate them with Ip data for the countries. This can be done with phpMyAdmin. Here is the ip2nation sql script that does that all for you.
Tags: get_currentuserinfo, ip2nation plugin, wp-useronline bug fix, wp_get_current_user
Filed under Lester Chan | 1 Comment »
