Now Tag your Blog entries!

Hey all--

Due to the sudden (and VERY welcome) use of blogs for creating user reviews of music and zines, I've enabled the ability to add category tags to your blog entries. Why? Because that enables similar types of blog entries to be grouped together. For instance, the review of the Micranots record by Dave and the Touched By and Anvil review by Alan have now both been tagged with the term "user reviews." Beyond that, each has also been tagged by the type of review (music or zine).

Now when you view those reviews, you'll see that in the byline it says who wrote it, what date, and what terms they've been classified in. You can click on the terms and it'll create a grouping of other blog entries that have been tagged with the same terms.

This applies beyond simply writing reviews. For instance, let's say someone wrote about how to fix a record player. They could tag it something like "DIY" and "music" then, when the "music" category was clicked from the byline, you'd see both the guitar amp fix and the Micranots review. And DIY would open up a whole different view with all sorts of other possibilities. Remember, you're writing your own tags here, so you can classify as you see fit.

Of course, this can get VERY cool very quickly, or it can be abused and become almost useless. Let's shoot for the former, not the latter (and yes, I will be monitoring and changing tags if it's warranted, though I promise to use a light hand).

One key to getting these tags and classifications to be useful is to always use the same tags for similar content. So, for example, if you want to write your own reviews, tag them "user reviews," and if you're reviewing a zine, also tag it with "zines." To aide in keeping terms consistent, as you type terms, previously used terms that start with the same letters will pop up (as I type this, there are only three terms, but as people blog and tag, it'll grow).

Use, folks! But don't abuse!

Dan

PS. Maybe it's obvious, but you don't HAVE to tag your blog entries.