Lauren is feeling a bit under the weather (which is strangely cold here now), so I get to write something during the week. That means you’ll be suffering through some more geeky stuff today.
The latest version of WordPress (the software that makes this website toe the line) added tagging. So we’ve been tagging new posts since, more or less, the start of March. You might have seen the little tags at the bottom of posts, or the Tag Cloud over there in the sidebar (Jeffrey Zeldman said that Tag Clouds are the new mullets).
WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck and Luke Morton requires Flash Player 9 or better.
While adding them as we go has taken care of about 20 posts, there seem to be around 800 more that don’t have tags. There are programs that are suppose to read through posts and “auto-tag” them, but they say that they aren’t very good.
I thought maybe we could do a little tagging experiment. The little box in the bottom right of the post will let you enter any tag you want for that post. Just type it in and hit enter. The link below will take you to a random post. Why not hit a random post or 50 and see what you think about tagging?
Tag them in whichever way you think is best; don’t feel like you can only use the ones in the Tag Cloud, those are only the most popular. There are something like 140 different tags in use now. Oh, three requests:
- all lowercase
- singular
- one word tags
As a sort of incentive, I will send the person who does the best job tagging something of Laurens that she will not notice is gone for a few weeks. May the best man win…
Oh, and I should point out that all of this is made possible by the folksonomy plugin written by Scott Sherrill-Mix.
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I only did one for now. Maybe I’ll do some more during my free period. It was 13 December 2008.
Hit “enter” after typing the tag to make it stick.
Yeah, and I wish it would take you back to the tag part of the page after you do it, but I haven’t been able to figure that bit out yet.
Oh, and I changed Your Random Fact to A Random Post for today, because I didn’t like having to come back to this page to get a new random post. I hope you don’t mind.
There, I did one, too. I’d do more but I’ve got all this weather over me.
Hey! The cloud is swirly!
Don’t pay any attention to her. That’s just the weather talking.
Lauren, the clouds are not swirly, go back to bed…
What are you guys talking about?
Nice face thingy! Perfect!
I saw these, and liked them better than the little monsters. They are made from little graphics files for each bit (mouth, eyes…) and combined to get the different faces.
What I’m really hoping is that Lauren gets interested in them and draws a set of different bits that we could use.
It’s hard to decide exactly what word to use. I got a post about songs getting stuck in Lauren’s head:
http://lloydandlauren.com/2007/09/22/song-exorcism/
I tagged it with “music”, but I could also have done “songs”, “radio”, and “Lauren is crazy”. I didn’t choose the last option, because it was more than one word and because we all know that already.
yeah, I’ve had that problem too. It’s fine to tag things more than once if you can’t decide on a single tag. And it’s okay to tag something differently than someone else has already.
It’s a free for all, and I’m really interested in seeing how the tag cloud changes by the end of the day.
“Lauren is crazy” should probably be a category and not a tag.
I did a bunch… but then it gave me a no more tags message.
I think the default limit is set to 10 tags in 10 minutes (or something like that). I’ll change it.
I’ve also come across some posts that I just couldn’t come up with a tag for. In those cases I’ve just gone on to another. Maybe someone else will come up with one, or maybe some posts just won’t have any.
I probably wasn’t being thoughtful enough. If you see anything that looks a little crazy, just delete it. Also, I think for ones that several come to mind, I’ll put them in. For example: family, travel might easily be on one. meta, tech, hardware might be on another. Does that make sense?
Makes sense to me. Tag away. There are no wrong answers.
But what tag cloud are you talking about? I don’t see it…and it contains some examples????
I tagged one.
At the top of the sidebar (on the right), one of the buttons (tabs?) is “Tags”. Click on that to see the most popular ones.
But don’t feel like you have to use those. They are just some that have been used so far.
I thought I clicked that box & nothing came up. Then I did it again, and it did work.
But when I click ‘Go to Another Post’, (where the Brad facts were–I’m getting posts that already have tags. The 1st one, as I read, I thought of 2 tags & they were the exact 2 that were listed. hehe…we all think alike.)
Did Deanne tag them all already?
No, I only tagged about 15. Before the tag police got me.
Sorry about that. I can get random posts, but not random posts that haven’t been tagged yet. It is interesting that you thought of the same tags.
Sorry, I don’t think I can help you. I can’t get past the orbiting tags above. I am mesmerized. Does it get updated with the new tags people add?
Yeah, it updates as the “tag ratio” change, but it’s not exactly real time. You have to reload the page to see the changes.
251 tags so far. I didn’t have a chance to look into the numbers in any great detail, but I did notice that someone tagged a post with “ninjas”. I can’t wait to see what that was.
Would someone tag my name a bunch of times so I show up in the revolving box? Please?
Done and Done!
I like that you can click on the word in the tag cloud. I clicked on Peggy. Will that make her come up more?
No, but she does get a little electric shock every time someone clicks on her.
Why does the Feedjit map say “Top Paonia blogs” on my computer?
Is such a little town near Delta that important? It has been saying that for several days now.
It’s an ad or some such. Ours says ‘Top Seward Blogs’, and Lloyd doesn’t think it’s in any way accurate because ours isn’t on it.
I think you can play it sort of like a crystal ball….Lauren should definitely consult it with parents during PT conferences this week!
Who changed my icon?
Karla did it. I don’t know how she did it, but she definitely did it.
But you don’t have to cry about it.
You know he’s being funny, right?
I don’t know. Karla is diabolical enough to do it.
Hush Curt, you’re blowing my cover. Some people still think I’m innocent.
Ok, I’m done. I can’t tag anymore. I spent most of the time reading the posts and comments. You know what, I don’t think this is an experiment at all.
ps..I like the “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail” box below. That is pretty cool.
For my next experiment I’ll need some help painting my fence…
Well, everything went pretty well. We added 556 tags so far. They are reported by IP address, so I’ll have to do a little work with my CIA buddies to get the names right. But it looks like we can call it a success, or something.
“Painting fence” HA!
Do we get white gloves to paint your fence with?? That’s how the kids paint the metal fences. Makes for a fun, messy, day. I can just see one painting his brothers face and hair and clothes. Can’t you?? I actually made a tag!
Thanks for tagging along. But why would you paint an electric fence?
Not an electric fence. A metal fence with pieces of steel. We still have to paint the corral. Would you like to help?? I might try the gloves on that too. Maybe we can get Declan to help this summer. He would probably be good at the hair and clothes part.