[thelist] tags philosophy

[Alastair Campbell]

Bernardo Escalona-Espinosa wrote:
> I am now planning to add the "tags" functionality to my site. If you
> don't know what I mean, every post in my blog will have a couple of
> tags - keywords - at the bottom, representing the main topics handled
> in that single post. Users then will be able to click on a given tag
> in order to find all the posts which have that tag.

This requires a service to make use of the tags you put on the site, the 
only one I know of at the moment is Technorati(.com).

> 1) Space-separated one-word keywords, or comma-separated multi-word keywords?

Each one needs to be a link, in the following format (for technorati):
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/wordone+wordtwo" rel="tag">WordOne 
WordTwo</a>

What you do between the links is up to you, I use a ul. It's remarkably 
difficult to find the documentation on the site (10 minutes browsing 
with no luck!), but google was my friend:
http://www.technorati.com/help/tags.html

> 2) Amount of keywords per post: quality over quantity, or quality over quantity?

What ever is relevant, if someone finds your post by searching on that 
tag, it shouldn't disappoint.

> 3) How much do users actually use the tags on blogs? Less than in
> Picture galleries?

Using the tags as links from your blog to similar content is only part 
of the story, it is also a mechanism for Technorati to categorise your 
posts.

Cheers,

-Alastair