tru_tags: Feature list

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10 November 2007

To learn more about tru_tags, check out the other tru_tags articles on this site.

Core features

  • Tag any article with an unlimited number of tags
  • List all the tags associated with an article
  • Generate a tag cloud or simple tag list
  • Search for all articles tagged with a given tag
  • Clean URLs and rel="tag" support without mod_rewrite or .htaccess modifications
  • RSS and Atom support
  • Support for creating a tag-based archive page
  • Clickable list of tags in the ‘Write’ page of the Textpattern admin
  • Admin-side configurability
  • Admin-side tag maintenance and redirection tools
  • Tag links can go to external sites or alternate locations
  • Show a cloud of “related tags” in the search results page
  • Tag-based archive pages (like this one)
  • Designed with site security in mind
  • Clean, readable code

Advanced features

Adding tags to an article:

  • Tags can be multi-word, with spaces. (use commas to separate tags)

Listing tags for an article:

  • Supports standard textpattern attributes like wraptag / break / class / etc. (the default break is a comma)
  • Don’t have to generate links when showing tags
  • Can render article tags as a mini-cloud, including sorting and advanced cloud features

Tag cloud:

  • Supports standard textpattern attributes like wraptag / break / class / etc. (the default break is a comma)
  • Can filter a cloud to only show tags from specific sections
  • Can exclude specific sections from the cloud
  • Cloud automatically filters out future-dated articles and non-published articles
  • Uses percentages for font sizes, so the cloud can be in any container, with fonts of any specified size
  • Can specify min and max percentage sizes
  • Can show the number of times a tag has been used, after the link or in the title attribute
  • Don’t have to generate links when showing tags
  • Tags have the class attribute set in various ways, so you can take complete control over tag styling
  • Infrequently (or frequently) used tags can be hidden
  • Can sort the cloud by tag frequency (ascending or descending)
  • Can limit the cloud to a max of ‘N’ tags, with the ability to keep only the most-used tags or a random set (weighted by frequency)

Tag search:

  • Site admins can put the name of the tag currently being searched into titlebars or links to external sites (this is careful about scripting attacks)
  • A handy txp tag (tru_tags_search_parameter) to return whatever the user typed into Textpattern’s search field (this is careful about scripting attacks)
  • Renders search results just like the standard article list does. This means you have complete control over the tag search output formatting, and that it supports standard features like article excerpts, override forms, etc.
  • Customizable support for standard 404 pages

RSS / Atom feeds:

  • Includes article tags in the RSS and Atom feeds (which means that Technorati will correctly identify articles)
  • Can include article tags in the feed body
  • Can customise the feed body to change the look of the tags, and/or to add extra items to the feed

Admin-side:

  • A few fancy javascript tricks to make it easy to use
  • List can be turned off or styled using CSS (and another plugin) if there are too many tags

Known issues (in the latest release)

  • tru_tags must use the Keywords field, and cannot use a custom field
  • No support for multiple tags at once (e.g. “life AND books”) tag search (but see this post for possibilities)
  • The tag cloud can be limited to just show tags from one section, but when you click a tag link from the cloud it shows articles from all sections
  • The tag search doesn’t support pagination. (It will show all the articles associated with a particular tag, no matter how many there are.)
Comments

  1. 6402 days ago

    RUDE says:

    Since I installed TXP 4.0.4, tru_tags renders an extra space after every tag, it’s not a big problem, but I’d like to know if I can fix it or something.

    Before 4.0.4, the tag cloud was like this “tag, tag, tag, tag…”

    Now is like this “tag , tag , tag , tag…”

    tanks! :-)

  2. 6398 days ago

    Nathan Arthur says:

    I just upgraded to 4.0.4 and I’m not seeing that problem. Textpattern and the plugin preserve whitespace in the tag calls – do you have an extra space or a newline somewhere? Can you send me your tru_tags_cloud or tru_tags_list call?

  3. 6342 days ago

    Markus Merz says:

    Re: tru_tags_tag_parameter

    1. I don’t get the keyword capitalized with

    bc. <span style=“text-transform:capitalize;”>keyword</span>

    2. ‘striphyphens’ is nice but if used in HTML context i.e. as a replacement in links it should have a %20 option instead of a simple space. In most cases ‘-’ is fine but if you trigger a search it might become important.

  4. 6341 days ago

    Nathan Arthur says:

    Markus – where you you using tru_tags_tag_parameter? I don’t quite understand what you’re trying to do with it, so I’m not sure what the problem is with the capitalization. The text-transform should work regardless of tru_tags.

    I also don’t understand your second item – what is it that you’re trying to do?

  5. 6341 days ago

    Markus Merz says:

    Yes I am using tru_tags_tag_parameter in i.e. sankt-georg.info/tag/video

    Page template (It is like that now extra for you :)

    @<h3>Suche nach Stichwort ‘<span style=“text-transform:capitalize;”><txp:tru_tags_tag_parameter /></span>’</h3>@

    That’s how the first headline containing the tag looks like in the output:

    @<h3>Suche nach Stichwort ‘<span style=“text-transform:capitalize;”>video</span>’</h3>@

    The rendered output should be ‘Video’ but it isn’t.

    For all keyword lists or tag clouds on my page text-transform:capitalize works fine.

    The 2nd item: striphyphens

    I am using tru_tags_tag_parameter in links i.e. to fill a link parameter. You can see on sankt-georg.info/tag/video that I am creating an amazon search link. If I have a keyword containing two words and I am using the option striphyphens then I will have/get a space instead of an urlencoded space (%20).

    There may be cases where a plain space in a link becomes an issue. Urlencode the space with %20 and the issue will be solved.

  6. 6341 days ago

    Markus Merz says:

    Solved: text-transform:capitalize

    It is the ‘ which destroys the span formatting. “ Is not working either.

    Now the form contains:

    bc. <h3>Suche nach Stichwort: <span style=“text-transform:capitalize;”><txp:tru_tags_tag_parameter striphyphens=“1” /></span></h3>

    PS: You should support @, bc. and bc..

  7. 6340 days ago

    Markus Merz says:

    Sorry to bother you again :-)

    Putting a tag in a link using tru_tags_tag_parameter also shows that “Gruner + Jahr” problem.

    I.e.: Creating a search link to amazon for books about “Gruner + Jahr” results in &keywords=gruner-+-jahr which will show up on amazon as a search for “gruner- —jahr” and this way produce nonsense. You can see the Real Life amazon example on my well known /tag/gruner-%252B-jahr page. (Pretty interesting but not important for this comment at all is that amazon is able to find the right books for the iframe ad)

    tru_tags_tag_parameter not only needs striphyphens=“1” but also urlencode=“1”.

    Yes, it’s Christmas :-)

  8. 6326 days ago

    Nathan Arthur says:

    RUDE & Markus – all the issues you describe should be fixed/implemented in tru_tags 2.0. Happy new year!

  9. 6191 days ago

    Michael says:

    I love your plugin, however I have a wish for the attributes mintagcount=“XX” and maxtagcount=“XX”. Since my articles are evergrowing in numbers, a fixed value (a number) for mintc and maxtc is not really useful. Do you think you could input an option to use, eg, percentages? Like use only tags that at least are used 5% of all tags and a maximum of 70% relative to the total amount of tags. Then this option would not be dependent on the amount of articles you have.

    I am sorry I cannot work on it and present already written code, but I think it would be really useful!

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