filed under: programming, rainskit.com, tagging, tru_tags, usability

644 days ago

I’m working on the next version of tru_tags and one of its major features is the ability to create a tag-based archive page, like this one. After implementing the feature, I tried it out, and I liked it so much that I decided to use it on this site. Specifically, I removed the old “About” page, merged some of that content into the “Links” page (and generally edited that page), and put the “Archive” page in where the About page used to be.

This should all make sense if you look at the menu links at the top of the site. For those of you reading this via the feed – click here to see it.

It’s a really interesting page to browse through – I find it strangely fascinating to see so clearly all the articles I’ve written, and how they clump together. I’ve also used it a few times as a faster way to get to a specific page. It’s somehow more powerful than the normal tag cloud, functionally and emotionally, and that surprises me.

Or maybe it’s just late :)

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filed under: geek, tagging, textpattern, tru_tags

851 days ago

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

Current Release

tru_tags 3.6 (for TXP 4.0.7 and above (including 4.2.0)) (download)

Forum announcement

This release is mostly a bug-fix release, but includes a few functional improvements also. It includes a large performance improvement for article lists, if you are/were showing the tags associated with each article.

The changes include:

• Added tru_tags_search_result_excerpt to work around a problem with using TXP’s search_result_excerpt for tag search pages.
• Added a 404_redirect attribute to tru_tags_handler to allow disabling of the 404 redirect feature. This is necessary when calling tru_tags_handler twice, for example when showing sticky articles followed by non-sticky articles.
• Expanded the tag clouds on the Write page and Extensions page to include future-dated tags and tags from non-searchable sections.
• Significantly improved the performance of tru_tags_from_article on article list pages by removing an unnecessary database query.
• Worked around a few javascript/DOM issues in IE that broke styling of the tags on the Write tab.
• Fixed a compatibility issue with other plugins that also use txp_prefs.php (by using include_once instead of include).
• Replaced all PHP calls to split() with explode() for compatibility with more PHP versions.
• Removed documentation (from the usage instructions about using rss_admin_show_adv_opts because it is no longer needed in TXP 4.2.0 and above.
• Fixed/improved support for using double-quotes in tag names (which could cause problems on the Write tab).
• Fixed a warning that could appear if using showcounts with tru_tags_handler.

Read more...

filed under: geek, tagging, textpattern, tru_tags

851 days ago

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

Installation

1. Go to the releases page to get the latest release. Don’t save it – just open it in your browser.
2. Scroll down a slight bit and follow the on-page instructions: copy/paste the big square block of characters into your Textpattern install, under admin -> plugins.
3. Hit “Upload”.
4. Remember to switch the plugin to “Active” in the plugin list.
5. You can find help text for the plugin by clicking the “help” link in the plugin list.

Configuration

Step 1: Click the “read more” link :)

Read more...

filed under: geek, tagging, textpattern, tru_tags

851 days ago

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.)

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filed under: geek, tagging, textpattern, tru_tags

852 days ago

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

This post contains an up-to-date list of all the (as-yet-unimplemented) feature requests that I’m aware of, with a rough indication of the order that I plan to implement them. If you have additional feature requests or want to suggest reprioritization of one of the features below, please add a post to the forum thread for this plugin. I’ll see it and update this page, and others will see the request also.

Group 1

• Fix txp:older and txp:newer, and the broken limit attribute
• Make txp:page_url work with tru_tags clean urls (see the forum post)
• Add texttransform="capfirst" to tru_tags_tag_parameter (see forum post)
• Make it possible to show a tag list in a popup (option/value) (see forum post)

Group 2

• Limit cloud to tags from X recent articles, or within X time period
  • Order list by (oldest? newest?) article date
• Color tags by age (of most recent article)

Group 3

• Related article list (for a single article), based on number-of-matching-tags
  • Filter by section / category
  • Second-level sorting by date?
• Limit cloud to a specific category

Group 4

• Multi-tag search (tag1 + tag2)
  • General boolean logic ((tag1 or tag2) and tag3)

Group 5

• Grouped index of tags – by section, category, alphabetical, etc
  • show articles for each tag?
  • single page per group
  • show tags (on the admin side) based on the category/section chosen
  • see Markus’s forum post about it
• Grouping related keywords (admin-side)
• Grouped-tag search (public side)
• Color tags by category / section

Group 6

• Move admin-side tag cloud to a better location (for big clouds)
• Auto-complete typing in the Keywords field (admin-side)

Group “eventually”

• mintagcount / maxtagcount, but based on percentages
• Show a “related” cloud for general search-result pages (or other custom-generated article lists)
• “There are [x] posts tagged: [tag_name]”
• Alphabetical listing of articles in tag search result
• Figure out Markus’s ideas about tagging, from the “Pivot” site (see forum post)
• Sub-tags

Group “depends on the next release of Textpattern”

• RSS feeds for individual tags

filed under: tagging, textpattern, tru_tags

1218 days ago

I’m proud to say that tru_tags is the tagging plugin of choice over on Textpattern Resources v2 (a.k.a. textpattern.org). That makes it the preferred tag plugin of at least one of the Textpattern developers, and puts it in the spotlight on an official Textpattern site.

Check out the gorgeous tag cloud and the post describing the use of tru_tags.

Woohoo!

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filed under: business, geek, tagging, tru_tags

1335 days ago

I’m pleased to announce the public release of tru_tags v1.8, sponsored by Simon Finch, a consultant / web developer in the U.K.

This release of tru_tags contains two new features: a new type of tag cloud and the ability for article tags to render as a mini-cloud. I also massively refactored and condensed the code, making it much easier to read/understand and hopefully much easier to maintain.

The first new feature can be seen by clicking one of the links in my tag cloud (over in the sidebar). On the resulting page, you’ll see that a second cloud appears (in the sidebar) under the heading “Related Tags”. It is showing you all the tags that are related to the tag you clicked on.

I mentioned that this version was sponsored by Simon Finch, and it’s true – he paid for these specific features, because he needed them for a consulting project he was working on. That has me excited in all sorts of ways:

1. My plugin is being used in the real world (in an online store!)
2. Work that I originally did for my own benefit is now helping others
3. I’m earning income that is derived from that original work
4. I’m earning income from open-source software!

As usual, you can download this version from the announcement page and you can find out how to use it on the instructions page.

(For those of you waiting for other features, they’ll be coming soon in a v1.9. I wanted to get v1.8 out the door with just the features for Simon, so I’ve had to delay the rest of these.)

Thanks, Simon!

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filed under: geek, rainskit.com, tagging, textpattern, tru_tags

1467 days ago

When I first created this blog I wanted it to have tagging support, which doesn’t come built into Textpattern (my blog software). At the time (Christmas 2005), tagging plugins for Textpattern were virtually nonexistent. Hunting around the web, I found ran_tags, chh_keywords, rss_unlimited_categories, and ajw_technorati_tags. They were all unworkable for me, because of bugs or complexity or feature-set, so I was left without tagging support.

So I wrote my own, based on ran_tags. I published it on the textpattern forums and subsequently released about a dozen new versions, each with new features to make it more powerful and/or easier to use. The plugin has seen a lot of adoption, and seems to be popular among the textpattern community. You can see it in use on this site.

It’s written with ease-of-use, simplicity, and security in mind, and it has a very rich feature set. To learn more, please check out the features list. There is one (potential) downside for some users, though. To help keep the code simple, I call out to the Textpattern code to actually do the tag search. That means that articles can only be tagged via the Keywords field, rather than using a custom field. Some people use the keywords field for other purposes, so they can’t use tru_tags. There are also a few other minor annoyances documented on the features page.

tru_tags can be downloaded from the releases page, and you can learn to use it by reading the detailed usage instructions. If you have questions, please post comments to any of these articles, or in the forum, and I’ll get back to you quickly.

Enjoy!

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