wikispaces

Improved Tags for Easier Categorization

June 27th, 2009 by Sarah

Head to your wikis this week and check out our improved tagging system.

If you are unfamiliar with tags, they are labels you can put on your pages or files to sort them into different groups. As a teacher, you can mark all pages related to a specific assignment with a particular tag; or as a manager, label all files related to a particular project with one tag. You can then view that tag and quickly find all of the work categorized into this group.

With our new tagging system, we’ve made it even easier for you to categorize and manage your wiki. You can now:

  • View page tags directly on wiki pages.
  • Add, rename, or a delete a tag on any page you can edit, regardless of who posted it.
  • Tag files on your wiki.

To view, add or delete tags on a page, go to the “page” tab, and then to “Details and Tabs.” If you would like to instead tag and categorizes files on your wiki, go to “Manage Wiki,” then “Files,” and click on the file name you’d like to tag.

With all these changes, you can still view and manage all the tags across your wiki by going to “Manage Wiki,” and then “Tags.” You can rename or delete a tag for all pages or remove tags by particular users.

Try out your new tags and let us know what you think at help@wikispaces.com .

Note: If your wiki has a customized theme, the old tag formatting will still appear at the bottom of your page. If you would like to remove it, edit your theme and find either:

<$WikiPageTags$>

or

<div id="showTags" style="display: none;">
<$WikiPageTags$>
</div>

Delete it from your theme, save your theme and you’re all set.

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29 Responses to “Improved Tags for Easier Categorization”

  1. on 27 Jun 2009 at 2:53 pm1 Martin

    Hi!

    Since this change in the tagging system, the navigation panel hasn’t been working right. For instance, pages tagged “main” don’t appear in the widget for pages tagged “main” and so on. Any word on this? My site relies heavily on the navigation bar. Thanks!

  2. on 27 Jun 2009 at 5:03 pm2 James

    Hi Martin,

    Drop us a note at help@wikispaces.com with a link to your site and we’ll take a look!

    Thanks,
    James

  3. on 27 Jun 2009 at 7:39 pm3 Tim Chase

    I use wikispaces to teach K12 teachers, and I’ve experienced the same thing at http://edtech2020.wikispaces.com/.

    Page tags were the way I arranged my navbar so that some pages could stay hidden, and now that system is nonfunctional . . . just in time for NECC! Luckily I have another way to help folks find my session handouts.

  4. on 27 Jun 2009 at 8:43 pm4 Steven Walling

    Is Wikispaces the only wiki with tagging?

    I don’t remember PBworks or Wetpaint having it, nor any open source software I could get my hands on.

    Regardless, this is nice to have. Thanks!

  5. on 27 Jun 2009 at 10:18 pm5 James

    Martin, Tim — sorry about that, the bug is now fixed!

    Steven — we’re not the only wiki with tagging, but we do expect to make tags more of a core feature than most. More on that in a future release…

  6. on 27 Jun 2009 at 10:34 pm6 Arthur

    We have lost the fields in which we can update tags, very strange

  7. on 28 Jun 2009 at 4:22 am7 Stephane

    Hi!

    Congratulations for your new tagging system! Now is there a way to tag a bunch of pages all at once? Or a quick way to go through many pages, perhaps in the page list, to quickly add tags?

    Thank you!

  8. on 28 Jun 2009 at 11:28 am8 Ariah Fine

    I had the same navigation problem as others. Ended up hardcoding the sidebar with links myself.

    But the problem was I’d tagged multiple pages “navigation” then called a pagelist with that tag in the sidebar to get those links to show up. Currently that was not doing the trick.

  9. on 28 Jun 2009 at 2:40 pm9 Paul Miers

    Is there any hope for making the pageList widget work with tags?

    I finally learned about putting the limit parameter into the widget code to make it write more than 10 pages. But now, even with that parameter, it will only write one page when you add a tag to filter the output.

    Is there some other parameter that needs to be put in when you want to filer output with a tag?

  10. on 28 Jun 2009 at 7:27 pm10 draedpd

    I think tags should be always visible to all. They are useful navigational aids.

  11. on 28 Jun 2009 at 10:46 pm11 Arthur

    the old tag is

    What is the new tag and where to put it?

  12. on 30 Jun 2009 at 10:25 am12 Erika Noonan

    Hello,
    I was uploading a somes files on to my wiki and the coding was messed up. Everytime I tried to upload a file the site would freeze up

  13. on 30 Jun 2009 at 10:59 am13 Debbie

    Hi Arthur,

    Are you unable to get to the tags using the new Details and Tags option mentioned in the blog post above? If you don’t see that option please send us an e-mail at help@wikispaces.com with your wiki’s name and we’ll figure out what is going on.

    -Debbie

  14. on 30 Jun 2009 at 11:00 am14 Sarah

    Ariah,

    We released a bug fix that should have resolved this problem. Are you still having difficulties with your navigation bar?

    Sarah

  15. on 30 Jun 2009 at 11:01 am15 Debbie

    Hi Arthur,

    For this message:
    “the old tag is

    What is the new tag and where to put it?”

    Are you having problems finding the tags you had put on pages before? If you use the Details and Tags option, do you see the old tags? Using the new Details and Tags option you can create new tags and delete old ones.

    -Debbie

  16. on 30 Jun 2009 at 11:03 am16 Debbie

    Hi Erika,

    Could you please send us a bit more detail at help@wikispaces.com? If you send us the URL of your wiki, what internet browser you are using, and the size/type of the file you are trying to upload we can figure out what is going on.

    -Debbie

  17. on 30 Jun 2009 at 11:04 am17 Sarah

    Hi Stephane,

    We don’t yet have a way to tag many pages all at once at this point, but we will look into that feature as we continue to improve the way tags work on Wikispaces.

    Cheers,
    Sarah

  18. on 30 Jun 2009 at 11:04 am18 Debbie

    Hi Paul,

    What you mentioned is a problem we found shortly after releasing the new tag system. It has since been fixed. You should now see more than one page with the tag you specify in the pageList widget. If you still see only one page, please send us an e-mail at help@wikispaces.com with the tag and wiki URL details.

    -Debbie

  19. on 30 Jun 2009 at 12:01 pm19 Sarah

    Hi draedpd,

    Right now, there is no way to turn on tags that appear at the top of the page for everyone all the time. However, you can embed a tag cloud into your navigation bar so that everyone will see all the tags that appear on your site no matter which page they head to.

    To embed it, edit your navigation bar, go to the embed widget tool in the toolbar, and then to the “Wikispaces” option. There you will see a link to embed a tag cloud. Click on it, embed the cloud, and then save your navigation page.

    Let me know if this resolves your issue.

    Best,
    Sarah

  20. on 03 Jul 2009 at 7:02 am20 draedpd

    Hi Sarah.

    My problem is that tags add information to my website. Imagine you have biographies of people and you tag their articles with their profession. If you see that “Joe Smith” is a musician you may want to see other musicians. If the tag “musician” is visible, it’s easy. If all tags are, then it’s complicated. If none are, I’m forced to put an explicit link to the tag.

    Other problem I found is that tags are not in alphabetical order, as they were before. See for example

    http://netgened.wikispaces.com/3E+Transparency+and+Semantic-Aware+Apps

    Its tags are: netgened, final, entry and hpc

    Thanks for your attention.

  21. on 06 Jul 2009 at 2:38 pm21 Sarah

    draedpd,

    If you would like to make some tags visible to individuals, you can edit your navigation bar and add a link to that tag. To find the link you would use for a particular tag, go to “Manage Wiki,” “Tags,” and then the particular tag you would like to link to. Copy that url and paste it into your navigation bar. This will allow you, as the editor of the wiki, to sort through which tags are relevant for people. Let me know if this helps you achieve the organization you would like.

    As for having tags listed in alphabetical order, we will look into this feature for future releases.

    Best,
    Sarah

  22. on 11 Jul 2009 at 1:03 pm22 draedpd

    Hi Sarah.

    I want each page to have their tags clearly listed, the same way as it is in most blogs and Wikipedia. Else people have to learn how to turn tags on.

    It’s good that you will have tags in alphabetical order, but please note that is not a new feature, but an old feature that disappeared.

  23. on 21 Jul 2009 at 6:18 pm23 Jack Manuputy

    Hi, please kindly view my wiki. After locating and reading this article, I still have no way to go about adding tags.

    Thanks in advance!

    Jack Manuputy

  24. on 23 Jul 2009 at 2:20 pm24 Debbie

    Hi Jack Manuputy,

    You can add tags to a page by going to the page, selecting the arrow on the Page tab, selecting Details and Tags, and entering text in the tags section. If you still have problems getting tags on your page please send us an e-mail at help@wikispaces.com with a link to your wiki and your Wikispaces username.

    Cheers,
    Debbie

  25. on 24 Jul 2009 at 6:21 am25 Gerald

    I’d like to create a link in my wiki which will do the following:

    1. Create a new blank page from an existing template
    2. Automatically tag the page

    The idea is that I have a page in my wiki which lists all other pages containing a particular tag. I want a link there that will allow a user to easily add a new page which will automatically appear in this list without the user needing to know which tag to apply or how to tag a page. Is this a possibility?

    If not, I will just create explicit instructions–I”m just trying to save the user some steps.

  26. on 28 Jul 2009 at 6:52 pm26 Derme

    Hi,
    This is a great much needed feature.
    Thanks,
    Derme

  27. on 02 Aug 2009 at 1:18 pm27 Tricia

    We are having problems getting the dropdown menu to add and edit tags to show on IE7……Does anyone else have this issue as apparently IE problem has been solved, however its still an issue for us?

  28. on 19 Aug 2009 at 3:47 pm28 Debbie

    Hi Gerald,

    You can create a page template by going to your wiki, selecting Manage Wiki, and selecting Templates. We are working to include tags in the page templates that you create. If you let us know a bit more about the link you would like to add to your wiki at help@wikispaces.com we can give you further information about doing that part.

    Cheers,
    Debbie

  29. on 19 Aug 2009 at 3:54 pm29 Debbie

    Hi Tricia,

    We are currently working to fix a problem with IE7 and our page drop-down menu. In the meantime you can upgrade to IE8 or use another browser like Firefox, Chrome, or Safari to access the dropdown menu.

    Cheers,
    Debbie