Our library system is doing the 23 Things program and most people are using Blogger for their blog. Blogger uses “labels” to organize your posts. WordPress uses “categories” but I also have a “tag’ cloud on my site. I wasn’t clear about the differences between tags, labels and categories so I went searching for an answer. It turns out that initially they were very different concepts but they all seem to be essentially the same thing now (… I think).
What’s important for us to know is that it gives you an easy way for your blog readers to group your posts about a particular topic. At the end of the 23 Things program I want to be able to click on the tag/label/category for BCPL2.0 to get all of my posts that had ideas I thought BCPL might be able to use with our customers. Of course this depends on me actually remembering to tag it correctly – that might be a stretch.
- Categories are like folders on your computer. You can have a category inside of a category. Categories add organization and order whereas tags add descriptions. Eric, from the blog, Internet Duct Tape, describes the differences this way: “Categorizing is like taking all of your socks and putting them into drawers based on colours. Tagging is like sewing a little label on your socks that says when you bought them, how to wash them, and “if lost please return to the dude with the fat cat.” “
- Tags and Labels are keywords that you can use to “catalog” your posts or pictures. They are handy if you blog about a lot of different subjects, since readers can then choose to view all of your posts on, say, Library2 at once. One post could use the tags Library2, Flickr, mashups. Another post might use Library2, blogs and forums. If you click on the tag “Library2″ you would get all of your posts that have that tag and you would get both of these posts. If you click on the tag “Flickr” you would only get the first post and any others with the same tag. If you have a team blog, you could also give each member their own label, so you could easily read all the posts by any one of them. The nice thing about tags and labels is that they are so flexible. You’re not restricted to someone else’s ideas of how information should be grouped. The down side is if you misspell the tag. You could have Flickr and Flicker.
When tags work and when they don’t: Amazon and LibraryThing
10 Minute Blog Tips: Creating Compelling Categories
Using Categories & Tags in WordPress and Other Blogs
purl soho string Originally uploaded by striatic
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