Joomla! tagging solution

Friday, 05 September 2008 22:01

I have way too much article now on this site...I just can't find any articles anymore (except with Google). That's the right time to introduce tags!

Tags are used to store information about a document, image or other online content to help searching. Social networking web sites such as Flickr.com (photo-sharing) and del.icio.us (bookmark sharing) use member-created tags as a means of organizing and popularizing content.

Unfortunately Joomla! does not have this functionality in its core... but thanks to Joomla! extensible plugin architecture, many solutions are available:

Joomla! Tags from Phil-Taylor (http://www.joomla-tags.com/)

The "oldest" and with famous Phil Taylor support, you pay for a premium component and a very good software. Only drawback: it is not open source and free as in beer.

Simple - Very Simple!
Inclusive - No programming needed!
Powerful - Total Control
Flexible - Add tags in many ways
Unlimited - Tags creates new pages
Google Bait - Google loves Tags
PHP5 Supported !!!!
100% Translatable
More feature being developed daily at the moment (May 2007)
Now 100% compatible with: Fireboard, Joomla 1.5.x, Joomla 1.0.x, Official SMF Bridge, OpenSEF, SEF Advance and Joom!Fish !!!
Joomla Tags is a Joomla extension, two modules and mambot that gives you the power and ability to tag content and to produce tag links, keyword clouds and pages within your Joomla Web site
Works on Joomla 1.5.x WITH or WITHOUT legacy plugin enabled!
Works on Joomla 1.0.x

Jtags (http://jacekzielinski.com/)

Free open source Joomla! Tagging Solution. Powerful & Simple!

While editing, below the article text box, there is a new text field "insert tags" like in the picture:

User is able to tag content without clicking on Insert Tags button.
Tags are saved automatically just after article is saved, so everything is saved after clicking on the main Save button.
The demo site of Jtags is here
Download from here

Joomla Tags Component and Tag Cloud Module

A promising component with Ajax and nearly all functionality of joomla! Tags, it is for sure not as mature and still in alpha stage for both Joomla! 1.0 and Joomla! 1.5.x

Homepage: http://www.fijiwebdesign.com/products/joomla-tag-component.html
Forum: http://www.fijiwebdesign.com/component/option,com_fireboard/Itemid,54/

Installation:
You'll need to install the Tag Component and the Tag Content Plugin and publish it in order to get it working.
Optional are the Tag Cloud Module and the Auto Tag Plugin.

Tag Cloud Component Features:

It can be linked to the menu, to display a tag cloud in its own page. eg: http://www.visitirelandguide.com/tags/
It can display tagged content in a list: http://www.visitirelandguide.com/tags/ireland/
It can display an RSS format for each tag content: http://www.visitirelandguide.com/index2.php?option=com_tag&tag=ireland&f=rss20&no_html=1
Preview of tagged articles
Related tags views - Tags related to a set of tags
Tags administration, publish, add, edit, delete, filters etc.

Joomla Tag Content Plugin Features:

Displays the tags inline in articles
Registered users can add tags.
Adding tags is done via AJAX in the background, while the tags update automatically.

Joomla Tag Cloud Module Features:

Displays a tag cloud - alphabetical, with tag density determining size of the tag.
Displays a related tag cloud - A density based cloud for the content being viewed, whether section, category, or list of tagged articles, or list of tags.

Joomla Auto Tag Plugin Features:

Automatically tags each Content Item when viewed.
At the moment, single keyword tags are pulled from the title, however we plan to add full context analysis, 2,3 word phrases, stemming etc. in the future versions.

So you can expect to enjoy tags on my site in a near future... as soon as I did test all 3 solutions on my test site.