We are getting nearer to the release of the Tagging Component

As a little teaser today I have uploaded the current version of the the Tagging component to my demo site. This is a full working version containing the component, core hack installer, module and mambot. Login now and take a peek at the cool and clean ajax admin interface and then take a look look at the new tab when editing content.

Several people are mis-understanding the way that tis component works, therefore let me explain a little. The component is meant for site administrators to “tag” their content with keywords that are relavant to that content item. When a tag is clicked a list of all the items tagged with that tag are displayed. This works exactly as the tagging works in popular blogging software like WordPress (As I use wordpress for this blog ). This component does’t allow your front end users to add their own tags to your content - thats a totally different use of tagging.

Using your imagination with this component you have many more possibilities to layout your content in Joomla. Before you were limited to placing your content in one category and one section. Now you can add your content to unlimited tags thus overcoming this limitation of Joomla’s!!

The tags component has built in support for SEF Advance and google loves the keyword rich urls - google has already indexed our site with amazing results!

At the moment we only have one layout that is displayed when a tag is clicked - however this is totally extensible by developers so that you can customise the layout you want to appear when a tag is clicked - you can even use the tag as a search term using a third party application. (E.g. I click on tag “PAF” and then the tags extension will search content items AND mosKB items and (lets say) use a web service to search Amazon books on “PAF and then developers can layout these results in a page as they wish.) all this is acheved with additional code which is not part of the Tags component however the possibilities are endless to those with a little PHP knowledge.

Out-of-the-box the Tags component will give you tagging of content and static content through a new tab when editing the content and by a dedicated admin console. There is even a Tag Cloud and a module that can be configured (using the params) to display a cloud, table or list of the tags, you can even have the count numbers E.g. Tag (10) included!

All in all I think this is a great component for Joomla - and one that hopefully you will enjoy too! Please check out the online demo and provide your feedback below asap - we are getting ever closer to a release !!!!!