Tags can still be very useful, despite being less and less prevalent in some circles. Because like I said In an earlier piece, some are bringing tags from the cloud and into the content. It’s such a simple idea that is too rarely used.

The easiest way to implement this is to simply add the link yourself. So say you are writing about mobile phones, and you happen to mention the Samsung D-807, an item which you’ve written about before and have a tag for already called “d807”. You’d simply wrap the mention in a link to that tags archive, and voila. There are also a few plugins that make this brainless, auto-magically turning the key words into links to the appropriate place.

KB Linker is one plugin, that with a little configuration will do it for you. You do need to set up each tag and the link to the tags archive, but you only need to do it once and it will do the rest for you without any more effort on your part.

Simple Tags, Embedded Tag Thing is a little more automated. Though I am not sure if the latter plugin works with version 2.5. The former though is a bit more then you need, it does however do it all for you.

Ideally, you would only use the link to the tag if you are not referencing a specific post, and you’d only have the word linked at the first instance instead of it being linked every instance throughout the article.

If you try out the last two options let me know how it works out.

The tag is dead, long live the tag.

Guest Author Bio: If you liked this post, please check out the writer, John Leschinski, someone who is both great at web design and a friend of mine. John Leschinski is a designer & consultant with almost a decade of experience, on the forefront of modern design, focused on creative opportunities and solutions for challenges facing businesses today.

Originally posted on May 7, 2008 @ 6:44 pm