Dear bloggers,
Due to performance issues, we have had to limit the number of tags that appear on your blog to fifty. However we feel that fifty tags isn't enough, so over the next few days this number will be increased to one hundred.
So, at the moment, your fifty most common tags are displayed. This does not mean that your other tags have been deleted, they just do not appear on the blog.
In the future, we plan to have a 'Show all tags' button so that all your tags will be easily accessible. We also expect to be able to increase the number of automatically shown tags to two hundred, but no more than that since very few users have more than two hundred tags.
Thanks,
Your BCUK team.
Comments (28)
On a personal note I use my tags as an index for my poems. These now total 151 tags so now a third of my poems cannot be accessed by my readers.
Yesterday I did notice that the whole list wasn't being shown and I tried to free up space by taking off some of the contents features - this explains why that didn't work!
I do hope that this issue will be resolved quickly.
Thank you
Marian
Hei, Marian.
You could make a Contents page with links to all of your poems, and then tag that as, say, "-Contents" (the "-" should keep it at the top of the list - until a tag sorting function is created!), and set the timestamp of it to a time before your first article, so it doesn't get in the way of the flow of your blog. That's what I'm planning to do for my blog. Alternatively, you could make sticky the Contents page; but with that number of poems it'll likely be very long, and pretty tedious for us to scroll past every time we visit. It'll take more time to add entries, but I think it could work quite neatly. Advantages are that you could categorise your poems, and perhaps write a sentence about each beside them - although poetry ought to be self-contained, no? and require no further explanation.
from Miblo.
Wow - thanks for that I'll see what I can do. I think I understand what you mean but might have to call for your help again if I get stuck!
Marian
Sure, go for it! It's an idea that's been floating around in my head for some time, but just haven't got around to doing.
While I'm in the 'Changes to tag system' article, I think it might be quite useful to have a 'Hide tag' feature, which can be selected for certain tags. For example, I divide my blog up into chapters, using tags such as "-Chapter 1110" (although that C loses its capitalisation) but it's difficult to keep the tags in order, and so the system is hardly serving its intended purpose. If I were to create a Contents page, with links to all of my tags and articles, and could hide all of the tags to do with chaptering (keeping one for the Contents page itself), it'll make my blog a bit smoother and nicer.
I don't know how feasible it'll be to implement, or how many people will make use of the feature, but I'll certainly appreciate it.
Cheers,
Miblo.
Thankfully the number of tags revealed have now been increased but I might try making a contents page as you suggest when I have some free time.
Unfortunately a 'Hide tag' button is not something we are planning to implement. Sorry.
Okay, no problem.
How about a 'Tag ordering' function, whereby we can customise the order in which they appear? I've tried to control the order of mine by using dashes, but it hasn't quite worked out as I'd planned.
However! I've just thought of an ingenious workaround: we can hide our tags section entirely, and create a whole new one as a bloglist! So, in conjunction with a Contents page, I can have my blog working beautifully. The only problem with this solution is that the quantity of articles bearing a particular tag doesn't appear automatically next to the name of the tag (i.e. "music (27)"). Advantages are that the bloglist entries can be ordered by time of creation, so if you don't mind deleting and recreating entries if needed, it is completely customisable! And you only need show the tags that you want to. This might possibly be more useful for you and me, Marian (if you use it in conjunction with a Contents page), than other folk.
It is possible to hide the tag section - just go to 'Blogs', click on 'Design' and then in the pop-up window that opens, go to '2 Modules'. There you can remove the tags module by dragging it out of your blog sidebar.
Quite right, Rampage. I've done just that, and have created my Bloglist and most of the Contents page (if you'd like a peep, Marian, to see what I mean), and it's working pretty smoothly, barring one thing: the links in the Bloglist open up in new windows. Is it possible to make them open in the same window? I understand you can add 'target="_self"' to an anchor tag, but that isn't possible for the Bloglist urls. Is there anywhere I can put this little expression, or could a feature be created enabling this '_blank' or '_self' option? Also, it would be nice if the Bloglist entries could be ordered in a similar fashion to the way the Bloglists themselves can be (viz. with up and down arrows).
At the moment that's not possible, but we have noted it.
Thanks for the suggestions.
Alright, cheers, Rampage. No problem.
The contents page is finished (or, rather, up-to-date) now, if interested.
Like we said above, there will be a 'Show more' button so all your tags will be accessible - just not immediately in your blog sidebar.
Nice to know, though, cheers.
I use tags to direct people to certain posts so a "show all tags" button would be great.
Hi Rampage,
I refer back to early and recent blogs from time-to-time; it's a diary function of a kind. Will I still be able to access my my early blogs and not so recent ones?
Yes, everything is still there, nothing has been deleted. The only change is that not all the tags are displayed - all your tags still exist.
Many thanks.
PS what is a 'Permalink'? Can we all get one if we want one and if so, how do we do it?
A "permalink" is the permanent internet address of a post. You can use this internet address to simply link to a certain post so that other people can find it.
For example, if you click on 'permalink' for this comment, it will give you the exact URL of this comment.
Hello,
Just tried clicking on the permalink and it sent me back to comment.
Yeah, I think that's right, menhir. After clicking it you'll see the URL in the address bar of your browser. You can in fact just hover over that Permalink link to show the url in your status bar, and then right-click and choose Copy Link Location (if you're on Firefox) so you can then paste it wherever you like.
Hello Miblo,
Nice to meet you.
I think I shall have to try Firefox as IE doesn't seem to respond in the way you describe. Your explanation is helpful and it would be useful if I could get it to work.
Am I able to establish a permalink icon on my blog, (or may be it's already there and I haven't noticed it). If I can create one, how do I do it?
Ah, if I right click on the permalink icon, in IE, the drop down menu gives me the option of adding it to favourites. It doesn't show in the status bar, though.
Yeah, I'd recommend upgrading to Firefox (as it's called on a page on this website). Nice to meet you, too!
.
There are permalinks already on your blog, underneath each article between the "Trackback" and "Email this post" links. And in your comments section you'll see a little image of a chain (a link of a chain) on the left hand side, next to the "Reply to comment" link. That's a permalink, and serves the same purpose as these ones here.
.
Happy Linking!
This limitation of the tags is, I believe, the first time BCUK has reduced functionality rather than extended it.
You say that very few people have used more than 200 tags. I suspect I am one of those people, although of course at the moment I have no way of checking this.
I have blogged for over two years and covered a wide variety of subjects. With not even a hint that you intended to take this sudden action, I have made full use of the tag function and taken care to make my 'front page' long enough to cover a full list - so the tags didn't trail on at the end. This was part of the feel of my blog, and I know several readers took full advatage of this list by checking out old posts.
On the other hand, I have not taken up excessive bandwidth by posting music, videos - and have used only a limited number of photographs.
Yes, in due course you will add a show all tags function, and increase the shown list to maybe 200. At this level.many tags will have only one reference - so presumably favour the ones at the beginning of the alphabet?
Given a few week's warning, there would have been time to do some work on reducing tags (eg, merging similar tags). More importantly it would have been a civil, friendly thing to do.
In future, if you are reducing functionality in an other way, please give us some advance notice
Hi Alec. I'm going to try to address the issues that you raised.
Ragarding not knowing how many tags you have: if you go into the 'Edit' function, all your tags are displayed there. There you can also easily edit your tags.
Now up to 200 tags are being displayed on all blogs.
Regarding which tags are displayed: The most commonly used ones.
The 'Show More Tags' button is still under construction. However, when it is implemented, we feel that the tags system will be restored to its full functionality. We are sorry to have landed this tags problem upon all of you so suddenly, but it really was unavoidable.
Again, apologies for the inconvenience.
If I go to edit a particular post, the click on "My tags" I get a list of 20 tags, not 200 plus. Am I misunderstanding you?
"The most commonly used tags are displayed" Clearly (to simplify a more complex scenario) if I had say 250 tags used twice, you would have to exclude 50. on some criterion or another.
Lets hope that the "Show More Tags" button arrives soon.
That is in the 'Edit' screen for an individual post. Those are a selection of your most used tags - they are there for easy tagging of posts.
I meant if you go into the 'Edit' function for the whole blog, you can see all the tags. You can get there either by clicking on the number of entries of a blog when in the 'blogs' tab, or by clicking on 'Edit' when on the 'Write' screen.
And, apologies, I misunderstood you. If the system has to choose between two equally-often used tags, it will choose alphabetically.
Glad there will be a show all button - thanks.
Well, here we are, a month later, and lots of new features on BCUK - but no sign of a "show all tags" button Any chance we can have it before further new functions are introduces? soon?
Incidentally, I have tried both methods mentioned above to get a complete list of my tags - with no success.
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