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Tech Tuesday - Tag, You're It!

Myr

Entry posted by Myr in Site Tech News

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This week is all about the tags.  Every part of the system uses them.  I bet most people kind of gloss over them if they notice them at all.  Buy why are tags important?  The honest truth is that the tags are there to help you group like material together.  For example, I tag all of these type of blogs posts with Tech Tuesday.  if you click on a tag, it pulls up the search engine and shows you everything that is tagged with that item:

https://www.gayauthors.org/tags/tech tuesday/

 

The same thing applies to stories.  Say you want to find all the stories tagged with Magic, well, just click on the tag on a story and you'll get your list:

https://www.gayauthors.org/stories/browse/tag/magic/

 

With Stories, you can also go to the "Genre and Tags" page and see the list of all the Genres and All the Tags.  Clicking on them will bring you to all the stories tagged accordingly.

https://www.gayauthors.org/stories/browse/genre/

 

Using tags is easy.  On every new topic, blog, gallery image, or story, or whatever content you're posting, be sure to place 1-3 of the most important keywords in the tag box.  The tags will self-format when you hit the comma.  So Tech Tuesday tags look like this:

tag examplePlease note here the item prefix.   In some places, you are allowed to add this prefix and it shows up on the subject line ahead of the subject.  This should be used sparingly as it is meant for emphasis.  Usage of the prefix  option does vary by by member group and which part of the site they are using.

 

There are some pretty big search updates coming in the Forum 4.3.0 software that is entering beta test now at our forum vendor's site.  Using tags not only helps our system now with searching, it'll make it better in the future.

 

Speaking of future, we will be patching the site soon with some bug fixes and part of that will be that we are going to start tracking readers' stats on a weekly basis.  Right now, when you look at a story, you see the total number of views over time.  But that could have been 10,000 views four years ago or last week.  There's no way to tell.  With the new system we are implementing, authors will be able to tell what of their material is trending and when.  Publicly, we plan on showing data on what people are reading by genre and by tags.  This update will just begin the recording of the raw data.  This way, when we get to the real update in a few months, we'll have a lot of data already on hand.  For those concerned with privacy, there is no personal data recorded at all.  For those wondering, why should I care?   This data will be used to understand our market.  Stories that get the most reads in a time frame will boost their tags and genres in popularity.  Writers who are looking for a challenge, can then write stories that fit what people are looking for... or do that and twist it back to what you're looking for by hooking them good and proper.  This ties back to tags.  Make sure the tags on your story are useful and actually describe the story.  Review your stories and make sure your tags make sense.

 

We are also open to adding more tags that are currently not in the system if you make your case for them.

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Mikiesboy

Okay. Did post something recently that didn't have a tag that worked as far as i was concerned. Thanks for this. 

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ReaderPaul

Myr, at this point I am not a GA author, (although at some time in the future I hope to be-- provided I write something worth publishing anywhere), but I am confused about the creation of genres and tags.  I see that tags relate to something within the story, such as "travel" or "space" or "Antarctica."  If mythical author "Qrtxm" wrote a story which featured hepatitis C, if he or she put "Hepatitis" in the tag list, would it create a new tag, or is an author limited to the tags already there?

 

Genres are more general, as I understand at this point, and it would be more challenging to arrive at a new genre.   I am guessing that the author "Qrtxm" might be able to create a new tag, but a new genre would have to be created by Gay Authors staff.  Are my guesses anywhere close to right?  "Qrtxm" might be able to create new tags "Canada" or "pie baking" but not a new genre of "Underwater?"

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Brayon
21 minutes ago, ReaderPaul said:

Myr, at this point I am not a GA author, (although at some time in the future I hope to be-- provided I write something worth publishing anywhere), but I am confused about the creation of genres and tags.  I see that tags relate to something within the story, such as "travel" or "space" or "Antarctica."  If mythical author "Qrtxm" wrote a story which featured hepatitis C, if he or she put "Hepatitis" in the tag list, would it create a new tag, or is an author limited to the tags already there?

 

Genres are more general, as I understand at this point, and it would be more challenging to arrive at a new genre.   I am guessing that the author "Qrtxm" might be able to create a new tag, but a new genre would have to be created by Gay Authors staff.  Are my guesses anywhere close to right?  "Qrtxm" might be able to create new tags "Canada" or "pie baking" but not a new genre of "Underwater?"

Genres are the basic type of stories, like Fantasy, Romance, Drama, or my favorite Science Fiction. The tags are used to tell the reader what the content is. When we post a story, there are several steps, and step 4(or 5) is story tags and for stories, they are predefined. We can check off up to 6 different tags for our stories. Myr once posted this link, that lists all the tags, both alphabetically and by usage: https://www.gayauthors.org/storyoptions/storytags/ .

 

Hope that helps.

Edited by BHopper2
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Brayon
Quote

We are also open to adding more tags that are currently not in the system if you make your case for them.

@Myr Would you like us to PM these to a specific person, or start a thread in the Help Forum? 

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Myr
  • Site Administrator

There is an old topic on it in Announcements. I can look later when I am not on my phone. 

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  • Site Administrator
Myr
  • Site Administrator
7 hours ago, ReaderPaul said:

I am confused about the creation of genres and tags.

Although @BHopper2 covered this, I wanted to make sure it was fully clear.  There is no such thing as the creation of genres.  They are pre-existing on stories and you just select them.

For tags, on stories only, you must select pre-existing tags.  If a tag does not exist for something you need, then you can request it and if we feel it is necessary, we will add it. 

For everything else on the site that allows tags, they are freeform and you can type your own thing.

 

If you wish to know more about adding a story, please visit our YouTube channel (link at the bottom of the main page and bottom of forum main page, and watch the "Add a story" video.

 

Please see topic in Announcements "Story Tags" if you feel there is a tag you need.

 

 

 

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mollyhousemouse

i'm not an author, but i do blog here occasionally.  i find using the tags widens the exposure to what i've written.

i've started using the tags to search for others blogs on subjects that interest me.

 

thanks for all the hard work Myr

 

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