By Rip Rowan on 9/16/2009 4:52 AM

A while back I posted something about WordPress’ taxonomy model.  At the time I thought it was clever and thought we should use something like it for the DotNetNuke Blog module.  Now, I’m less enamored with it.

Here’s why.

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By Rip Rowan on 11/3/2008 4:09 AM

Taxonomy is one of the least understood weapons available for SEO.  We all know the basics of effective SEO:

• URLs constructed with relevant terms, avoiding parameterization
• Each page can be accessed by only one URL
• Effective use of keywords in the title tag
• Use of keywords in H1 tags
• Links back to the page from other pages

How does taxonomy fit into all of this?

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By Rip Rowan on 7/5/2008 6:49 AM

I stumbled across a bit of text that clarified an earlier discussion on tagging:

Hierarchical: indicates a parent-child (vertical) relationship like cat and dog are children of mammals)

Association: indicates a "similar to" (horizontal) relationship like mammals is similar to animals.

Bingo!  This is what people think of when they create categories and tags.  Categories are hierarchical, and tags are associative.  The problem is - they're both right and wrong.

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By Rip Rowan on 5/1/2008 9:46 AM

In my latest post, I mentioned that I really view tags and categories as two facets of the same thing.  Turns out I'm not alone.

This interesting post explains how WordPress implements tags and categories.  Like me, it's apparent that they view both tags and categories ultimately as the same entity type: "terms".  They then overlay a set of structures that enable various use of "terms" in the WP UI.

I think a similar - if not identical - approach should form the basis of tagging and categorization in the DNN blog module.

By Rip Rowan on 5/1/2008 9:41 AM

I'm inclined to view "tags" and "categories" as just two facets of the same thing: knowledge hooks we apply to content to help us find it.  My gut tells me that these things tend to be viewed as two different beasts because of the way they've historically been implemented.

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