One of the two content management platforms we use regularly here at Effex Agency is Joomla. For website projects that require multiple content creators, complex user account configurations or advanced business process features it's our choice.

With Joomla 3, the CMS has focused more on design and usability, making responsive layout a core part of the software and improving permission and category functionality.

Joomla Tags

With the new version, 3.1, they've introduced tags. Tags are a way to quickly categorize content by a series of key words or phrases. Tagging is common in blogging and news websites where regular updates need to be connected loosely by topic.

Previously tags were only available in Joomla through 3rd party plugins that did an okay job but often left some functionality to be desired. The new tags feature seem to offer a comprehensive set of features right out of the box and a surprising feature that isn't common with other systems that use tags.

Tags vs. Categories

Many CMS systems, Joomla and wordpress included, use bot tags and categories to organize content. In many ways they're quite similar. In Joomla's case, there are two major differences.

First, in Joomla, any article can belong to only one category. However, any number of tags can be applied to a single article improving your ability to group content in a flexible way.

Second, categories are created ahead of time and are intended to be static. Tags can be created on the fly as you write the content it applies to. This makes tags ideal for following trending topics as they come and go.

Tags Key Features

Tag clouds and blog style listings of articles with a shared tag can now be added directly to your site's navigation. Finding articles based on keywords used to only be available through search, now it's only a click away.

One feature of Joomla's new tags system I found surprising. Tags can be hierarchical, meaning tags can have parent tags and be grouped. This feature, common to categories, is not normally applied to tags. It will be interesting to see what kind of new functionality this quirk gets used for by creative web developers.

Effex Agency designs and develops open source websites using Joomla. Contact us now about how we can help you with your Joomla based website.

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