Zoints Thread Tags System - GREAT for SEO

There will be no future releases of the 3.5.x version of the tags system, only the 3.6.x and later revisions. AJAX support in vB 3.5.x is far too problematic to work with and slows down development time significantly. Due to most forums being on or making the transition to 3.6.x, we've decided to do this so that we can provide more features and better support in a timely manner going forward. I apologize for the trouble, but feel this is the best decision for the community at large.

Demo:

http://network.zoints.com/tags

A great article on the importance of tagging can be read here.

The Zoints Thread Tags System will improve forum side search, SEO, and traffic for forums that choose to utilize it. And in my opinion, it's just plain cool

When a member creates a new thread, they can now input a series of "tags". Tags are simply keywords that describe the thread.



If you then go to your-forum.com/tags you will be presented with what is called a "tag cloud". The more times a tag is used, the larger the text grows. As you can see, the tags are also searchable.



Clicking on one of the tags in the cloud then lists all of the threads that are tagged with that particular keyword. The default option lists tags in a forumdisplay format. There is an option in the admincp to use a simple format.



Clicking on the thread title of one of the above threads then takes you to the thread. If you have the option on, the tags the thread are tagged with are also listed above the thread. Clicking one of those tags takes you to all the threads on the forum tagged with the same tag. Search engine spiders are going to have a field day with this



The thread starter and moderation staff have a slightly different view which allows for administration of tags:



The forum's tags are also searchable via the search dropdown. The advanced search option allows for a variety of additional criteria to be seached for. Your members create a whole new (and highly efficient) forum search engine!



If you have the option on in the admincp and register your forum, once every hour, your tagged threads in publically viewable forums are linked via the corresponding interest tag on the Zoints Forum Network. For example, if you go to http://zoints.com/tag/children you will see what is pictured below. Not only is this a great relevant inbound link for SEO, but you will get traffic from Zoints direct to these threads!

Another example of this in action: http://zoints.com/tag/music




The admincp options

















Official support for this modification will be at http://network.zoints.com in this forum.


Change log:

2006/10/24 - 1.2.1
* Bugfix: breaking inline moderation when tag cloud below posts
* Bugfix: ajax input not working when tag cloud below posts
* Bugfix: seo hook effective for "results as threads" option
* Bugfix: Autogenerated tags have "quot" removed
* Bugfix: Automated template edit screwing up styles
* Improved instructions for manual template edits

2006/10/19 - 1.2.0
* Option to display results as threads
* Advanced search page
* Popular tag cloud pagination
* Popular tags displayed in forums
* Option to display tags in showthread at the top/bottom
* Fix for vbadvanced products navbar links
* Other minor fixes and tweaks

2006/10/02 - 1.1.2
* Bugfix: Foreign language characters in thread description
* Bugfix: Commas showing up when removing first tag in showthread via ajax
* Removing some redundancy in the tags AJAX removal

2006/09/30 - 1.1.1
* Bugfix: Preventing all HTML from being parsed inside tag descriptions

2006/09/30 - 1.1.0
* Adding and deleting tags from showthread via AJAX
* Mass-deleting single tags from entire cloud for admins
* Automatically generate tags for older threads (with option to show or hide on main cloud)
* Automatically stripping out tiny (2 or less characters) tags

2006/09/28 - 1.0.8
* Minor bugfix

2006/09/28 - 1.0.7
* Bugfix for required tagging

2006/09/28 - 1.0.6
* Character replacements
* Tag limit per thread
* Option to require tags for a thread
* Bugfix where stopwords may not have worked properly
* Bugfix for vBSEO / main cloud not showing up

2006/09/xx - 1.0.5
* Unreleased dev build

2006/09/23 - 1.0.4
* Ability to add multiple tags via showthread.php
* Ability to exclude certain forums from utilizing tags
* Addition of custom hook for developers to change thread urls

2006/09/21 - 1.0.3
* Ability to add and remove tags from showthread.php
* Bugfix for older versions of mysql

2006/09/21 - 1.0.2
* Small bugfix

2006/09/20 - 1.0.1
* Showing tags list on showthread.php

2006/09/20 - 1.0.0
* Initial release

[Zoints]

Originally Posted by DChapman

Nothing. That looks to be on our end. I'll have our engineers look into it. Sorry for the trouble

That's fixed in the new version

[Zoints]

1.1.3 has been released which fixes showthread ajax bug. Sorry for the trouble.

[djwins]

wow, this sure looks neat *tags*

[Zoints]

Major Update - Zoints Tags 1.2

Thank you to everyone who provided feedback for this next version. Special thanks go out to Buro9.

Changelog

2006/10/19 - 1.2.0
* Option to display results as threads
* Advanced search page
* Popular tag cloud pagination
* Popular tags displayed in forums
* Option to display tags in showthread at the top/bottom
* Fix for vbadvanced products navbar links
* Other minor fixes and tweaks

Upgrade Instructions

1. Upload all files
2. Import new product and select "yes" to overwrite.

The new features

When you go to the admincp options for the thread tags, you are now presented with the option to display tag results in a forumdisplay format:




When that is selected (it is the default now), then your tag results will look much like your forum display as seen below:



This is exciting, because you now have a near infinite number of virtual forums with highly relevant threads within your forum. The SEO implications are enormous.


Two more options in the admincp are shown below.




As you can see in the dropdown, you now have the option to have a tag cloud above threads on forumdisplay.php, below threads on forumdisplay.php, or off. The same goes for the tags on showthread. The image below is an example of the tag cloud below threads on forumdisplay. Please note that these are tags just for that specific forum. So you now have forum by forum tag clouds




We now allow for you to have a "popular tag cloud" pagination. You set the number of pages to display




We have implemented a powerful "advanced" search for tags. This is especially exciting in that the search is very efficient. This was tested on a big board with over 400,000 theads. Each thread was autotagged yet searches took less than a second whereas normal searches bog down. In other words, if your members tag threads well, then you now have a much more efficient, human generated search engine.




You can search to see what tags a member has used, tagged threads with more than X replies, and all the other advanced search functionality.



Enjoy!

[djwins]

Wow, the new changes look great.
It's getting hard to resist installing this.

Any chance of letting the admin assign usergroups tag editing permissions?
It seems like a great reward to give to "higher" usergroups.

[Zoints]

Originally Posted by djwins

Any chance of letting the admin assign usergroups tag editing permissions?
It seems like a great reward to give to "higher" usergroups.

Yes, i'm sure we'll be able to add that to a later build.

[Make Money?]

I also would rather my admin / moderation team be in charge of all things to do with tag creation... and not the users.

I am aware that his might be a 'small minded' view... and am willing to review it in future..but the forum I run is a technology based one and I dont want newbies tagging their misinformed posts as 'goldmines' of information.. I would prefer instead to have selected key threads tagged so that newcommers to the site are presented only with high quality, vetted information. I standby eagerly to try this once it can be made admin / moderator only.

Thanks very much

[Zoints]

1.2.1 has been released. This is primarly a bugfix release:

2006/10/24 - 1.2.1
* Bugfix: breaking inline moderation when tag cloud below posts
* Bugfix: ajax input not working when tag cloud below posts
* Bugfix: seo hook effective for "results as threads" option
* Bugfix: Autogenerated tags have "quot" removed
* Bugfix: Automated template edit screwing up styles
* Improved instructions for manual template edits

[ushkand]

Thanks for the great hack. Looks like this is the perfect hack for what I was looking for. I have a question - How would I add a tag automatically to a new thread link? something like this? what is the right syntax?

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/newthread...wthread&f=112&tag=xxx

Also what is the syntax for searching based on a specific tag?

Thanks again for an awesome hack.

[tpearl5]

Chapman, do you work for Zoints? I've gotten e-mails from them before regarding their services, but this actually looks interesting.