It's A Good Day For Blogging (Free Tagging)

Adding category tags to posts has been a cumbersome process around here. First someone (like, say, me) had to set up this intricate hierarchical array of terms. Then, a blogger had to scroll through this giant list and ctrl-select the terms she wanted. If the terms she wanted weren't there, she either had to go add them (making posting that blog entry she just wrote a giant pain in the ass) or ask someone with admin privileges to do it for her (again, pain down in the sitter.)

Well no more, dear bloggers! As of today, you can just type in the tags you want when you're creating a new blog post. If they don't exist, they'll be added automagically.

There's a potential downside to this—a couple, actually. First, the list of tags loses its structure. "Heath Shuler" won't exist as a subcategory of "NC-11," which won't be a subcategory of "US House," etc. In practical terms, though, I'm not sure how much this matters. Second, when someone tags their post "Heath Shuler," the post won't be associated with older posts tagged "Heath Shuler" (the two tags will exist in separate 'vocabularies'). I'll be re-associating older posts a few at a time in my spare time, though, so this problem will go away over the next couple of months.

Anyway, if you have any questions or if things don't seem to be working, just let me know. Enjoy!