Advanced Tag Entry WordPress Plugin

Introduction and Features

The Advanced Tag Entry WordPress plugin extends the built-in tag functionality of WordPress 2.3, giving you new ways to manage the tags on your post. It adds a new section to the post editing screen, that lets you:

• Add a tag to your post from a drop-down list of existing tags you have already defined on other posts (so you can make sure you are consistent).
• Remove a tag from your post from a drop-down list of the tags you have already added to your post.
• Create a new tag, by defining the tag name and tag slug.
• Edit existing tag names and/or tag slugs.
• Delete tags that are not actually being used, from the WordPress database.

Note: Advanced Tag Entry is not recommended for WordPress 2.5 and later. Also, it doesn't work at all for WordPress 2.2 and earlier versions. It is ONLY for WordPress 2.3.

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Installation and Usage

To install the Advanced Tag Entry plugin:

1. Make sure you are using WordPress 2.3 ONLY. Previous versions of WordPress do not support tagging, and the plugin is not needed for later versions.
2. Contact Poplar ProductivityWare to get this plugin zip file. It is not on the site, because it is not appropriate for current versions of WordPress. If for some reason you still want it, send an email explaining why, and we'll send you the plugin.
3. Extract and upload the advtagentry.php file into wp_content/plugins.
4. The other files (MO, PO, and POT files) can be used to localize Advanced Tag Entry to a different language (this only affects the WordPress post editing screen, not anything your blog readers will see). If your WordPress is in a language for which MO files are provided, install MO file into the plugin directory. If your WordPress is in some other language, or if you prefer to have a different translation of Advanced Tag Entry, you can use the advtagentry.pot file to translate Advanced Tag Entry -- see the article Translating WordPress for more information on how to do that. Note that if your WordPress is using a locale called "xx_YY", then you will need to end up with an MO file named "advtagentry-xx_YY.mo", so you may need to rename the file. Also note that the MO and PO files provided here may be incomplete -- they were donated by other users of Advanced Tag Entry.
5. If you need more detailed information on how to manage WordPress plugins, please visit the Managing Plugins page on the WordPress site.

To activate and use the plugin:

1. Log in to your WordPress administration page.
2. Click on "Plugins" in the top menu bar, and activate the "Advanced Tag Entry" plugin by clicking on the link that says "Activate" to the right of the plugin name.
3. Make sure you have JavaScript enabled in your web browser.
4. Write a new post or edit an existing post.
5. You will see a new section near the bottom of the post editing screen, called "Advanced Tag Entry". Expand this section by clicking on the "+" sign on the right side of the bar. You should see something like this:
   
6. Use the top section of Advanced Tag Entry to tell WordPress which tags you want on the post you are editing. Choose a tag from the list and click Add to add it to the post. Choose a tag from the other list and click Remove to remove it from the post. The line that says "Current Tags on Post" shows the current tags on your post, as a blog viewer will see them. When finished with your changes, click "Save", "Save and Continue Editing", or "Publish" to save them. Notes:
• Important: The standard tag entry section right under the post content area on the post edit screen should not be used if you are using Advanced Tag Entry. Whenever you Add or Remove tags in the Advanced Tag Entry screen, any entries you have made in the standard tag entry section above are overwritten.
• Also, the standard tag entry section is changed to display tag slugs, rather than tag names, when you use Advanced Tag Entry.
7. Use the bottom section of Advanced Tag Entry to manage all the tags in the database:
   • With Create New showing, type in a tag name and tag slug (the slug is used in tag URLs, so it cannot have special characters in it), and click Submit to create a new tag.
   • Choose an existing tag from the drop-down list, and its name and slug will be shown in the edit fields. Make any desired changes and click Submit to edit the tag. Changes will affect all posts that are using this tag. If the same name and slug are also used as a category, edits will affect the category too.
   • If there are tags that have been defined in your database, which are not being used on any posts, you can select them from the bottom drop-down list and click Delete to remove them from the WordPress database. Only unused tags will appear in the list.
   • All changes in the lower section are saved as you do them.

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Frequently Asked Questions (and answers)

1. What versions of WordPress is this plugin compatible with?
   Advanced Tag Entry works with versions 2.3 through 2.3.3 of WordPress. WordPress 2.5 has a new tag management and tag entry system, and Advanced Tag Entry is NOT recommended with WordPress 2.5 and later versions. Versions of WordPress prior to version 2.3 did not have tag functionality, so Advanced Tag Entry does not work with them at all.
2. I'm having a problem with how tags are displayed in my blog. What could be happening?
   Advanced Tag Entry does not have anything to do with how tags are displayed in your blog. It only affects how you can enter tags on the post editing screen. So, you'll need to check into your other plugins, your theme, or WordPress itself to fix your problem.
3. Which tags does Advanced Tag Entry recognize?
   Advanced Tag Entry recognizes the tags in the core of WordPress 2.3 and above (the ones entered in the "Tags" field, directly under the post body field on the post editing screen). Advanced Tag Entry creates tags that go into the core WordPress database. It does not recognize or create tags that are specific to other tagging plugins.
4. I created a new tag with some special characters in it, and it looks like WordPress or the Advanced Tag Entry plugin changed what I entered. Why?
   There are a couple of things that could be happening:
   • When you define a tag name with HTML tags in it, WordPress strips those tags out before it saves the tag in the database.
   • Since tag slugs are meant for use in URLs, WordPress "URL-encodes" characters in tag slugs. Only certain characters are allowed in URLs; others end up looking like "%02" and things like that when they are URL-encoded.
   • If you don't supply a tag slug at all, WordPress will attempt to create one from the tag name, by converting illegal characters such as spaces to legal URL-characters, and then URL-encoding.
   If you want to avoid these problems, your best bet is to define a tag name without HTML tags (or < and > characters) in it, and type in a slug that is composed of only letters, numbers, and underscore characters (_).
5. When I activate Advanced Tag Entry and then edit a post, I see something strange in the standard Tags entry field of the post edit screen. When I deactivate, it goes back to normal. Why?
   Advanced Tag Entry puts tag slugs, rather than tag names, into the standard tag entry field on the post edit screen. This is to ensure correct matching of your intended tags with the ones you have chosen from the drop-down lists in Advanced Tag Entry, because tag slugs cannot have any special characters in them. You can see what tags are on your post by looking at the line that says "Current Tags on Post" in the Advanced Tag Entry section of the screen, which displays the tag names as your blog readers will see them.
6. When defining URL "slugs" for tags, I can't have spaces in them. So what character should I use?
   The usual practice is to use either a hyphen ("-") or an underscore ("_") character. Do not use a plus sign ("+") or a comma (",") -- the plus sign is interpreted by WordPress in tag URLs as a combined tag search, so a URL with an "abc+def" tag in it would search for posts that are tagged with both "abc" and "def". And the comma is the standard tag separator, so a tag "abc,def" will be interpreted by WordPress as two separate tags.
7. What has changed from version to version of Advanced Tag Entry?
   • Version 1.02 - bug fix: fix so it works with Asian languages better, as well as quotes, HTML entities, etc. in tags.
   • Version 1.01 - bug fix: presence of tags with apostrophes was making plugin not work correctly.
   • Version 1.0 - initial release
8. How can I find out if there is a new version of the plugin?
   No new versions are expected to be released. Poplar ProductivityWare recommends that you upgrade to WordPress 2.5 as soon as it is available, and de-activate Advanced Tag entry, as it is no longer needed in WordPress 2.5.

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Questions, Comments, and Bugs

The Advanced Tag Entry plugin is provided free, with no warrantee and no guarantee of service or support. However, Poplar ProductivityWare welcomes your comments. So if you have questions about how to install or use the plugin, suggestions for how to make it better, or wish to report a bug in the plugin, please contact Poplar ProductivityWare. Thanks!

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