[BETA] BoardTracker Advanced Topic Tags Mod - v1.9.1

[BoardTracker]

MOD Name: BoardTracker Advanced Topic Tags Mod

Author: BoardTracker

MOD Description: Add a complete, fully integrated, thread tagging system with tag search and locally cached tag clouds powered by boardtracker.

Topic tags are the forum equivalent of article tags often seen on blogs linking to tag search on flickr, technorati, del.icio.us etc.

Tag links and clouds can use mod_rewrite for improved SEO. Tag clouds are fully customizable and are generated automatically by boardtracker and cached locally in your db for fast access without processing overhead. Cached tag clouds can be placed anywhere on any page on your board. Also a javascript version of the cloud can be placed on any other site outside your board.

Powerful tag search engine is fully integrated within the board while all the heavy processing work is done in the background by boardtracker servers. Search tags by date range, author, category and forums.

You can also include several boards in the same tag search - just define the list of boards (with boardtracker id's) to include and results from all those boards will appear in tag searches on your board - great for traffic trading with other board admins or even just to circulate traffic between your own boards if you run several.

Other features include: tagging can be restricted to specific usergroups and certain forums can be excluded. Local, multi-board and global tag search options. Searches also show 'related tags' cloud. Tagging can be set to 'required' to force users to tag all new topics. Stopwords list to block posting of innapropriate tags. Dynamic RSS feeds of tag search results.

Submit your board to BoardTracker for indexing and once listed and spidered all your tags will also appear on boardtracker and on other boards which opt for the global or multi-board search which can bring you more traffic. Until your board is indexed it will operate in global mode by default as long as it is 'active'.

MOD Version: 1.9.1

phpBB Version: 2.0.22

Demo: http://forums.boardtracker.com/tags.php?search=forums

Download File: BT_Tags_phpBB-1.9.1.zip

Changes since version 1.9.0:
- fixed bug affecting usergroup and forum restrictions while 'tags required' enabled.
- fixed text for 'tags required' in admin panel

To upgrade from 1.9.0 you need to go through the code edits and replace the four sections marked 'updated in v1.9.1' and also re-upload the following files..
boardtracker_admin_tags_body.tpl
boardtracker_admin_tags.php

[securitynut]

WOW

Someone heard me... I was bugging you all for a release like this, with proper tag searching. Thanks!

Edit: Oh... I just noticed you still depend on BoardTracker. Is that really necessary? Why not just run tag searches through a PHP search function?

From a webmaster perspective I feel dependencies on other sites are not a good thing. For starters you are depending on the external server being up, and that the site has a decent business model which will keep it online. That is why people store images on their own servers, not imageshack. It would be great to see a built in tag search function, completely independent.

[BoardTracker]

A real search engine for phpbb or any board type is no trivial task (and not really the focus of board software) and will very likely result in your server slowing down or crashing under the load once a board gets moderately busy.

Using boardtracker to power the search removes all such load issues and provides a real search engine at no cost. BoardTracker has been running for several years now and isn't about to disappear. Even in the absolute worst case if something did happen to BT (not likely) you still have all the data stored locally in your db so you wouldn't lose anything anyway.

That is why people store images on their own servers

I bet those servers are hosted by someone else though unless you run your own datacenter.. Everything you do on the net depends on some other company somewhere along the line providing a service or infrastructure.

[securitynut]

Hmm, I just noticed you are a BoardTracker representative

Ok, I see how BoardTracker may be valuable for those that want to search external sites too, but what about people who just want to search up their own site for specific tags, as in Wordpress or similar? In this case the engine would only have to check the database for posts tagged with whatever tag the user is querying. That wouldn't be a very complicated addition (but still way over my head). I think it would be great to see an option allowing the user to do search queries like that, but understand if you prefer to run it through the BoardTracker system.

Either way it is a good mod, I think it is a valuable tool for those looking to incorporate external forums into their own. I guess my idea is slightly tangential to where you are heading with this MOD.

[BoardTracker]

but what about people who just want to search up their own site for specific tags

The mod is specifically designed for searching only tags on your own board - there is an option for searching globally if you want also but its not required. As soon as your board is indexed by boardtracker the mod will be able to search within your board (or several specific boards if you want).

[abhishek1711]

what does this exactly do , can users search for tags in my forum or they have to visit boardtracker for the same?

whts difference with phpbb-seo.com dynamic meta tag mod?

[BoardTracker]

This tags mod is entirely integrated within your board - users do not have to visit boardtracker to search - they search inside your board and results appear inside your board and tags are also stored in your db.

Topic tags are visible on your board and created by your users allowing them to more easily find topics of interest. Your tags also are searchable on boardtracker and might have some seo value in other search engines but it is not an seo mod and nothing to do with meta tags which are a different thing entirely.

[abhishek1711]

thnks !

one more question - the tags are not automatically created? i mean the users have to specifically fillup the tags field or by default too the mod will create tags. if its manual only , then an issue as how many users would take the pain and also create relevant tags

[BoardTracker]

Tags have to be manually added by your users (or you/your mods could do it after) but there is an option in the tags mod to making tagging compulsory when posting a new topic so that is one way to get lots of tags created quickly.

However even without that it seems quite a few board users do like to tag their topics, particularly if you explain to them why it is good for them and the board if they do.

We'll be releasing an updated version of this mod soon now that the mod db submission process here appears to be open again so if anyone has any suggestions for new features (or found any bugs we need to fix) then let me know soon.

[Captain Tycoon]

Edit: The tags are now showing words that do not exist on the forum...

[krisbfunk]

is this mod still active?

[jerryong]

Any latest version for PHPBB3.0.0 ??