vapourtrails.ca

Update: I’ve put up a new beta of this plugin for WP 2.0. You can read more about it here. But stay on this page for the current stable release or for WP1.5.

“Jerome’s Keywords” is a plugin for WordPress 1.5.x and 2.0 and to associate keywords with your posts. The plugin lets you do the following:

1. Adds a field to the post & page editing screens for entering or editing keywords. Separate all keywords with commas — spaces are okay, so you can enter multi-word “key phrases” too, just don’t use commas.
2. Implements a local keyword/tag system! Readers can click on a post’s keyword/tag link to see other posts with the same tag. It’s a simple but effective way of letting users find content that interests them.
3. Index your tags with Technorati. Normally if you’re listed on Technorati they’ll only pick up your categories as tags. With this plugin, your keywords show up in their tag pages too.
4. Create a local tag cosmos. Now your site can be just as cool as Technorati or Flickr.
5. Add keywords to your page header: e.g. <meta name="keywords" content="list of page keywords"> The meta keywords tag is no longer used by most search engines, but this is an easy way to create a relevant keywords <meta> tag regardless.

There are a quite a few keywords and tags plugins available, but I think this is the only one that does all of the above. However, I’d like to give special mention to Stephanie Booth’s excellent Bunny’s Technorati Tags Plugin — it was helpful in solving some post-meta and filter problems I initially ran into.

Buyer Beware

Ok, so it’s free (licensed under the GPL) but you should still proceed cautiously. While I’ve tried to make it as bulletproof as possible, there’s no guarantee that it won’t break your site or cause premature baldness. That said, I’ve been using this plugin for quite some time and still have more hair than most guys my age (I can’t say the same for the many others using this plugin, but they seem to be a contented happy bunch).

Download

You can download the plugin here. Just install it like any other WordPress plugin: put jeromes-keywords.php into your wp-content/plugins directory and activate from your admin panel.

Installation

1. Copy the file jeromes-keywords.php to your WordPress wp-content/plugins directory.
2. Activate “Jerome’s Keywords” from the Plugins administration panel.
3. Re-save your permalinks from the Options-Permalinks administration panel.
4. Start tagging!

The following resources should prove helpful:

• How to display a post’s keywords
• Displaying keyword search results
• Creating a keyword cosmos
• Creating a top keyword list
• Adding a meta keywords tag to your page header
• Indexing keywords with Technorati
• Other tips & tweaks (old)

Updates

• 29-Dec-2005 - Version 1.9 adds support for WP2.0. Thanks to Horst Gutmann for the suggested changes!

• 23-Jun-2005 - Version 1.8 fixes a minor bug related to category links (no need to update if you don’t use them).

View full changelog