Tagging Them

OK folks. I've noticed a very lamentable state of affairs in The Shanty. You may have noticed it, too. Turns out, we're way too awesome at posting kickin' rad stuff. At times, the Kickin-Rad-ometer makes its way into the red. When this happens, kickin' rad stuff is flying at you at such a kickin' rad pace that you barely have time to take it all in. What's worse is that after that stuff has hit you in the face, it disappears. 

This is the lamentable state of affairs. It is way too difficult to retrieve past Shanty posts unless you know exactly when it was posted, or what the exact title of the post was. I'd like to try something new.

You'll notice a couple of new features at The Shanty. Like, we've got our very own search box! Type in anything you want. If it appears in The Shanty, it'll pop up. Don't quite know what you want? This brings me to new great awesome kickin' rad feature No. 2.

Labels. Below the Search box you'll find a list of topics arranged alphabetically. I went ahead and labeled each post from the months of August, July and June. These labels appear alphabetically. Next to the label appears a number in parentheses. This tells you how many times this label appears in The Shanty.  Check out "Concert Reco" for instance. Every time I came across a post that was recommending a show, I labeled it "Concert Reco." Interested in what shows have been recommended by Shanty writers? Click "Concert Reco." 

Some other popular labels include "Video" and "Music." Every post that I found which concerned music in some way I went ahead and labeled with "Music." These posts would include music sites like Myspace links (see also, "Myspace link"), band sites and music videos. Likewise, "Video" was used to label all posts which featured a video like an episode clip (see also "episode clip"), movie trailer (see also, "movie trailer"), or music videos (my personal favorite). Also, check out "News," "Joke," and "Picture." Or "Site reco," or "Book reco." Or whatever else.

You may be thinking what I'm thinking. 

Dude, some of these labels seem pretty retarded, if not also really repetitive and unnecessary. I mean, look at the size of that list! It's huge! How can that be at all helpful?! I believe I'm now dumber for having read this entire thing! Ugh! "Hey woder"? Whiskey tango foxtrot?!

You may be right. Undoubtedly, we'll be using more labels than others. But remember, The Shanty has been, is and will always forever be a work in progress. Like that Post Archive feature? How retarded was that? Right? Eventually, after we get some practice at this, we'll have whittled down the necessary list of labels. Let's see which one's you guys use, which one's we don't, and we'll go from there.

How To Label. Whenever you're making a new post, be sure to label it. I mean, you don't have to. But you risk your post disappearing down that kickin' rad river rapid we call The Shanty. To label your post, look down to the bottom of the text box to find a much smaller text box. "Labels for this post" appears just to the left of the box. "Show all" appears just to the right of the box. Clicking on "Show all" will display all of the currently used labels. Click on the ones that you think are most appropriate. You may want to add another label, like a band name or a song title or whatever. Like for this post, I added a "How To" label, which will go on all posts that show you how to do something. So great, and educational. Just go ahead and type whatever you want into the Label box and separate it with a comma. Go nuts. But there's a 200 character limit which can get kinda frustrating. And remember, HUGE list of labels already. So don't go that nuts. Go a little nuts.

So whatcha think?