Customize Site Introduces Tags

November 21, 2022, 07:14:18 PM Posted by SleePy on November 21, 2022, 07:14:18 PM in Customize Site Introduces Tags | 2 Comments
Simple Machines Customization team is proud to announce tags for the customization site.

This feature is being worked on and we wish to explain what is being done.  We also wish to receive community feedback and work on improving this feature.

Why tags?
The idea for tags started out simple.  Customizations need a way to express ways that allow multiple categorized data.  Such useful information as does this theme support dark mode?  Does this modification support PHP 8?  Is this customization supported by the author?

We realize that adding many questions for developers  would result in poor experience for both developers and users.  This also would mean we have code to modify and/or our database changed for each additional question.

How can I use tags?
When editing your customization, you can add tags.  Tags are added by auto-suggest like feature.

Can I search for tags?
We have added a include and exclude tags to the search.  Searching for any of the included tags will match any customization based on a simple OR.  Excluding tags will also exclude any customization using the simple OR.  We may in the future adjust this to be a toggle between "OR" and "AND".  But not at this time.

Can I enter my own tags?
While developing the tags feature, we came across a fundamental issue.  If we allow creation of tags by customization authors, we could end up with various deviations.  Such as "PHP 8.0", "PHP 8", "PHP8", "PHP8.0", "PHP 8.0.23" would all be unique tags, but they all mean the same thing.  Now while something like a software version would be fairly easy to normalize, we then realized this would also follow true for words in other languages and their related misspellings or grammatical gender issues.  Both of these lead to complications in the code, management, developers and end user searches.

As such we have decided to start with, we will implant tags with the customization team being in control of managing tags.  At a future time, we may revisit this as we figure out ways to reduce these complications.

What is the status of categories and styles?
During development of tags we came to a simple realization.  Tags can replace categories.  For what is a category, but a tag that you can only apply one of.  Where as tags allow many categories.

The tags is a new feature to the customization site and as such there are possibilities of bugs or other issues.  We will be slowly expanding and improving the tags feature.  So for now, we won't be implanting any tags with the same handling as a category at this time.  At a future date when we feel the tags feature is stable and ready, we will move all categories into tags and migrate all the data.

We intend to handle this same change for styles on themes for the customization site.

Can I suggest improvements or other tags?
Yes!  Please direct feedback to the team in our Site Comments, Issues and Concerns board.  If you wish to submit this privately, you can send a personal message to our SMF Customization Team account and it will be received by our team.

Comments


landyvlad on December 21, 2022, 06:09:38 PM said
I noticed this the other day - excellent!

d3vcho on December 22, 2022, 04:49:03 AM said
Hey I missed this announcement. Indeed really cool feature.

Thanks a lot!
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