I've seen vB forums that have it.
Preceding the post title is a drop box you can pick what category your post falls under within the subject of that forum area. The tagging should not be forum wide but each section should have its own tags, or optionally when you add a new tag you should be able to specify which areas the tag is good for.
You should also have control to allow no tags or require them for all topics.
Finally, when you click a tag that forum area should self sort into only the posts that have that tag.
I hope that's clear enough or ask me and I'll elaborate.
It's not going to happen in the 2.0 or 2.1 series of SMF. I would be surprised if it ever happened in the SMF core; it's been discussed many times by successive teams of developers and none of them have agreed on putting it in before onw.
Personally, I find most tagging both irritating and unhelpful in the context of forum software. Providing each board on a forum has a clear scope, a tagging system ought to be unnecessary in my experience.
I would rather have related topics https://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=189 I think is more appealing.
Would you know if there are any mod packages I could get that would put that feature in my forum?
I'd love to have it and I do write PHP but I'm afraid it's too big a job for me to handle for myself. I work part time as an IT contractor in corporate applications development. Oh and I have a hobby server but I have my hands full just doing server stuff, too much to rewrite SMF.
This might be a start https://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=579
You can also search the Mod Site (http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/) for other mods with similar functions.
Thanks Lex, and I really appreciate your trying. I don't think that's it.
Think of a forum that covers art and music and reading, and we have sections for each. In all these subjects there are genres. Say perhaps in art there might be "impressionism," in music there might be "blues rock," and in reading there might be "fantasy" or "romance."
The idea is that in reading if you get interested in reading romantic novels (hehe) you can click the "romance" tag to filter that forum section and show only romance.
That's what I was looking for. I got it partially working but never finished it. Do you think there is any possibility I could hook up with a mod developer and give him what I've got and encourage him and collaborate to make it work?
I work only part time (in IT) so I can't pay for the mod package but I would be more than happy to give a developer my work and give up any credit (okay you could say "inspired by Suzy A") and they could even sell it as long as I get a freeb. Is there a section in this forum where I could hook up with a collaborator.
I got most of the tagging mod done but I finally failed out that I just couldn't integrate it with the forum's search system. Here's an example:
[Romance] "Wuthering Heights by Jane Austin"
The "romance is the tag" and it's hotlinked separately from the title part. Click the title and you read that topic, click the [Romance] and the forum section is filtered to show only Romance genre books. Get it?
The problem is that it requires people be consistent in their tagging, and most people just aren't, and the rest usually end up having to be the taggers of everyone else (which is usually a miserable and thankless task)
Not really. You have a "requires tag" and tell forum members to put in a tag request to use it or their post will be deleted.
My mod was written to easily add tags and specify which forum sections it was active in.
I finished right up until the day I closed my forum.
The reason I came back to SMF was to re-start that forum.
Yes, and I'll bet you were the one doing the bulk of the tagging so it was consistent as a result, and that your members very often didn't bother no matter how easy you made it.
At least, this has been the experience I've had on literally dozens of other forums that have tagging where it's in any way freeform. More often it's a very select pre-defined list of tags, and even then mis-tagging is common.
I think what you are describing seems more like a topic prefix mod? https://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=4038
BR360 thank you so much, you're a total dude! Er, or dudette? LOL! It's late here in Chicago and I'm about to faint/crash but that looks like almost the mod I wrote before I gave up!
I'll look it at tomorrow but it just might do the job. If nothing else, thank you so much for at suggesting a viable solution to my problem!
Suzy