josephmancuso

Thank you.

The blue box and login area were not showing up before; I was getting text that said something like “Welcome , ” as if it thought I had an account but left the name information blank. Perhaps it was misreading my cookies because I was logged in here?

Anyway, thank you again. I’ll check it out!

Now “tagging” – it’s the newest buzzword on the net … That’s why I am trying to avoid the use of word “tagging” when I talk about post Categories.

Understood… that makes sense. I’ve likely just got tags on the brain, as I’m more or less using Categories as if there were a shared set of tags to help users find what they’re interested in quickly… but my vocabulary is also not likely up to speed. :)

Also, for testing, why not sign up to http://wordpress.com/ …?

I may give that a whirl. Thanks so much for your help and patience!

Thanks for the reference. I’m sorry, though, that I’m not 100% sure that “Link Categories” are what I’m after. (I apologize that I’m still trying to learn the terminology here.)

Let me try to be clearer about what I’m trying to do:

The blog structure I’m most familiar with is one where a user posts entries, and each one has a comments section wherein a forum discussion can take place. This is, at a basic level, what I need. However, what’s also critical is the ability for users to tag their posts with keywords (or categories, as I thought WordPress called them) that describe one or more topic areas to which the post pertains.

The catch is, on most blog engines I’ve seen, the set of “tags” with which users categorize their posts is specific to each user. E.g., I may have tags for topics like “cats”, “photography” and “football” that other users can see, but this set of tags is completely independent from the set with which another user categorizes their posts, even if they have terms in common, such as “football”, “baseball” and “statistics”.

What I’m seeking is a structure wherein all the users in a given WP install can categorize each of their posts into one or more categories as they wish, but wherein all of the categories created/used by everyone appear in the same pool. The goal is to have a forum wherein any user can browse the list of categories, and choose to see all of the posts made by all of the users that were tagged into the category (or categories, plural, ideally) in which they have interest. E.g., if I’m interested in “football” and “cats”, I want to be able to login and easily get to a single page where any post by anyone that was categorized with the “cats” or “football” tag shows up.

Sorry that was longish, but perhaps it’s a clearer explanation of my application. As of yet, I haven’t found a forum, blog or CMS tool that was easily configurable to do this. I saw WordPress, however, and hoped that (at last) my search has ended! 🙂

Thanks again very much for any advice or references you can provide.

-Joe