It’s a discussion that goes beyond the realm of the forums, but has been debated within it in the past. In a previous version of WP, (1.5.x), categories could not be added “on-the-fly”. Thus tagging plugins became popular.
Categories can be used as tags,labels, what ever you want to call them. Technorati will pick them up as “tags”. Some people don’t like to have a million categories, and would rather use categories for general description, and use tags for specifics.
It really comes down to preference, deciding on a system, and sticking with it.
Using categories as “tags” as they are most commonly used is a bad idea. WordPress cannot handle an unlimited number of categories, and it is not advisable to make them on-the-fly like tags would be.
If you want tags, install a good tagging plugin like Ultimate Tag Warrior.
If you want categories, use them sparingly. No more than, say, 100 or so.
I don’t know what a “label” would be in this context.
TAGS – categories – labels are 3 very different concepts:
- categories follow the same concpet of the computer’s folder (one inside the other, univoque relation)
- tages are ‘keyword’ texts typed freely to an article. One article could have the following tags [travel, china, budget] , while another one could be [travel, japan, art].
very good coz it’s the most flexible.
At the same time, if you type TRAVEL once and TRIP another time, these 2 articles wont be listed togther.
even worst, you type TRAVEL on one article, and TREVEL by mistake on the otherone…
- labels are half way: they are Pre-defined keywords, you can apply as much as you want of them to a single article. A little bit more time consuming then tags, but much more cleaner. A good sample of Labels is the Gmail labeling system.
so now my qustion is: do we have labels in wp??
What you describe as “labels” are much like the already existing “categories” in wordpress.
Totally agreed with jalabiso’s explanation for both two terms “categories” and “tags”
