To begin with, an explanation. A tag is something used by a site to describe entries, posts, photographs, content... anything. They help search engines like Google or Yahoo. They help actual real life people when they search. On the whole, they're pretty handy things to have and use.
So, therefore, a tag cloud, like the one on the main page of this blog, is a group of tags bunched together. The good thing about this is that the more frequently used tags are shown larger than the other which helps people find out what the site is about in a quick and easy way. Something that's not that easy with this particular place of random thoughts...
On the right hand side of the main page, you can see my tag cloud which shows the 20 most used tags on this site.
For the past two days no less, I have been going through each of the 180 posts previous to this and giving them tags based on what they're about - I've also given every entry a tag for the year and month in which they were written as well as any other times that are mentioned or linked to in any way... this has lead to the interesting years of 1062 (the post with a game to play) and 1686 (Daniel Fahrenheit) to be included. Actually, "Daniel Fahrenheit" is one of my personal favourite pieces of writing...
Currently there are 487 different tags for this site (which may be added to with this very post) and the 20 most popular are:
- 2005 (75) - clearly a productive year. I must've had nothing to do!
- linkage (66) - this is any post that has a link to another site somewhere in it or, occasionally, just references another site.
- August (44) - another prolific time. I rarely go on holiday, but have time off work... the joys of teaching!
- 2007 (43) - surprisingly, given that I've worked full time for the majority of this year, 2007 is the second most post-filled year!
- 2004 (39) - don't remember much about 2004. This site was relaunched then, on 29th February (I'm fast approaching my 4th birthday)
- 2006 (35) - quite amazing how the years vary with the number of posts... this is the year with the least.
- October (27) - gone up by one with this post, but I wonder why the onset of autumn makes me write more?
- merged blogs (26) - posts which were once part of other places, such as my short lived Formula One blog, or the OK Go thing, have this tag to collect them together. This certainly won't get any larger. My lesson has been learned.
- photos (23) - any post with a photo, or a reference to a photo. Fairly straight forward!
- April (19) - another post filled month. Easter?!
- February (18) - can't explain this at all...
- music (17) - I'm quite shocked this is this low. After all music is one of the most important things in my life (hence the music player on each page...)
- March (16) - again, no idea why I write a lot in March.
- videos (15) - any post with a video in it, or a link to a video on sites like YouTube.
- download (14) - any post with a download on it. Mainly these are videos, but it does include the five OK Go podcasts.
- July (14) - summer? These trends are odd to me...
- Formula One (13) - I have gone a little overboard on this lately... but there are some sprinkled around the past as well!
- May (13) - the month Aryton Senna died, so that accounts for one. The other 12, I have no idea about.
- OK Go (13) - mainly from the OK Go blog. But also contains links to the majority of their videos...
- September (12) - back to school. So posts taper off. Still in the top 20 tags though.
Not hugely interesting reading, I agree. But I hope that by clicking some of those links above (which all open in a new window by the way) you will find something that interests you.
Happy exploring!
[Note: the Tag Cloud is currently not working and so has been removed from the site for now. - HSX, February 2008]
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