Tags are a highly useful aspect of the forum and shouldn’t be confused with categories. Categories are groups of discussions with a common topic, like the different sections of a newspaper. Categories are a great way to find content that you enjoy reading and posting about, but they are limited.
There are many different categories to choose from already, but what if your topic could fit into two different categories at the same time? That’s where tags come in. Tags are labels that you apply to your posts to help other people find them.
For example, in a forum about film entertainment, you can categorize a post about a TV show as Television, while also tagging it as both a comedy and a drama. If you only had categories, you would have to choose either comedy or drama.
The versatility of tags means that you can label your posts for multiple concepts (e.g. programming language, product, function, etc.) so that other users can find and read your post without having to dig through several different categories.
To follow or mute tags:
- In the Preferences menu under Notifications in the left-hand column, click Tags.
- To watch a tag, click the search bar under Watched and choose the tags you want to follow. You will receive email notification of all new posts and topics using those tags.
- To track a tag, click the search bar under Tracked and choose the tags you want to follow. You will see a count of new/unread posts next to the topics.
- To only receive a notification for a first post, click the search bar under Watching First Post and choose the tags you want to follow. You will only receive an email when someone makes the first post in a new topic using those tags.
- To mute a tag, click the search bar under Muted and choose the tags you want to silence. You will not receive any notifications for activity using those tags.
