Best practices for bulk editing and merging tags

Hey Alex,

Thanks for the info in the link. I found Stiofan’s explanation useful.

I’ll wait for the developers to help explain, but I wanted to make sure my three main questions are clear and get answered:
1) Should we not allow users to add tags to the listings?
2) What are best practices for bulk editing and merging tags in GD CPT? – Regardless of who is adding them.
3) Is there any way to make an autosuggest search or dropdown filter for tags?

You said, “Tags are often used for admin ad hoc groupings of listings.” Is that meant to suggest we shouldn’t be having our users set the tags and only have admins add/manage them? I’ve heard opposing ideas on the GD forum and other places online.

I think documentation on this is needed and it should be less about describing how it works and more about guiding admins on the benefits and drawbacks of the various ways to manage tags in GD CPT.

I pulled together what I’ve read on the forum about the search algorithm and the management of tags:

ADVICE ABOUT USING TAGS ON GD CPT:
– From Paolo (10/1/15): Tags are taxonomy elements used as short keywords. They are one of the elements searched by the search form along with title, categories and content. They allow to browse all listings by a specific tag (just like categories).
– From Stiofan (10/16/18): Tags are user entered info and they are already searched during a normal search, you can also just visit a tags page if thats what u want to filter by. I don’t see the benefit of adding a specific tags filter (in the search), but i’m happy to debate it and how it would work. User replied:

– tags are asked for on the front end, raising expectations
– people do not know which tags to search for, but would if presented with a list (a well known taxonomy problem: one person’s ‘cat’ is another’s ‘feline’ is another’s ‘persian’ but all of them would know to select ‘cat’ from a list)
– you can add lots of other things to the filter but NOT this.Is adding tags to the filter extraordinarily hard for reasons I don’t comprehend?

– From Alex (9/5/18): Tags do not offer autocomplete because Tags are the most common administrative tool used to organize listings and so are hidden from general users. This has been changed in V2 where a form of autocomplete is now available. (https://wpgeodirectory.com/support/topic/adding-tags/)
– From Paolo (10/1/18 ): User said: “Is there anyway to override the location element? I would prefer that a tag searches all articles with that tag as opposed to the tag and specific location….I managed to achieve what I wanted by removing “Add location in urls” in the permalinks. Are there any downsides to this?” | Paolo responded: A downside could be less location focused ranking in Google search results… Other than that it should work.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW GD SEARCH ALGORITHM WORKS:

– The “Search For” field will search for keywords in the listing title, text content, categories and tags. GD will check the entry titles, description and taxonomies (tags and categories) of the listings. The search will not check custom fields or locations. (https://wpgeodirectory.com/downloads/advanced-search-add-on/ AND https://wpgeodirectory.com/docs/gd-search/)
– From Stiofan (10/10/18): The algorithm is weighted for different things, you can think of it like a points system, if the query is the exact same as the title it gets 20 points, if it’s in the title it gets 20 points, if its in the body it gets 3 points for each occurrence, if the listing is featured it gets extra points to boost it. (https://wpgeodirectory.com/support/topic/can-you-please-explain-how-the-search-results-are-prioritised/).
– From Stiofan (11/1/18): Here is the order by query part, so hopefully you can understand things a bit more: ORDER BY ( gd_titlematch * 2 + gd_featured * 5 + gd_exacttitle * 10 + gd_content * 1.5) DESC, wp_posts.post_title asc, wp_geodir_gd_place_detail.is_featured asc, wp_posts.post_date desc (https://wpgeodirectory.com/support/topic/can-you-please-explain-how-the-search-results-are-prioritised/page/2/)

COMMON WAYS TO CHANGE:
– From Guust (9/1/18): To sort by featured first on your Listings pages: GD > Place Settings > Sorting Options tab > Add Featured to the Sorting options on the right, and set to default.

Thanks for the quick reply and explanation, Paolo. Two last questions regarding #2 and #3 from above:

2) Thanks for the tip. I’ll use CSV file import/export. Do you see any obvious problems with using a plugin that merges tags like this one: https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-tags/

3) Could I submit a feature request for the the tags being included in the “Search For” field. I truly have no idea how difficult that would be, but if that’s too complicated would you consider adding a for tag dropdown field in filters? I saw this has been asked before, but not sure if it’s difficult.