Manage your tag vocabulary

Posts on your site carry tags, and every tag comes from one shared list rather than whatever a writer happens to type that day. The Tags screen, in the admin sidebar beside Posts, Pages, and Library, is where that list lives. This guide covers viewing it, adding a tag, renaming one, retiring one, and what happens to a post that already carries a tag you retire.

• Viewing your tags
• Adding a tag
• Renaming a tag
• Retiring a tag
• What a retired tag leaves behind
• Adding a tag already in use
• Saving your changes

Viewing your tags

Open Tags and you see every entry in the shared list, one row each, with a count of how many tags you have in total. Each row shows the display name, the short slug it’s stored as underneath, and how many posts currently carry it. A tag with no posts reads Unused.

The display name lives only on this screen. A post’s own details panel shows and stores the slug directly. That slug is the string checked against a post and written into its file.

Adding a tag

Type a name in the field at the top of the screen and press Add tag. As you type, the screen shows the slug your name is stored as, derived automatically by lowercasing the name and turning spaces and punctuation into hyphens: “Snow Report” becomes snow-report. You don’t choose the slug yourself.

A name built entirely from punctuation has nothing to derive a slug from, and the screen says so rather than adding an empty entry. A name that would derive the same slug as a tag you already have is also refused, since two rows storing the same slug would be indistinguishable to a post that carries it. Either way, the space under the field explains the problem before you press Add tag.

Renaming a tag

Click into a row’s name and edit it directly, the same field the list already shows you. This changes only the display name on this screen. The stored slug underneath never changes once a tag exists. A post’s own details panel and every post file keep showing and storing that same slug, untouched by the rename. Renaming “Snow Report” to “Snow Reports” updates the label here, on this screen, without touching a single post file or the tag picker editors use when tagging a post.

Retiring a tag

Each row carries a delete control at its right edge, but it only works on a tag no post is using. The moment a tag’s count reads anything but zero, that control turns inactive, and its label names the count. A post still points at that slug, and the screen will not delete a tag while a post is using it. Remove the tag from every post that carries it first, in each post’s own details panel, and once its count reaches zero here, the delete control opens up.

What a retired tag leaves behind

Retiring a tag changes the shared list. It never reaches into a post and removes a tag already checked there, and ordinarily you won’t notice the difference, because the delete control already refuses a tag any post is using. The gap is a post mid-edit: if a writer has a post open with a tag checked but hasn’t saved it even once, the Tags screen has no way to know that post is using the tag, so retiring it there is still allowed. When that post is finally saved, its tag doesn’t vanish. The post’s own details panel still shows the tag, checked, with a small note that it isn’t in your tag list anymore, and it stays exactly as checked as it was until someone clears it.

Adding a tag already in use

A tag can end up on a post without going through this screen first, most often when your site adopts the shared list after posts already carry free-typed tags of their own. Any such tag shows up here, below your main list, under a heading naming it as already on your posts along with how many carry it. Add to list turns it into an ordinary entry. cairn proposes a name from the slug, turning its hyphens back into spaces and capitalizing the first letter, and you can rename it right away if you’d rather call it something else.

Saving your changes

Every add, rename, and retirement you make on this screen stays local to your screen until you press Save changes at the bottom. Nothing is written to your site’s configuration before that, so the list you leave without saving reverts the next time you open Tags. Once you save, the new list applies to every editor. Anyone tagging a post after that sees your additions, and the tags you retired no longer appear in the picker.