Geeky Ramblings

WP Tags to Technorati

I’ve written my first useful Wordpress plugin!

In Wordpress 2.3, they introduced a new tagging feature … which I think is pretty nice … but I haven’t found a plug-in that lets you turn those tags into Technorati tags.

I’ve played around with a few dinky little plug-in’s in the past … but they were all for my own personal use. This time, however, I decided to try my hand at making a plug-in that could be used by more people.

So, I’m pleased to announce “WP Tags to Technorati”.

You can see the plug-in in action below.

Installation

Upload the full directory into your wp-content/plugins directory
Activate it in the Plugin options

(pretty simple, eh?)

Frequently Asked Questions

Works it with all WordPress versions?

This version works with WordPress 2.3.0 and better. It’s dependent on the new
Wordpress tagging feature.

Download

Here

Revision History

0.1	Initial release
0.2	Added comment to the markup so it’s clear that the plugin is being invoked.
0.3	Added classes to the generated links and fixed problem with single tags.
0.4	Properly encode the generated tag url.
0.5	Added options panel so “Technorati Tags” label can be customized.
0.6	Added the ability to not include the tags in the footer, so they could be manually put in a theme.
0.7	Added a control to allow technorati tags to open in a new window. Also added version identifier to comment.
0.8	Reformatted setup panel. tags2tech_get_tags_links() no longer needs to be echo’ed. When invoked directly, it will output the links directly. It will still work with the echo method though.

150 Comments

By jayne d'Arcy, 13 November 2007 @ 7:40 pm

I’ve activated the plugin but I see no changes to my tags. They’re still just working internally. How will this change my tags? Does it conflict with the Simple_Tags plugin which manages tags?
By david, 13 November 2007 @ 7:42 pm

Once activated, you should see “Technorati Tags: ” at the bottom of your post with the list of tags.

It shouldn’t conflict with SimpleTags (I used that too), but the appearance will be very similar. If you look at http://www.geekyramblings.org/2007/11/10/wordpress-tags-to-technorati/ you’ll see the plugin in action.
By jayne d'Arcy, 13 November 2007 @ 9:26 pm

Hi David, I have your plugin activated and just to double check I have deactivated Simple Tags. It still isn’t showing. Do I need to put something in my template? Here’s a post with a tag of memes:
http://www.jaynedarcy.us/2007/11/13/if-i-were-president/
By david, 13 November 2007 @ 9:44 pm

Jayne:

Download the current version … I’ve added some code to put comment markings in the generated html. Give that a try. FWIW: The page you indicated has the simple tags plug-in was still active, but that shouldn’t have any impact.
By jayne d'Arcy, 13 November 2007 @ 10:41 pm

I’ve deactivated SimpleTags by Broobles, Simple Tag Amaury Baumer. I’ll keep those deactivated. I thought it might be that I’m using a Sandbox-based theme and so I switched it to the default and still didn’t get technorati tags. Sorry to be such trouble, but I’d really love to use this plugin.
By Bev, 16 November 2007 @ 1:44 pm

Jayne sent me here and I’m glad she did. I’ve got your plug-in up and running. Love it.
By René van Gellekom, 22 November 2007 @ 7:10 am

Great plugin. Thank you very much
By wwstewart, 22 November 2007 @ 9:24 pm

Seems to be working on my site. I only wish I could use it on my regular blog (it’s hosted on wordpress.com, so I can’t upload to it). I also linked to it, just so you know.

Nice plugin! Keep ‘em coming.
By Ken Savage, 26 November 2007 @ 4:07 pm

Nice David but is there a way to put the tags anywhere within the loop right now?
By david, 26 November 2007 @ 5:26 pm

is there a way to put the tags anywhere within the loop right now?

Not currently … but let me see if I can put something together.
By Blayde, 27 November 2007 @ 1:48 pm

Forgive the complete noobness of this question, but do the tags get added to Technorati ie, does technorati pick them up and link back to your site if they are clicked, or are they just tags…
By david, 27 November 2007 @ 1:51 pm

do the tags get added to Technorati ie, does technorati pick them up and link back to your site if they are clicked, or are they just tags

I think the default ping that Wordpress does should include Technorati automatically. I’m pretty sure that Ping-o-matic does.

My plug-in doesn’t do the ping, because it’s invoked every time the post is displayed. You only want a ping to occur when the post is initially made.
By Blayde, 27 November 2007 @ 1:54 pm

Okay, so the tags i added originally to the post SHOULD be on Technorati anyway…

Thanks
By david, 27 November 2007 @ 1:58 pm

Okay, so the tags i added originally to the post SHOULD be on Technorati anyway

Maybe … depends on how they were referenced. I don’t know if Technorati will pick up on the link if they were not links to Techorati initially.
By Jonathan Beeston, 4 December 2007 @ 3:52 pm

This is a great plugin, but it’s wrecked my RSS feed unfortunately. When it’s activated, the array included as comments in the HTML is picked up in the feed e.g.

object(stdClass)#162 (11) { ["term_id"]=> string(2) "32" ["name"]=> string(7) "adsense" ["slug"]=> string(7) "adsense" ["term_group"]=> string(1) "0" ["term_order"]=> string(1) "0" ["term_taxonomy_id"]=> ...

Why do you think this is? I’ve had to switch the plugin off for the moment. Perhaps it’s my template? Thanks.
By david, 4 December 2007 @ 4:06 pm

Grab the latest version. It doesn’t have the debug code.
By Jonathan Beeston, 4 December 2007 @ 4:40 pm

Thanks David, that’s fixed it.
By Joe Horn, 9 December 2007 @ 12:29 pm

Hello,

I found that this plugin will display extra info before post body.
I guess, those information is displayed for debugging, right?

Maybe we should add this line of code just before $tag_url be defined:
define('DEBUG', false);
and let the code for displaying debugging information to be like these line:
if ( DEBUG ) { echo ""; }
Does it will be better?

Anyway, this is a WONDERFUL plugin.
Thanks for your development and sharing.
By Joe Horn, 9 December 2007 @ 12:30 pm

let the code for displaying debugging information to be like these line:
if ( DEBUG ) { echo ""; }
By david, 9 December 2007 @ 12:32 pm

The debug code has been removed from the latest version. Grab it here.
By keith, 12 December 2007 @ 9:43 am

hi,

I just install this plugin. But, when I post, the tags generated with this kind of link :

http://www.giveawaywebsite.com/‘http://technorati.com/tag/business+client/’

Its seem doesn’t work with that link.
you can see this post at http://www.giveawaywebsite.com/free-website-blog/internet-business-leverage/keep-your-e-business-engaged-via-e-mail

How to fix this?

Thanks!
By david, 12 December 2007 @ 10:10 am

It looks like PHP ‘magic quotes’ is enabled for your server. If you can turn off magic quotes, the problem should be be fixed. I’ll see if I can find a way to programatically handle it. Checkout http://us2.php.net/manual/en/security.magicquotes.disabling.php for more information.
By keith, 12 December 2007 @ 10:55 am

hi david,

thanks for the solution. I had found the other plugin which is interfere the wp-to-technorati plug-in. The plugin which intefere that is WPCashLinksLite, which is a Plugin to search for keywords and make them linkables (http://www.wp-pluginsdx.com/index.php/category/wp-cashlinksdx-wordpress-plugin)

How to solve this if I want to use both of these plugins?

Thanks in advance!
By david, 12 December 2007 @ 12:40 pm

How to solve this if I want to use both of these plugins?

First off, try disabling PHP magic_quotes on your server.

Since the plug-in you mention is commercial … I can’t look at it to see what it’s doing.

Sorry, but that’s all I can suggest.
By Thorleif Wiik, 15 December 2007 @ 6:21 pm

very nice plugin !
By Benjamin, 18 December 2007 @ 3:39 pm

i somehow dont get how does this work.must i fill up my tag’s wat the bottom when im making/writing a post?or does this plugin autosearch my post for words to be put under tags.

im not very sure how to use technorati as well, must i fill up the tags on the site or does it actually scans my site for tag words?
By david, 18 December 2007 @ 3:47 pm

must i fill up my tag’s wat the bottom when im making/writing a post?

Yes

does this plugin autosearch my post for words to be put under tags.

No.

im not very sure how to use technorati as well, must i fill up the tags on the site or does it actually scans my site for tag words?

When you ping Technorati (either individually or using a service like pingomatic), Technorati will analyze your post for the links. Your post will then show up under the tag categories you specified on Technorati.
By Benjamin, 18 December 2007 @ 5:54 pm

so is there a widget that has a label technorati tag or something?cos at the moment there is already a tag cloud widget , and i dont really see a diff activating your plugin.am i missing something?
By david, 18 December 2007 @ 6:28 pm

The tag cloud doesn’t create links to Technorati.
By Benjamin, 18 December 2007 @ 7:04 pm

so where or how do i make the tags appear?im sure there has to be some code or script i have to put somewhere,no?
By david, 18 December 2007 @ 7:14 pm

so where or how do i make the tags appear?im sure there has to be some code or script i have to put somewhere

As long as your post has tags, and the plug-in is enabled, the technorati links will show up automatically.
By Jonathan Beeston, 19 December 2007 @ 8:11 am

Hi David,

Any chance you could make the colon before the tags optional? I’ve encoded the label in header tags, so the colon appears on it’s own before the tags and looks out of place. Have a look at my blog and you’ll see what I mean.

I realise I could easily edit the code to remove it, but other users might benefit too.

Thanks,

Jon.
By david, 19 December 2007 @ 1:52 pm

Any chance you could make the colon before the tags optional?

I think that’s doable … although the code isn’t trivial at this point (existing values need to be updated, but only if they haven’t been updated before).

Check back in a few days and I might have something.
By Ken Savage, 22 December 2007 @ 1:47 am

David, I got your code up and running. Thanks man. Great plugin and much needed too.
By Chris, 27 December 2007 @ 9:37 pm

David,

So i have installed the pluggin and noticed that it has replaced the tagline with technorati tags. I quite the newby so this question might sound amature, What ui am wondering is will this now disable the previous tsgs and only refernce to technorati.? i have noticed that google has already indexed some of my tags.
By david, 28 December 2007 @ 9:35 am

it has replaced the tagline with technorati tags

Not sure I follow … my plug-in replaces nothing … it appends the technorati tags to the post. If I look on your blog, I saw just the technorati tags generated by my plug-in.
By Chris, 28 December 2007 @ 9:49 am

I knew when i wrote that it would be a little confusing.. originally that line of techno tags you just saw used to be just tags.. so now that your plugin has converted them to technocrati tags, does that cancel out what the original tags did for me?
By david, 28 December 2007 @ 10:17 pm

Chris: I really don’t know what to tell you here … my plug-in doesn’t replace, convert, or cancel anything out. My plug-in simply appends the technorati tags to the end of the post.
By Jason, 17 January 2008 @ 10:03 pm

Is their a php function i can use to customize the placement in my template?
By david, 18 January 2008 @ 7:55 am

Is their a php function i can use to customize the placement in my template?

Yes, use this:
echo tags2tech_get_tags_links();
By Monkeyskull, 3 February 2008 @ 7:52 pm

Thanks for a great tool, David. You might want to edit your ReadMe doc to be very explicit about how to put the function call in a page template — I didn’t know you had to use ‘echo’ and kept trying all sorts of other things, and some people might not know to wrap the echo function call in php tags.

Thanks again!!!
By doppjuice, 3 February 2008 @ 9:48 pm

Perfect. Thank you!
By David Jacques-Louis, 10 February 2008 @ 8:14 pm

What tags have you in the sidebar yourself? What is it called?
By WebGeek, 20 February 2008 @ 7:21 am

Great plugin! I was looking for something like this and found your plugin. Works like a charm!
By homikus, 4 March 2008 @ 9:00 am

Thanks, man! Works great and and does a great work!
By lsl, 12 March 2008 @ 2:53 pm

I’ve installed the plugin and it’s working, but now I seem to have two sets of tags displaying. What do I need to do?

http://www.maxinesniderinc.com/blog/
By david, 12 March 2008 @ 3:01 pm

I’ve installed the plugin and it’s working, but now I seem to have two sets of tags displaying.

You’ll need to update your theme to not display the tags.

The tag prefixed with “Technorati tags:” is the one supplied by the plug-in, the other set of tags is provided by the theme.
By Gilgemesh, 14 March 2008 @ 9:37 am

Love the plugin. It has made adding the Tags much more efficient than what I was researching. The only issue I have is I am getting the Technorati tags info twice in my posts. I want it to show up in only 1 place, after our internal site tags. Any ideas? I’m not real PHP proficient, but I can find my way around a bit. Here’s a sample post:

http://blog.heathensonline.com/2008/03/13/full-on-zombie-fun/

Thanks for any help in advance.
By Gilgemesh, 14 March 2008 @ 9:50 am

Bah, I got it figured.

I might have tried looking first huh.
By Franca Richard, 19 March 2008 @ 6:06 am

Really useful plugin, thanks!
By Molli, 21 March 2008 @ 1:28 pm

Many thanks to you, David. This is a wonderful plugin and I truly appreciate all the work you put into creating it and the generosity in sharing it with all of us. You’re a gem! Thanks again
By Reese, 22 March 2008 @ 4:30 pm

I’m trying to add the tags to my single.php because that’s where my regular tags show, but I can’t figure it out as I know next to nothing about php. I unchecked the box in the option and copied tags2tech_get_tags_links() into the php under my regular tags, but I didn’t know what to put before or after it, I tried <? php tags2tech_get_tags_links() ;?&rgt; with and without the semicolon. Should it be something else?
By Mara Mei, 8 April 2008 @ 2:11 am

I’ve been looking plugin for a long. Thank you.
By Rolf Erikson, 23 April 2008 @ 12:17 pm

I have activated your plugin. It seems to work but when I look at Technorati they have only seen the category as a tag. Have I done someting wrong?
By Chris, 2 May 2008 @ 7:41 am

Hi! I have installed the plug in to WordPress 2.51 but am getting a fatal error when I click the Technorati Tags tab in Settings. Any words of wisdom as to what I might have done wrong?
By david, 2 May 2008 @ 7:51 am

Sorry for the long delay on this reply … work’s been a bit hectic.

Reese: Can you email me your single.php file?

Rolf: Can you point me to an example?

Chris: Can you tell me more about the error you are getting? Perhaps the error log entry from your web server?

david
By Chris, 2 May 2008 @ 9:07 am

My error is

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: is_plugin_page() in /data/members/paid/l/a/larkrise.net/htdocs/www/wordpress/wp-admin/technoratitagging.php on line 65

I have no idea how to get an error log from the server- shows how little I know about anything!
By david, 2 May 2008 @ 1:25 pm

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: is_plugin_page() in /data/members/paid/l/a/larkrise.net/htdocs/www/wordpress/wp-admin/technoratitagging.php on line 65

Chris:

Do you have any other technorati tagging plug-in’s installed? That file isn’t one that is included in my plug-in.

A real plug-in should be installed the wp-content/plugins directory, not the wp-admin directory.

david
By Chris, 2 May 2008 @ 2:46 pm

No, no other plugin. I think I must have copied the plug in to wp-admin in error and then copied to wp-content/plugins. I have deleted the folder that was in admin. The technorati tagging tab in settings now returns the error: Not Found
The requested URL /wordpress/wp-admin/technoratitagging.php was not found on this server. I think I have made a bit of a mess of this!
By david, 2 May 2008 @ 2:56 pm

Well, the file technoratitagging.php is not part of my plug-in, so I really don’t know what to tell you.

The only file used by my plug-in would be wp-content/plugins/wp-tags-to-technorati/wp-tags-to-technorati.php
By Chris, 2 May 2008 @ 3:39 pm

Hi David. OK, apologies needed: somehow, although I wanted your plugin and thought that that was what I had downloaded- in fact what I got was technoratitagging! No wonder it was confusing for both of us. Now I have yours, do not have the other and everything is wonderful!!
By Greg, 4 May 2008 @ 6:28 am

Hey, I’m just curious why this plugin is necessary. If you use the built-in tagging functionality in Wordpress and ping pingomatic on posting (which is the default behavior), Technorati picks up those tags. What am I missing?
By david, 5 May 2008 @ 8:47 am

I’m just curious why this plugin is necessary. If you use the built-in tagging functionality in Wordpress and ping pingomatic on posting (which is the default behavior), Technorati picks up those tags. What am I missing?

My plug-in just generates the links TO Technorati for you. It does nothing to actually ping Technorati (the standard ping mechanism built into WP, as you said, does that for you).

It offers the reader an easy way to find other posts, on other blogs, that are similarly tagged.
By Greg, 7 May 2008 @ 5:32 pm

Gotcha. Makes sense. Thanks for the response!
By Rolf Erikson, 12 May 2008 @ 1:55 pm

Hi David,

Regarding my comment on April 23rd, 2008 you asked for an example.
What I mean is the different tags from your plugin,(example http://www.blognyheter.se/coaching/?p=385 ,and the tags at technorati, example http://technorati.com/posts/APpgLjc1E4vnvqPDg3gsPDhBhUyJ49YrUVrEB9nSCWY=
By david, 12 May 2008 @ 3:46 pm

Rolf:

Looks like it’s working OK to me.

You specified ‘framgång, happy, lycka, values, värdering’ as the tags on the post … and ‘Coaching, analys, framgång’ as the categories. The plug-in generated links for the tags to technorati.

That’s all my plug-in does … not sure what Technorati is using to determine the tags.
By Rolf Erikson, 13 May 2008 @ 4:03 am

OK, I understand noe how your plugin works.

Zoudry blog writer has solved it by putting the tags after the text like this:

<!– Tag links generated by Zoundry Blog Writer. Do not manually edit. http://www.zoundry.com –>
Technorati : <a href=”http://technorati.com/tag/entreprenör” rel=”nofollow”>entreprenör</a>, <a href=”http://technorati.com/tag/framgång” rel=”nofollow”>framgång</a>, <a href=”http://technorati.com/tag/napoleon hill” rel=”nofollow”>napoleon hill</a>, <a href=”http://technorati.com/tag/rik” rel=”nofollow”>rik</a>

You can see my post here: http://www.blognyheter.se/coaching/?p=345 and Technorati here: http://technorati.com/posts/mfUNwx9B8/UKnbr5GYQqftyOsarvjUOrowz6HTnJS9Q=

As you see Technoratis has the same tags.
By david, 13 May 2008 @ 2:30 pm

Rolf:

It looks like you aren’t using WP’s tagging function … as my plug-in is not emitting any tags on the post (the space between the comments my plug-in generates is empty.
By Rolf Erikson, 13 May 2008 @ 11:59 pm

That´s right. I used this before changing to your plugin. I just gave you an example how Technorati determines the tags.
By Joe Perez, 19 June 2008 @ 11:01 pm

Just wanted to say thanks for the cool plug-in
By moserw, 7 July 2008 @ 5:48 am

Works like a charm. Simple to use and setup too is easy. Thanks for sharing and making it so easy. Swell idea.
By JM, 17 July 2008 @ 10:23 am

I was wondering how I could add the rel=”nofollow” to each tag. Could you explain where I could place this so when it generates a tag it automatically nofollows the tags.
By david, 17 July 2008 @ 10:28 am

I was wondering how I could add the rel=”nofollow” to each tag

Hmmm … not something I originally considered, but I guess it could be added.
By Robert@PNG, 16 August 2008 @ 10:33 pm

Thanks for the plugin. I do have one question – is there anyway of excluding the generated Technorati tags from my blogs RSS feed? Ideally I want to display the Technorati tags on a single post but exclude these tags from my RSS feed.
Is this possible?
By david, 17 August 2008 @ 4:10 am

is there anyway of excluding the generated Technorati tags from my blogs RSS feed?

yeah, that should be possible.

Give me a few days to work on it though … kind of busy with other stuff at the moment.
By Robert@PNG, 17 August 2008 @ 4:58 am

Thanks for responding to my comment,

Will hear from you shortly,

R
By degra, 20 August 2008 @ 5:15 pm

Great plugin! It works very well in WP 2.6.1 and I like the customizable text: I put the URL to an image into the box, and the image (Technorati small logo) is there, before the tags!
By david, 7 September 2008 @ 12:47 pm

Robert: Download version 1.0 … I’ve implemented the requested functionality.
By Robert@PNG, 7 September 2008 @ 3:09 pm

Hi David,

Onya mate!
Thanks for the mod.
Will give it a test soon.

Cheers,

R
By Alberto Rodriguez, 13 September 2008 @ 1:52 pm

Hi David,

First of all, what a great plugin. Simple, neat but effective. The way things should be.

Second, I’d like to know what do I have to do in my theme to place the Tech-tags ONLY in the “simple post page”. I just want to show the tags in the post page, not the main (index) page.

Regards,

AR
By david, 14 September 2008 @ 10:52 am

Alberto: I’ll see what I can do. Shouldn’t be hard. Check back later this week.
By david, 20 September 2008 @ 11:38 am

Alberto: Check out version 1.01 … should do what you are looking for.
By Frank Richard, 26 September 2008 @ 1:14 am

Thanks for the mod, really thankful!
By Alberto Rodriguez, 26 September 2008 @ 11:58 am

Dude,

The plugins works like a charm!

Thanks.

AR
By Fialho, 7 October 2008 @ 4:46 am

Hi,

I’ve installed your plug in and it works, but it places the links in a place where I don’t want to. So I disabled the footer option in admin section and add in the place where I wanted. Nevertheless nothing happens…..can you please help me out ?
By david, 10 October 2008 @ 1:52 pm

I disabled the footer option in admin section and add in the place where I wanted. Nevertheless nothing happens

Can you email me the PHP source of the theme page that you put the ‘tags2tech_get_tags_links()’ call?
By Intelliginix, 26 December 2008 @ 5:09 pm

Hi, I am new to blogging. Could someone please explain to me what are Technorati tags, and what’s their purpose?
By Bob, 15 January 2009 @ 1:55 pm

Hi David – great work!
One small problem is that I now have two sets of tags below my post. Check out at the bottom http://cli.gs/a31Ddp there are “technorati tags” and then there is a duplicate set of just regular “tags.”
I’m running WP 2.7. Any thoughts?
Thanks – Bob
By david, 15 January 2009 @ 1:58 pm

Bob: All I can suggest is that you edit the theme and remove references to “the_tags” in the php code.
By Bob, 15 January 2009 @ 2:10 pm

Thanks. Will try it.
By Caleb, 27 January 2009 @ 5:44 pm

I too am having difficulty understanding the need for this plugin:

Tech crawls my post from a ping,then finds your plugin’s tag links which then allows the reader to read another post on another site located in Technorati…where’s the benefit for my site in this?

I mean Tech is going to find my regular tags anyway, so what’s the point…please clarify
By david, 27 January 2009 @ 6:30 pm

Caleb: The point is not to help Technorati find your posts … the point is to help your visitors find similarly tagged posts on Technorati.
By Stephen, 17 March 2009 @ 3:32 am

Thank you – I’ve just downloaded and installed the plugin and updated some of my old posts. I’m really to keen to see the effect on my blog traffic over time!
By 8pet, 11 May 2009 @ 7:54 am

That was great plugin,I like it!