WordPress Plugin: Get Recommended Tags for WordPress 2.3

The idea of tags has become the standard in today’s blogging and it always surprised me that WordPress didn’t offer tags built directly into their software. As a result, I’ve been an avid user of the Ultimate Tagging Warrior plugin (UTW) for as long as I remember, probably since I made the switch to WordPress in the first place.

With yesterday’s release of WordPress 2.3, the tagging system we have been waiting for was finally built directly into WordPress. The problem is that this new tagging feature is very basic and won’t compare to popular tagging plugins UTW and Simple Tagging.

My personal preference would be to use the tagging system built into WordPress 2.3, but still have that added functionality that some of those plugins offer. It looks like Ryan felt the same why, but unlike me, he luckily has the skills to make it happen!

Yesterday Ryan unveiled a new plugin he called Recommended Tags, which uses WordPress 2.3’s built-in tagging system, but will actually give you tag recommendations on your Write panel. It includes some features that are needed for this type of plugin, including the ability to locate plural tags, or useful tags that maybe only share one word (Ryan gives the examples of your article mentioning Vista but your tag is Windows Vista or your post mentioning download, but your tag is downloads).

Currently Ryan has this early version available, but he gave me the heads up that he is hard at work on the next version, which will give the user more flexibility in the Options panel, as well as add a type-ahead autocompletion feature which sounds exciting.

I have gone ahead and added it to my Best of: WordPress Plugins list and encourage anyone to give it a try that has made the upgrade to WordPress 2.3.

Update: Ryan has just posted that an update was made to this plugin to include the additional features discussed above!