the tags look terrible.
they gots to go.

i never used tags before moving to wordpress, but after playing with them for awhile to figure out how they work and what purpose they served, i started putting the tags for my own reference and so the articles could be found if/when someone's looking for something along those lines - it is nice to get a little traffic besides my family from time to time.

but --and maybe i'm just neurotic and insecure and afraid of looking like i want attention, since the kid who wants love never gets it-- that doesn't mean that when someone is reading my page i want them to see the various tags i've gotten all tag-happy with while trying to figure out where something belonged (hmmm.... is it more life or more love? or maybe it's porn? hmmm...)

i don't like the look on the theme, and i don't like the invasion into the privacy of my thought process. if i had wanted tags i would have choosen to display them. obviously i didn't, a big part of why i chose that theme. and now i just want to be able to CHOOSE whether or not to display them (be it the main page or on individual posts) without having to buy an ungrade that supposedly this isn't pushing, or delete them all and remove my low-profile self completely from the radar.

for that matter, all themes should have the option to display or not, especially on the front page. it should be under reading settings, the same as you would choose what the front page should be, how many posts to display, or whether to show a summary or full articles, etc. it's a BASIC display setting choice!

grrr.

ok, maybe that was three cents.

lots of chaoticsoul users chose that theme because they liked its clean appearance, and tags and categories at the bottom of every post destroy this clean and elegant look. besides that, there's widgets for both, and most bloggers use them.

what gets people really angry is the missing opportunity to chose what to display on the blog, and to have to pay to be able to chose. i cursed wordpress in very colourful language while i sent the payment for the upgrade...

I asked why there were no tags on my posts, 'cos I like them. Looks like I'm in a very small minority when it comes to Chaotic Soul. Sorry people but they are useful if not overused. Shoot me if you must but surely you don't mind a bit of dusting and Hoovering?

even though i swallowed the bitter pill and upgraded to get rid of this "feature", i hope wordpress stuff uses some common sense instead thinking they know better than their users and customers what's best for them and their blogs.

I was out drinking with one of the major Drupal developers in the world and we bet how long it would take me to reach the front page of Google for "camel cheese." I said less than 48 hours...I went home, posted, tagged it "Camel Cheese" and woke up to be #3 on Google.

I would still prefer to be able to switch the things off! WP, are you listening? (Probably not.)

Seriously, no. Categories and tags on WP.com are given major prominence on Google. Take it from someone who's won several worldwide contests about this.

Another thing that I am worried about is that if there are several posts with the same tags on the same page (it would typically be 'photography' in my blog), the page might be penalised by search engines for junk content. (The same goes for making the tags the same colour as the background, by the way.)

"Hi Martin,
All of the themes display the tags. If you really feel that strongly about it, you can purchase the Custom CSS upgrade and hide the tags and category display."

And i really thought that the point was "not selling the Custom CSS upgrade". ;)
This is not selling stuff, this is blackmailing!

I am looking forward for the "HUGE marble of doom" in the middle of every post in my blog.

The reason I chose WordPress was because it seemed to give us the most control over the appearance and content, and one of the main reasons I chose Chaotic Soul, was because it had less clutter.

I often like to write many posts with just a sentence or two commenting on something i then link to. Now I can end up having more text in the "posted in" than I do in my actual post.

We bloggers like to control the content and appearance of our blogs. I thought WordPress understood that. The more you clutter up our blogs with things YOU think we should have, the less freedom we have to choose our own look and content.

Why do I need categories and tags in the sidebar if WordPress is going to put them into every post? Heck! why not just put everything into every post! You could put archives, a search bar, and a calandar at the bottom of each post too! From a design perspective its the difference between Windows and Apple. WordPress is like windows, insisting on 14 different ways to do the same thing, we want apple, with just 1 straightforward, simple and clean way of doing each thing. And that definately isnt achieved by repeating things at the bottom of every single post.

If WordPress really wants to make blogging better for us, give us MORE choice, not less! Let us turn this clutter off!

now, i apologized for my harsh tone, and i can tolerate the new styled tags and stuff. but that doesn't mean i like it. it's fine that wordpress thinks every blog should show tags and categories, but we have widgets for both. and most blogs with this theme which i know use these widgets. and who's not using them, does it on purpose. i still would prefer my blogs with the clean style, and i would highly appreciate it if we are given the possibility to chose if we want to show tags and categories or not.

i hope the statement about no attempt to sell more upgrades is true and we will get a choice. as sunny said, if we can chose related links or not, it shouldn't be a big thing to give this opportunity for tags and categories as well.