In many situations, you'd think the easiest solution would be the best. Saving time and getting the job done quickly. This, however, just isn't the case if you're going to allow users to use a simple text field for managing keywords or tags. A tagging system relies on making it easy for the user, but it may not be so easy to implement itself. Here are a few questions you might be faced with.

What happens when one user enters "devloper" on record 1 and another user enters the correctly spelled "developer" on record 2? How do you make it easy to rapidly enter multiple keywords with a high degree of accuracy? What about removing keywords from this simple text field? Does the user just get to remove any portion of a whole word - causing a data nightmare? What about those commas being used to separate the keywords? Do you really trust users to get it right all the time? Can users be trusted to add multi-word keywords and get the commas correct?

The answer to all of those questions comes down to you. As the developer controlling the situation, you get to make sure the data is entered as desired and is still easy for the end user. And, in that case, the system is going to be a bit more complex than using a simple text field to allow users to enter whatever they want.

The video and technique file for this topic showcase a wonderful system of being able to enter and remove keywords used for data segmentation. If you've implemented a tagging system prior, then make sure and take a look at this one because you may find some UI niceness that's just too good to pass up!

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