One of the most powerful tools of Netscape is our tags feature.

Tags are descriptive words you can add to your stories to make them easier to find. For example, a story about a new iPod might have the followings tags: Apple, iPod, mp3, Steve Jobs. All stories for a specific tag can be found via a very basic URL structure, which you can type into your browser's address bar:

http://www.netscape.com/tag/[tag name]

In this example, you would replace [tag name] with whatever specific tag you are looking for; for tags composed of multiple words, you would put a + between the words. For example, the URL for the President Bush tag would be:

http://www.netscape.com/tag/president+bush

When you submit a story to Netscape, make sure that you enter up to 5 descriptive tags separated by commas to each of your stories. Tags that contain multiple words, such as digital audio player do not need to be included within quotation marks. However, for tags that include punctuation, such as XYZ Widgets, Inc., please wrap these in quotations, e.g. "XYZ Widgets, Inc."


Figure 1: When you submit a story or video to Netscape, the tag field appears immediately beneath the Channel drop-down menu.

Adding tags makes your stories easier to find for other members, but tags can also be a great tool for finding the content you are looking for on Netscape or even organizing the stories you submit.

Keep reading after the break for more tips and tricks related to tags...

We're still busy hammering out some of the formatting for this blog, but since everyone is launching sites in Beta these days, we thought we'd do the same in the interest of getting ourselves out there.

Check back over our posts from the past few days and you'll see a welcome to the blog post, a post announcing our new video feature, a post announcing Alexia's coverage of a green event, and a Did you know? post. Karina and I are going to start highlighting little known features of Netscape in these segments to help everyone learn how to use the site to its fullest.

Please let us know if you have any questions, suggestions, or recommendations of what you'd like to see on this blog. We're here to serve the community of Netscape members.

Note: Beta = the feed isn't working yet. ;-) Fixed!... still in beta, though...

One of the great features of the site that helps you find great content that hasn't yet made it to the homepage is the Tracker, which can be found in the right side bar of the site. If you click on the "Watch LIVE" link on the tracker you will be taken to this page where you will see everything that is going on on the site, updated every 45 seconds.

Notice the tabs at the top of this page. You can track All Activity, Stories, Comments, New Users (we're currently up to 62,465 members!), Votes, and even find Anchor Commentary.

You can also quickly jump to find new stories by clicking on the "Find new stories" link in your member box at the top of the right-hand column.

UPDATE: Now videos are in the Tracker too.

Check after the jump for a full preview shot of the Tracker.