Usability issue with WordPress

Writing a blog is a new thing for me. I started blogging back in November, and since then have really liked being able to document new topics that I have learned and other experiences.

When I’m finished with writing a post, I like to go over the post and look up specific topics or special unique characteristics about the post and add them to the list of tags for the post. This is nice because it allows posts to be categorized easily and also allows another way to summarize what a post is about.

In the WordPress interface, there is a textbox for entering in tags. You enter in the tags and separate each one with a comma. When you are done entering in the tags, you click the button labeled ‘Add’. After doing that, then I will proceed to clicking on the button labeled ‘Publish’.

What happens if you don’t hit the ‘Add’ button. Nothing. Except for the fact that none of your tags are saved and your post is published. I’ve done this now countless times, and there could be many ways to fix this issue.

But why don’t I hit the ‘Add’ button sometimes? Could it be that I got distracted while entering in tags and when I came back to my senses I realized that I wanted to publish? Did I get lost looking through my post for a mention that I thought I had included? Is the ‘Add’ button too small and easy to skip over?

I’m not really sure to any of those hypotheses, but I do have some ideas for fixing this.

• When I click ‘Publish’ and there are tags that haven’t been “added”, I should get some kind of prompt that I may be losing this information.
• When I type a comma, the previous tag should be “added” but remain in the textbox so I can change it or remove it and it would subsequently delete it from the “added” tags. If I move away from the textbox, then a timer could proc and see there is still a tag that wasn’t added and “add” it.

The first would be the easiest to implement and the second would be the toughest. If somebody came up with a different idea and got it implemented in WordPress I would be just as happy.

Just don’t design software that allows for me to lose my data easily.