A new Travel site, and four uses for tags
Tuesday, 28th November, 2006
Here at Guardian Unlimited we’ve just launched our new Travel site. You’ll be able to read a lot about it in the industry press, but I just wanted to write a little what we’ve done from a technical-managerial point of view.
The project motivation is ideal
The main strands of our business are editorial, commercial and technical. But this is not an editorial project, it’s not a commercial project, and it’s not a technical project. This is something that’s been driven by all of us. Editorially we wanted to improve navigation and bring in more user-generated content. Commercially we wanted to offer more flexible advertising opportunities. And technically we wanted to exploit our content much more.
The new Travel site brings all of us together. One technical force was to exploit keywords, or tags, a bit like those on Del.icio.us and Flickr. This is a very flexible way of categorising content and hence allowing better use of it. Tags, in turn, allow us to generate much more relevant navigation and bring in related readers’ tips from our travel tips site, Been There. For example, if you’re reading about Croatia then you can also see a column headed “Readers’ top tips” which shows readers’ tips specifically about Croatia.
This is also the perfect opportunity to redesign, to better present that information. And just as we can present more relevant tips, so we can present more relevant advertising to our readers. And the redesign also allows us to shape the pages to better fit the ads — the page can close up around a small ad, and expand to comfortably fit a larger one.
Of course, there’s a lot of technical stuff involved, but a technical project is no good for the sake of it. Here, the three strands of our business were driving each other. An ideal scenario.
Aside from much better navigation and contextual advertising, and since this is a technical blog, here are four of the other (smaller) things we’ve used tags for…
There’s a page for every tag
Each tag has its own page! Here’s the page for San Francisco. And here’s the page for skiiing. And here’s one for food and drink trips.
In fact, we’ve got hundreds of tags in the system already — you can see our list of places and activities, for example. And now we’ve automatically got a page for each of them.
There’s an RSS feed for every tag
Okay, not a big leap technically, but terrific for our readers. Top right on each subject page is the RSS link for that subject. If you’re interested in an area of Travel then it’s odds on we write about it. And if we write about it then we’ve got an RSS feed for it. You can get your own personal skiiing feed from Guardian Unlimited.
We can combine tags
Tags also allow us to pull together even more really specific and relevant content. If you’re on the San Francisco page you can find out about food and drink in San Francisco. Or you can investigate short breaks in Portugal. Or water sports in the UK. Well, you get the idea.
Friendly URLs
Our URLs are usually of the form
which is short but a bit obscure. So we’ve taken the opportunity to improve that for the new Travel site. The same article above now has the URL
http://travel.guardian.co.uk/article/2003/jul/05/watersportsholidays.budgettravel.boatingholidays
It’s longer, but we hope it’s also more intuitive. You can clearly see the what it is (an article), the date (5 July 2003), and what it’s about (water sports, budget travel, and boating holidays).
And it’s not just articles which have friendlier URLs. Here’s the URL for the Hamburg tag page:
and here’s the RSS feed for our Hamburg content:
All much easier to deal with.
And one other thing…
Lots of this is automatic. But there’s one important part of tagging that’s not: the actual act of adding the tags. In theory we could use software to look at each of our articles and determine what it’s about, and so apply the tags. But that’s not going to give the best results for our readers. So we’ve made sure that all our articles have had their tags considered and chosen individually by someone who has actually read the article. That means the navigation should be spot on, and the advertising links are ideally targetted. There’s an awful lot that machines can do, but sometimes it needs a human being to add the magic.
Anyway, hope you like the site.
davblog wrote:
Guardian Travel Site…
The Guardian have introduced a new travel web site and GU development manager, Nik Silver, has written an interesting article……
Posted on Tuesday, 28th November, 2006 at 3:23 pm | Permalink
Wortfeld » Kofferetiketten wrote:
[...] Wer immer noch glaubt, dass tags – Schlagwörter – eine bloße Modeerscheinung seien und nutzergenerierte Inhalte sich nicht mit Qualitätsjournalismus vertrügen, schaue sich das neue travel.guardian.co.uk an. Der Chef der Guardian-Softwareentwickler, Nik Silver, schreibt in seinem Weblog über die Ideen dahinter. Aber schon ein Blick auf die Seite zum Tag Paris zeigt die Kombination: Guardian-Reisetipps plus Guardian-Artikel plus Lesertipps plus Leserfotos plus RSS-Feed plus exzellente Werbemöglichkeiten. [...]
Posted on Friday, 1st December, 2006 at 12:21 am | Permalink
Martin Stabe » links for 2006-12-01 wrote:
[...] niksilver.com: A new Travel site, and four uses for tags How the Guardian uses tags on its new travel site. (tags: blogs Guardian tags tagging web2.0) [...]
Posted on Friday, 1st December, 2006 at 9:25 am | Permalink
andrewskinner[dot]name » Blog Archive » links for 2006-12-02 wrote:
[...] niksilver.com » A new Travel site, and four uses for tags Nice write-up on the just-launched redesign by the site’s software development manager. (tags: website web2.0 travel guardian tagging tags print) * * * * * * * * [...]
Posted on Monday, 4th December, 2006 at 10:28 am | Permalink
UserX - הבלוג של ×¢×™× ×ª ×¢× ×‘×œ על עיצוב חווית המשתמש ועיצוב ממשק » Blog Archive » קישורי×? - 6 בדצמבר wrote:
[...] קישורי×? - 6 בדצמבר ט×?×’×™×? עולי×? כיתה : ×?תר תיירות חדש של ×”×’×?רדי×?ן המבוסס על ט×?×’×™×? כל שלכל ט×?×’ יש עמוד משלו ויש עמודי×? שה×? תוצר של שילוב של ×©× ×™ ט×?×’×™×? ביחד. ×›×?ן יש הסבר על פיתוח ×”×?תר. כשכבר חשבתי ש×?ין יותר ×›×?לה, פורטפוליו פל×?ש מדהי×? שמזכיר קצת ×?ת הקולקציות מזילות הריר של ×”×?תר של ×?יסי מי×?קי פיקסלי×? כטפט: Pixelnotes הו×? פרויקט בהשר×?ת המר×?×” המפוקסל, שימוש ×—×›×? של post-its יוצר משטח עבודה על הקיר ×©×ž×©× ×” ×?ת צבעו על ×¤× ×™ זמן. קרן רובוטית עוקבת ×?חרי ×?זרחי×? תמימי×? במרחבי×? ציבוריי×? בעבודת ×?×ž× ×•×ª של מ×?רי ססטר מישהו שעושה ×?ת העבודה ×‘×©×‘×™×œ× ×•:השוו×?×” של ×?תרי ×?ירוח ×—×™× ×ž×™×™×? לויד×?ו . ויש המשך פוסט-דיג – × ×§×ž×ª×• של העורך : ×?תר המשלב ×?יסוף שטח של חומרי×? ×”×ž×¡×ª×ž× ×™×? כפופולריי×? + יד ×ž×›×•×•× ×ª. ×?×? ב×?מת חסר לכ×? עוד מקור להמלצות מדיה ותרבות, ×”× ×” מייל יומי מומלץ [...]
Posted on Wednesday, 6th December, 2006 at 9:50 am | Permalink
Bruce Combe wrote:
Nice work. It would be great to see this standard of design/development applied across all of Guardian Unlimited. Just one thing though, with a proper tagging system shouldn’t both of the following URLs work?
http://travel.guardian.co.uk/tag/croatia+hotels
http://travel.guardian.co.uk/tag/hotels+croatia
Posted on Wednesday, 6th December, 2006 at 1:22 pm | Permalink
Nik wrote:
Thanks for the kind words, Bruce.
Regarding the design and development: yes, we do intend to continue this work across the rest of GU. Emily Bell, our Director of Digital Content, has talked about this briefly in the trade press.
Regarding tag URLs, we did think very carefully about that very issue and related issues. The scheme you outline does indeed ensure findability — you can guess a URL and get a page. However the disadvantage is that it dilutes the information architecture. For example, suppose one blog post points to …/tag/croatia+hotels and another points to …/tag/hotels+croatia then in general it’s impossible to know that they actually refer to the same resource. The principle that won out was: one resource, one URL.
The next logical suggestion would be to add redirects — a redirect would satisfy both camps. But we prefer to exercise some caution with redirects, as you can very quickly end up in confusion.
So in this case simplicity and reliability trumps pliability.
Posted on Wednesday, 6th December, 2006 at 11:55 pm | Permalink
The Guardian’s new travel site at SimonWaldman.net wrote:
[...] …is launched today. It’s not just a clean lick of paint, but a fundamental change in the way that we deliver content. The result of spectacular efforts by a very gifted team… You can find out more about some of the back end loveliness from Nik Silver’s blog. [...]
Posted on Thursday, 7th December, 2006 at 1:26 pm | Permalink
niksilver.com » Guardian Unlimited is hiring a Development Manager wrote:
[...] Mostly about the management of software development « A new Travel site, and four uses for tags [...]
Posted on Thursday, 14th December, 2006 at 4:59 pm | Permalink
Tagging - more worth than RSS for the “average” consumer? « harbour 7 wrote:
[...] But photo-tagging and social bookmarking are only part of the story for tagging. Email is potentially a big growth area and hence introduction for the masses to tagging. We now have tagging within GMail (some great tips on this from Steve Rubel), and Taglocity for tagging email in Outlook. We also have the growing use of tags in web design & build strategies, as employed by Guardian Unlimited for the relaunch of Guardian Unlimited Travel - Nik Silver gives a thorough explanation of how tags are employed for this site, but importantly from a user perspective it means improved navigation, easier discovery of related content and more friendly urls. It seems that once it manages to genuinely and effortlessly aid people’s digital lives, we may likely see the mainstream internet user take tagging of of content and data increasingly to heart. [...]
Posted on Wednesday, 14th March, 2007 at 7:40 pm | Permalink