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Add tags to your fragrances in the Basenotes Directory

by Grant Osborne, 24 October 2006

You are now able to 'tag' fragrance on Basenotes with words that you feel describe them, and situations you would wear them in. You need to be a logged in member of the Basenotes Community to take advantage of this feature.

If you are a member of sites like Del.icio.us, you may be familiar with the idea of tagging. You can find out more about tagging in general, in this Wikipedia artice: Tag (metadata).

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to tag fragrances on Basenotes. The system will currently only let you see your own tags at present, but once enough people have used the system you will be able to search other members tags, and find out which tags are popular for each fragrance.

Step 1: Find the fragrance you wish to tag

If you have a Basenotes Wardrobe, it may be easiest to start from there, otherwise, browse the Fragrance Directory and find your chosen scent. In this example, we have picked Body Kouros by Yves Saint Lauren.

Step 2: Add tags to your fragrance

Over on the left of the page you are invited to add keywords to the fragrance. You have none so far, so click on 'edit?' to get started. You will then be presented by two text boxes in which to add your keywords. The first one is shown below:

You can then add words or phrases (tags) you feel are associated with the fragrance, making sure each tag is on a separate line. These words can be descriptive of the fragrance family or type (ie oriental, chypre, citrus, marine, fresh, floral...), maybe pinpoint ingredients that are dominant for you (ie spicy, woody, musky...), feelings (happy, love...), cost (ie expensive, cheap, costly, value for money...), type of fragrance (ie niche, mass market, designer...). In our case, we have chosen: masculine, sexy, and strong to describe Body Kouros. You can have as many or as few tags as you feel each fragrance needs.

It is important to note that your tags should be used to describe the fragrance in general. Avoid using tags that describe your bottle specifically, ie decant, sample, tester, bought from eBay. We will be adding functionality in the coming months so that you can add information like this.

The second box allows you to add situations as to when you think the fragrance is suitable to wear. This could mean physical places (ie office, work, college, restaurant...), activities (ie clubbing, weight lifting, relaxing, dating...), or situations (ie romantic, formal, casual...).

Once you have added your tags you must save them. Click on Save Keywords, as pictured.

Step 3: Viewing your tags

Once you have saved your tags, you will then be able to see them embedded in the page. If you wish to edit them, you can. You will be able to see these tags each time you visit the fragrance's page (provided you are logged in).

Once you have tagged a few fragrances, you'll probably want to view all of the fragrances you tagged. There are two ways of doing this. You can click on "Show all fragrances I have tagged" on the fragrance profile page, or if you are in the Basenotes Directory - over on the right is an option to do the same.

You will then we able to see all the fragrances you have tagged, along with the words you chose. Tags you use often will appear largest. You can narrow down the fragrances by clicking on the tags - so if you wanted to search your fragrances for something light for the office, click on 'light', and then 'office' (or whatever tags you have chosen).