Flickr: Groups and Tags

Flickr is an easy to use photo-sharing web service.

I have created a Google Gadget called flickr-show to display shared photos when I needed such a tool for showing photos on the AHRP website. The gadget allows me to display a set of photos on Flickr selected by a combination of a group and some tags.

A group on Flickr is simply a way for people with similar interest to share photos. For example, I have created a group called AHCS for friends of the Ann-Hua Chinese School to share their photos about or related to the school.

Tagging is another way for people to find photos on Flickr. For example, by tagging a photo with AHCS, we allow ourselves and others to search for photos related to the school; With a tag 2010, we limit the search to photos taken in the year of 2010; Using 3 tags together, AHCS,2010,mid-Autumn, we can limit the selection of photos to those taken at the AHCS 2010 mid-Autumn gala.

Now a bit of boring instructions for joining a group on Flickr and tagging photos:

• Group
• Before you can add photos to a group, you have to join the group first: You go to your page on Flickr, which is called your photostream page. For example, mine is at http://www.flickr.com/photos/gswj/.
• On that page, you will see a horizontal menu right under the Flickr icon on the top of the page. The first item is Home, then You, and so on. The 5th item is Groups with a little downward triangle next to it.
• AHCS is an open public group, meaning anyone may apply to join. Here is the generic way to join a group on Flickr: Click the word Groups in the main menu -- not the triangle. You will see a page the groups you administer, created, and belong to, etc. You will also see a Find group search box on the right side of the page.
• Enter AHCS in the search bar and click the Search button. The AHCS group has the Ann-Hua logo on it so you won't miss it.
• Click the group name or logo to enter the group page. You should see a Join? link somewhere in the page. Click that to join. That sends an application to the group administrator, that is yours truly for now.
  
• Go back to your photostream page. Find the Organize and Create menu item with a little downward triangle. Click on the little triangle to pull down the menu and select All your content or Most recent upload, depending on what you have.
• That opens the Batch organizer. There, you will see your photos shown as thumbnails across the bottom of the window.
• Right above the thumbnails, there is a Select all (very small) link. Click that to select all the photos; Or you may manually select one and the shift-click to select a group of photos.
  
• Drag and drop the selected photos into the center part of the window that displays Drag items here to edit them as a batch. If you get it right, your photo thumbnails will be displayed in that area.
• In the Batch Organizer, there is also a menu item called Send to group. Click that.
  
• You will see AHCS in a list of groups you are a member of. Click it to add your photos to the group.
  
• Tag
• This should be relatively easy: We'll assume you have just done sending the photos to the AHCS group as outlined above and continue from there.
  
• Right above those photo thumbnails, there is a horizontal menu item under Batch Organize labeled Add Tag. Click that.
• You should then see a pop-up for you to enter tags. Enter AHCS 2010 2010-10 mid-Autumn and hit the Enter key.
  
• You are done!

Once accepted in the AHCS group, your photos tagged with AHCS 2010 mid-Autumn will appear in this slide show.