WordPress plugin: WP-Cumulus Flash based tag cloud
I love tags. I think it’s a brilliant idea to tag blog post. Not so much because I feel it enables people to find information they’re looking for, but because tag clouds usually offer a more adventurous mode of navigation. If I click on a tag called “water” there’s no way of telling whether I’m going to end up reading about water shortages in the third world or the chemical composition of rain. And I like surprises.
What I do not like however, is the way tag clouds traditionally look. Enlarging the font for often-used tags causes all sorts of line height weirdness, which bugs me. This why I started experimenting with Flash to see if I could come up with something better looking. I’m so happy with the initial results I decided to post them here. Both the movie and the plugin itself need loads of work, but please feel free to tell me how you like it so far.
WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck requires Flash Player 9 or better.
P.S. The tag cloud displayed by the movie is this site’s actual ‘live’ tag cloud, and yes, if you manage to click a tag the page for that tag will open… 
P.P.S. You can download the plugin here. The FAQ should answer most of your questions.
now is the era of flash why would somebody block it from browser?
Bonus totally insightful, for this opinion.
Infinitely appreciate your input! I like and I’m sure do a good job. We...
Thanks for your input to this site! I love and I think you make a good job....
please check http://www.yuco.com/
http://www.roytanck.com/tag/re ladcms/ Sorry, no ReladCMS, ReloadCMS
my E-mail id:-desai.lalu1@gmail.com my password resat maro
Visually I think it’s very cool! But my problem with this app (and with most scrolling flash photo indexes) is when it speeds uup and out of control. It sometimes becomes a cursor-balancing act to click on the tag (or photo) you are interested in.
Comment by YaWie — March 7, 2008 @ 1:13 pm
Wow this looks very good! I like this idea of tag cloud. You should fix speeding problem and if it is possible to change background to transparent(more people will have oportunity to add tag cloud to their blog without destroying whole design).
Good Job
Comment by wojcieh — March 8, 2008 @ 4:11 pm
The speed is definitely something I’ll have to look into, and transparency is also high on my list. As is the ability to change the display size.
If I do make this transparent though, I’ll have to make the text color adjustable as well to accommodate both dark and light background themes.
Comment by Roy — March 9, 2008 @ 12:53 pm
I found it great, I just dugg it. Good luck and congratulations!!!
Best regards,
http://justtellmewhy.com
Comment by Cristian Eslava — March 13, 2008 @ 9:09 pm
Sweet…
Comment by Richard — March 14, 2008 @ 5:40 am
…and oh, are you planning to release it to the public?
Comment by Richard — March 14, 2008 @ 5:53 am
I plan to release this sometime this month, but there really are a few pesky things I need to iron out before it’s ready, so please hang in there…
Comment by Roy — March 14, 2008 @ 10:57 am
I’m hanging in… =)
Comment by Richard — March 14, 2008 @ 7:58 pm
Hey! I love the cumulus and I’m testing it within my wordpress, bud sadly I experience problems while using Polish diacritic signs. Namely, letters like ą ę ć etc. are not visible at all
Please tell me whether it has something to do with the plugin itself of rather if comes from my Polish Wordpress installation.
Kind regards
Grian
Comment by Grian — March 18, 2008 @ 3:16 pm
Hi Grain. This is an unfortunate side effect caused by the way Flash handles fonts. In order to be able to animate the tags smoothly, I have to specify which characters I want to include in the movie. Adding all would make the movie far to big for use in web pages, so the current version has all the Latin characters.
There’s a full list of options on this page.
Contact me if you’d like to help test other language versions. I can whip up a version with the Cyrillic character set for instance for you to try.
Comment by Roy — March 18, 2008 @ 4:33 pm
Hi again! I appreciate your fast reply
Polish diacritic characters are within the “Latin Extended A” (not Cyrillic) range of signs. I would be really happy to see how the Cumulus works for the range of signs…
Please let me know if it’s still possible for you to try with the “Latin Extended A” set.
Waiting to try it out!
Best regards,
Grian
Comment by Grian — March 18, 2008 @ 5:37 pm
Cool WP Plugins, but I can’t use since I still use 2.2.3 version, could you re-compile it in order to compatible with 2.2.x version?
Best Regards.
Comment by Entrepreneur Indonesia — April 2, 2008 @ 7:00 pm
@Entrepreneur: WordPress 2.2 didn’t have native tag support, so there’s really no way for this plugin to function in versions before 2.3.
Comment by Roy — April 2, 2008 @ 7:30 pm
Wow! This looks really exciting. I am very curious how this will be worked out further! Thanks for sharing this with the world.
Comment by Benjamin — April 15, 2008 @ 11:03 pm
Good job there!
I really like it.
I’m downloading it and hope it works great on my website.
Thanks.
wgn_white
Comment by wgn_white — April 17, 2008 @ 2:05 pm
i’m drooling.
really looking forward to this!
Comment by casey — April 29, 2008 @ 9:37 pm
hi, mi problem is: “WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck requires Flash Player 7 or bette”. What can I do?
I’m using wp 2.5.1
Many thanks
Comment by mimmo — April 30, 2008 @ 7:31 am
This plugin cause a big problem on IE 6 with wordpress 2.3.2…so I loved it, but I must abandonn it! pffff
Comment by bibliobsession — April 30, 2008 @ 9:40 am
Howdy;
im not a big coding nose, but i try it, because;
its looking brilliant.
But maybee thats my mistake: thats dont works for me . .
Comment by Pierro — May 4, 2008 @ 6:32 am
Really great plugin, thank you!
Could you please add an optional parameter to stop the cloud movement when the mouse is out of focus?
Comment by Jay — May 14, 2008 @ 8:52 am
Hi Jay. That’s actually a little more tricky than you might think. When the mouse leaves that Flash movie, the last known position is reported to actionscript, so there’s no way of telling whether it has left the movie or not. I’ll look inoto this for future versions, but don’t get your hopes up…
Comment by Roy — May 14, 2008 @ 9:15 am
I’m not a Flash expert, but what are the initial values of the mouse cursor reported by ActionScript when the cursor did not focus the Flash movie so far?
Furthermore, when leaving the movie, the cursor has to cross at least one of the borders of it, so couldn’t you just check against the appropriate border values to determine if the movie has focus?
For example, when the cursor hits the left side of the movie, the last known position to be reported should be 0 for the X axis.
Comment by Jay — May 15, 2008 @ 2:03 pm
Hi Jay, If you move the mouse at regular speeds, the last x-coord reported will probably be somewhere between 0 and say 20. If you move very quickly it might even be as high as 50. I’ll have to look into gradually reducing mouse influence as you get further away fro the center, but this might be tricky to do because currently it works just the other way around (the further from the center, then more speed).
Comment by Roy — May 15, 2008 @ 2:07 pm
Wow, thats a great plugin, I was searching for the same feature all around the web, and breadcrumbs have brought me here. I m really happy to see this great piece of art, ( programming beneath ) but as mesmerised I am , at the same time a little sad as well as this is a wordpress plugin. I want to use it on my html site. I dont want dynamic tags but the option to add static tags/ categories with links to site pages. Ofcourse I want the same look and animation, for its marvellous. Please see if you can do it for me, and many others who will surely appreciate it.
In return I can provide you backlinks from a search engine i.e http://www.nxtsearch.com, and many sites and directories. If you want i can pay you as well but that cant be a large sum as i cant afford much.
Please do reply and guide me to achieve the same.
Comment by Nishkrant — May 20, 2008 @ 8:03 pm
Hi Nishkrant. I actually wrote a post a few days ago about this. Please see this post.
Comment by Roy — May 20, 2008 @ 8:07 pm
Love it
Looks great on Firefox on my Mac
Been told only a black screen on IE
Is there something else to put on my server to help Flash load on IE or is this really the 2006 Direct X flash ‘thingy’ problem on IE where the user needs to deal with his or her own IE issues concerning Flash and how IE now deals with flash start up
your my only hope Obiwankenobi
Comment by Howard — May 25, 2008 @ 11:40 pm
Hi Howard. There really is no reason why it shouldn’t work on IE. It definitely does on PC. But this is one of the reasons I use SWFObject to embed the Flash movie. It deals with all this stuff without me having to worry about it. I myself can only test on a couple of browsers, and all of them are PC-based.
Comment by Roy — May 26, 2008 @ 8:33 am
looking at http://theflashblog.com/?p=246
Appears to be different thoughts on how to do this
like the SWFFix etc
have a look
your my only hope Obiwankenobi
Comment by Howard — May 27, 2008 @ 3:24 pm
Hi Howard. All of those solutions have pretty much culminated in SWFObject. I am unable to test in IE on Mac (and why would you ever use IE on a Mac?).
Comment by Roy — May 27, 2008 @ 3:27 pm
Great Work, love the plugin…
Comment by Gabor — May 29, 2008 @ 11:04 am
tooo cooooll!
I love resizing and changing the background!
Comment by danielmcvicar — May 30, 2008 @ 10:10 pm
I love it, I put it on my site, but with explorer it doesn’t work … WhY? I did something wrong?
Comment by Mattia — June 5, 2008 @ 1:28 pm
Hey,
I’m using your tag cloud on a new website and have 2 questions…
1. I have it running in the sidebar at 500 width 350 height. I would like to keep that ratio but make the font size smaller on the higher end.
2. Is there a way to change the border effect to a different color effect on mouse over?
You can have a look at my site if that helps…
http://anonymouspond.com/
Thanks!
To answer a question above…
I use IE on a Mac through VMware for testing and for some reason it disables Flash and SWFObject . That could be why you’re not seeing the cloud. You may have to trust that non-Mac users of IE do indeed see it.
Comment by Pierrot — June 6, 2008 @ 1:27 am
Thanks for the answer, but I’m a non-Mac user and with IE I can’t see it … This is my site http://lnx.mattiafumagalli.com/
Comment by Mattia — June 6, 2008 @ 12:17 pm
@Mattia: There are a considerable number of coding errors on your blog. I ran it through the W3C validator, and some of these errors are quite severe, to the point where they mess up the document’s structure. This can cause SWFObject to fail. I suggest you look into this. If fixing the errors does not make the plugin show, please drop me an email.
@Pierrot: As far as I can tell, IE on the Mac is extinct. The newest version is 5, released in 2003, which basically is ancient history. To be quite frank, I’d not exprect any current website to work in it, let alone a plugin like this.
1. If you open up the plugin’s PHP file, you’ll se a call the WordPress’ wp_tag_cloud function. This function accepts a lot of parameters, but for the plugin the parameters string is empty. Feel free to specifiy the minimum and maximum font sizes if you like (and are confortable editing PHP files).
2. The highlight effect is included in the swf file, so the only way to change this is to have me make a custom version for you.
Comment by Roy — June 6, 2008 @ 6:38 pm
wow, thx for this super cool plugins, im using in at my blog
thx !!!
Comment by Supermance — June 28, 2008 @ 12:59 pm
It is cool!
Comment by Chars Lee — July 2, 2008 @ 10:10 am
. .
Comment by http://remont-komplekt.ru/ — July 5, 2008 @ 7:51 pm
wow this is amazing… how did you do that? do you think you could give me the code, or give me some help in making my own?
Comment by Luke — July 9, 2008 @ 4:39 pm
Hi Luke: Drop me an email. I’ll see what I can do.
Comment by Roy — July 10, 2008 @ 2:23 pm
Brilliant plugin, thanks
Comment by Noelia — July 11, 2008 @ 8:17 pm
Just a thought, you should make your flash tag cloud navigation for the site (on the right) the same background color as the left side so it blends in (the yellowish color). That would look really cool as it would seem to be integrated with the page instead of a loaded flash movie, I think.
Comment by Luke — July 14, 2008 @ 9:33 pm
Very nice. I’m interested in integrating this Flash cloudfile in another content management system. Do you have additional information about how feeding the flash with the tags (whoich format, xml)?
I’m not very familiar with Wordpress …
Thanks in advance,
Peter.
Comment by Peter — July 16, 2008 @ 9:49 am
Hi Peter. There’s some info here: http://www.roytanck.com/2008/05/19/how-to-repurpose-my-tag-cloud-flash-movie/ . It really is quite simple.
I’m working on a new version, so the info on that page might need some updating soon.
Comment by Roy — July 16, 2008 @ 10:51 am
Very nice and fancy plugin – I likez it!
Is it possible to call the template function with parameters for customization? I would like to have a big tagcloud on my Blog Info page and a small one in the sidebar – just like on this site.
At this very moment, all I can do is set the parameters in the options once.
Could you please drop me an email on this matter?
Thanks!
Comment by Marco Luthe — July 29, 2008 @ 10:09 am
Hi Marco. The plugin has two separate options panels. One for the widget and one for the regular version. If you drag the widget to a sidebar you’ll be able to set its settings.
Both feature a field that lets you pass parameters to the template function.
Comment by Roy — July 29, 2008 @ 10:31 am
Hi Roy.
Thanks for the hint.
As I am not using a widget-enabled site, I worked around it. I found “echo wp_cumulus_createflashcode(FALSE|TRUE)” in your plugin that lets you either show the big one (FALSE) or the widget one (TRUE). Then I also changed the widget options in the database to fit my needs in the sidebar.
For non-widget-users or users that like to do things manually (like me), a template function would be nice where you could pass on the parameters (width, height, etc.), maybe as an array.
Then you could use it whenever and in whatever way you liked.
Would be nice if you provided this in an update, maybe?
Thanks!
Comment by Marco Luthe — July 29, 2008 @ 1:43 pm
hi, thanks for this great plugin, but i’ve a problem about turkish characters, plugin works fine but don’t show turkish characters, how can i fix it?
Comment by sezer — July 30, 2008 @ 9:00 am
@Marco: Clever
@Sezer: I’m way behind on making international versions. The current version does western European characters only, and I’m considering options for making other language versions. If I were to do it for all other character ranges, this would be a lot of work.
I’ll post about this in the near future.
Comment by Roy — July 30, 2008 @ 9:09 am
Hi, Roy
I just install your plug-in, right now, I learned the plug in is not yet internationalized
This makes some tags in not displayed correctly but this is not a big problem for me so far. I’m using Turkish characters in my blog as Sezer says. So that should be superior fix for us. 
My main problem is:
I’m not using regular side bar location for the tag widget. I want to embed cumulus to my template to displayed right place. I searc for a php tag to add to template but I can’t find it.
Can you tell me how can I add the cumulus to rihgt place?
Comment by RecNes — July 31, 2008 @ 10:51 am
Hi RecNes. have a look at the instructions on the plugin’s release page (http://www.roytanck.com/2008/03/15/wp-cumulus-released). It details the three options you have for adding WP-Cumulus to your blog. the PHP function call is < ?php wp_cumulus_insert(); ?>, which will call the non-widget version.
Comment by Roy — July 31, 2008 @ 10:55 am
Ooops! I missed. Thanks alot
Comment by RecNes — July 31, 2008 @ 12:38 pm
Background transparecy doesn’t works for me with Firefox 3 + Flash 9 + Linux.
Looked up with Opera 9.51, same as firefox.
Comment by RecNes — July 31, 2008 @ 12:56 pm
@RecNes: This is a known limitation in the Flash player: http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-80
Comment by Roy — July 31, 2008 @ 1:07 pm
The flashvar used to pass the tags info is called “tagcloud”, and contains XML data describing the tags. If it is not passed the movie will look for a file called “tagcloud.xml” in the current path and parse that instead.
>> This doesnt work. Can you provide a example with external tagcloud.xml?
Comment by Tommy — July 31, 2008 @ 2:39 pm
Hi Tommy. I’ve added an example tagcloud.xml to the downloadable example.
View the example_xml.html file to see it in action.
Comment by Roy — July 31, 2008 @ 2:52 pm
Thanks Roy! I have a suggestion. If server uses mod_rewrite, script cannot find tagcloud.xml. My solution is add flashvar to define path to this file like
so.addVariable(”xml-url”, “/my/path/to/xml/”);
What do you think?
Comment by Tommy — July 31, 2008 @ 3:18 pm
@Tommy: The XML loading was really only put in there to be able to run the movie form Flash’s IDE and see tags. It’s not a true feature of the program, and supplying the tags through the flashvar is definitely the way to go.
You can however go in and hack this in yourself now that the project has gone open source…
Comment by Roy — August 1, 2008 @ 12:44 am
Thank i’ll use it
Comment by Cilt Bakımı — August 8, 2008 @ 3:44 pm
Really good plugin, I was looking for one such plugin on my http://www.auctionwire.info and I found this to be highly usable.
Thanks
Comment by Auctionwire.info — August 9, 2008 @ 4:40 pm
Great Work, love the plugin…
Comment by Volkan — August 10, 2008 @ 1:15 pm
Hi there! I loved the plugin, but suddenly it stops working! I tried to reinstall it but no chance to come back. The background appears but no tags rolling…whats the matter?
Thanks to this awesome plugin, cheers from Brazil!
Comment by Tom — August 15, 2008 @ 11:35 pm
wow! this plugin is amazing!
well done.
greetz
felix
Comment by Felix — August 18, 2008 @ 12:08 pm
The wp-cumulus plugin is a great. Roy, thank you for download.
Comment by Linienrichter — August 19, 2008 @ 9:04 am
Has established at itself your plug-in WP-CUMULUS, it is very happy with result, has already advised to its friends to bloggers.
Comment by Skokov Ilja — August 27, 2008 @ 7:45 am
Looks very nice, Roy! If you make tags interconnected, it’d be just awesome.
Comment by Franco — August 27, 2008 @ 9:01 am
Hi Franco. I thought about that, but there’s no logic in the connections. The way WordPress handles tags links them to posts, not to other tags. Using something random to connect them suggests logic when there is none, so I abandoned the idea.
Comment by Roy — August 27, 2008 @ 9:04 am
Hi there! I love this plugin, but – can you help me? – i want to insert this not into sidebar as widget, but in different place, but don’t know how(((.
Can you answer: what php-code i have to paste in to insert this amazing cloud? Thank you!
Comment by Ant Key — August 27, 2008 @ 10:04 am
Hi Ant Key. You can use
< ?php wp_cumulus_insert(); ?>
To insert it into your sidebar.php. More info is here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-cumulus/installation/
Comment by Roy — August 27, 2008 @ 10:07 am
And you can make colored tags?
Comment by the_hamster — August 27, 2008 @ 11:14 am
Hi Hamster. There are two reasons why there’s no colored tags it this point.
1. WordPress treats all tags equally, you can’t specify a color for them.
2. With all tags the same color, they’re more easy to stack. It doesn’t matter which one of two overlapping tags is ‘in front’, because the resulting transparency will be the same. This allows for faster rendering and hides ‘jumpy’ effects when one tag ‘overtakes’ the other.
Comment by Roy — August 27, 2008 @ 11:22 am
Hi,
Thank you for sharing this plugin with us – it would be nice if you could add an option to make the cloud move at very slow speed while the mouse is not over the cloud. My site is red and white and it catch your eye immediately when the red cloud moves.
Lourens
Comment by Lourens — August 27, 2008 @ 9:30 pm
FUKKIN AMAZING!
that’s what I think about it
Comment by leon — August 29, 2008 @ 1:04 am
sir ,now i have down and instroll. but cloud is appear only “uncategoried”.
how do in another tags.
Comment by koaung — August 30, 2008 @ 7:52 pm
Hi Koaung. It appears you’ve set the plugin to display categories only, and you have only one category. Either that or you’ve set it to display both, and have not tagged any of your posts.
Comment by Roy — August 31, 2008 @ 6:34 pm
So coooool and awsome. Great great work.
I wanna get it.
Comment by Eranio — August 31, 2008 @ 6:41 pm
Hey, i’m impressed by the 3D effects of the tag cloud ~~ good work .
Comment by tamchuen — September 4, 2008 @ 12:32 pm
Thank you
Just what I was looking for
Sarbjit Singh
http://www.gjtutorial.com/news
Comment by Sarbjit Singh — September 4, 2008 @ 1:12 pm
Hi,
Thank you for sharing this plugin with us – it would be nice if you could add an option to make the cloud move at very slow speed while the mouse is not over the cloud. My site is red and white and it catch your eye immediately when the red cloud moves.
Lourens
======================================
I fully second this view. It rotates too fast with a mouse hanging over it.
Comment by thinkweird — September 5, 2008 @ 1:23 am
Hi thinkweird. I think Lourens means something else. His point is to have a minimum speed for when the mouse is not over the movie. There is a speed control setting in the backend for when the mouse is over the movie.
Comment by Roy — September 5, 2008 @ 7:04 am
I considered this for http://legacydaily.com but I feel that for users looking to click on the tags this makes it harder. It certainly looks absolutely great. Also, I think it is a metaphor for the human mind where all these tags actually float around and none are at the top all the time. As a navigation tool, I have my doubts.
Comment by legacy daily — September 12, 2008 @ 12:26 pm
Very very cool…but from a SEO point of view?
Comment by web cosenza — September 15, 2008 @ 1:56 pm
Amazing…!! Let’s see if was placed in my blog.
Comment by toroz — September 15, 2008 @ 2:15 pm
en,Very very cool…
Comment by springcity — September 21, 2008 @ 8:41 am
Can’t seem to get the widget to work on my theme. Any suggestions? I have 13 blogs and this is the only theme that I am having problems with. Thanks, love cumulus.
http://brunswickislandproperties.com/
Comment by Nikko — September 24, 2008 @ 8:36 pm
@Nikko: I’m afraid you’ll have to fix the xml parsing errors in your page before Cumulus will come alive. See http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fbrunswickislandproperties.com%2F for more details.
Comment by Roy — September 25, 2008 @ 8:53 am
I was curious to know if your tag cloud app will ever be applied to the awesome ‘Del.icio.us’? Lots of people use it as a social bookmarking tool and the incredible WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud would make it even greater!
Comment by Greg R. Plaza — September 28, 2008 @ 12:53 pm
Please have a look at the Cumulus Widget in my Blog. It looks as if the tags are not evenly distributed on a ball, but they ‘knubbeln’ in many places, there are many Tags much to near on the same place and other places are free of Tags. How this could come? I’ve tried with showing less Tags and all Tags (number=0), but is wont gone better, it don’t looks much pretty like your Cumulus in your Sidebar.
What can I do?
Puh
Comment by Puh — September 29, 2008 @ 10:09 pm
@Greg: I have no plans to port it to del.icio.us, but WP-Cumulus is open source, so somebody else might step in and do it. In fact I hope someone does.
@Puh: In the options panel for the widget, there should be a checkbox you can use to distribute evenly.
Comment by Roy — September 30, 2008 @ 9:37 am
I have implemented this fantastic plugin on my site:
http://www.thinkweird.info/
But I have three questions:
1. I want to exclude certain tags, but how/where can I find the term_id of the tags?
2. How to make the sphere start rotating when the page is loaded, even without a mouse hanging over it?
3. Possible to render the form into a cube instead of a sphere?
Comment by thinkweird — October 4, 2008 @ 9:23 pm
Hi TW. If you go to “manage->tags” and roll over a tag, the number of the end of the url for the link (usually displayed in the status bar of your browser) should be the ID.
The sphere does rotate a little when the page first loads. In order to not draw too much attention away from the page’s content it stops after a few seconds. I’m thinking of making this optional in future versions by adding a ‘minimum speed’ setting or something like that.
Yes, but I don’t really see the point. A sphere is the optimal shape for a rotating effect. This is probably not something I will explore. Nothing is keeping you from making your own version though.
Comment by Roy — October 5, 2008 @ 1:26 pm
Roy, thank you for your reply.
How to make this plugin show tags in other language, say Chinese?
Comment by thinkweird — October 6, 2008 @ 1:36 am
Please see http://www.roytanck.com/2008/05/19/how-to-repurpose-my-tag-cloud-flash-movie/ for more info in internationalization.
Comment by Roy — October 6, 2008 @ 8:57 am
great plugin!! but i feelso dumbe what i try to let it work and I’m not able to understant ho to do it…
well, i uploaded and activated the plugin.
And then? Now I’m stopped…
PLS.. some help…
Comment by ippo — October 6, 2008 @ 1:24 pm
@ippo
The simplest way is to use Widget. Go to the widget settings and add it.
Comment by thinkweird — October 6, 2008 @ 3:03 pm
Wow!!!! Greate!!!
Comment by Eva — October 6, 2008 @ 8:46 pm
Hey anyone listening?
CAN I GET THIS FOR BLOGGER TOO?
Comment by Abhishek — October 8, 2008 @ 1:55 pm
Hi Abhishek. You might want to check out http://www.bloggerbuster.com/2008/08/blogumus-flash-animated-label-cloud-for.html .
Comment by Roy — October 9, 2008 @ 8:21 am
Excellent! Any chance this would be available as an xml/flash object for normal html/css websites? So if a site had hundreds of links, they could appear in this instead of a huge accordion.
Comment by Storm — October 9, 2008 @ 9:10 am
Hi Storm. Check the link I posted a couple of comments above yours. That post should get you started.
Comment by Roy — October 10, 2008 @ 11:32 am
I used Roy’s flash plugin and created a ColdFusion application that collects twitter messages from all over the world. Check it out: http://www.chrismore.com/twittersphere/
Comment by Chris More — October 17, 2008 @ 2:00 pm
Is there a maximum number of tags that wp-cumulus will accept. Im at about 65 and new tags stopped displaying. I have the latest stable version of Wordpress and Wp-Cumulus. Is it possible that Super Cache running in “half on” is causing this?
Comment by EP — October 21, 2008 @ 5:02 pm
Muy interesante plugin. Voy a colocarlo en mi blog. De paso pueden visitarlo en http://www.webinteresante.com
Comment by Diana — October 22, 2008 @ 7:47 am
@EP: There’s no limit built into WP-Cumulus, but it gets the tags from a WordPress template tag that has a built in default maximum of 45. You can add more by using the parameters option in the settings panel of WP-Cumulus, but you might run into trouble with CPU utilization, and some other potential issues.
Comment by Roy — October 22, 2008 @ 7:48 am
hello
good plugin !!! waww !!
but bug with “lightbox 2″ -doesn’t work anymore)
on IE an Firefox Mac os x
works fine with Safari and Firefox Windows
strange ??
Comment by olivier — October 22, 2008 @ 12:23 pm
Hi Roy,
It’s me again. Do you continou to develop wp-cumulus? I’m looking for newer version for al long time which can shows the chars in other languages (like mine, Turkish -çşğıÇŞĞÜİ-) correct.
Comment by RecNes — October 22, 2008 @ 11:18 pm
Hi RecNes. Don’t hold out for a true unicode version. As long as Flash handles text the way it currently does (not being able to smoothly animate non-embedded text) there’s simply no way I would be able to do this.
I feel the current version is sort of ‘feature complete’, so I’ve finally been able to get some freelance work done
.
Comment by Roy — October 23, 2008 @ 10:10 am
Hi Roy,
fantastic!!!!
thank you very much for giving us such wonderful plugin!
only one problem again with the language. Could you please add the simplified Chinese font in it? Because only the English tags can be showed now.
By the way, I have categories both in English and Chinese on my wordpress. So is it possible to only display the english tags on the english category, just like now, see http://watch.bioipr.com.
And only display the Chinese tags on the Chinese categories?
Thank you very much!
wu
Comment by wu — October 28, 2008 @ 10:12 pm
just read your post about how to add language characters. But hard to find trial version of the Flash 9. ：(. and it is too big for my old notebook.：（
Comment by wu — October 28, 2008 @ 11:37 pm
how to use this plugin in common html page ,not wordpress?
Comment by acgfestival — October 30, 2008 @ 3:50 pm
Hi, I see that in the php file there are several paramaters that seems to give the possibility to change the background color, but it doesn’t work, it always remains white …
Bug ?
Comment by Alex — November 1, 2008 @ 6:38 pm
Nice touch, but unforunately Google spiders don’t work with flash based tags.
It’s more important to be going up in Google’s rank and serch engine, than having a very nice but useless tag plugin (in Google’s search and indexing).
Cheers
Comment by PT — November 2, 2008 @ 2:18 am
@Alex: Are you using the background transparency option perhaps? This renders the background color setting useless.
@PT: The regular tag cloud is written into the page for user who do not have flash (albeit invisible). This should minimize the effects of WP-Cumulus on search engine placement,
Comment by Roy — November 2, 2008 @ 11:41 am
great. plug it in right away !!!
Comment by sang mantan — November 2, 2008 @ 11:01 pm
great plugin! thanks for your hard work. i am using the plugin in the sidebar on my site but I was wondering if it was possible to display the regular html tag cloud if flash is not supported on the viewer’s browser.
Comment by k3v0 — November 3, 2008 @ 9:31 pm
Hi k3c0. Earlier versions used to do that. It takes a little while however for the javscript to replace the regular cloud with the Flash one. This will happen once the whole page is loaded and result in layout shifting (the regular cloud is usually bigger, so everything underneath moves up a second or two after the page has been rendered).
The regular cloud is still written into the page, but hidden through CSS. You should be able to (quite easily) modify the plugin and see the effect for yourself. Simply remove the style declararion that’s on line 113 (in the current version).
Comment by Roy — November 4, 2008 @ 3:35 pm
Roy,
Your suggestion worked like a charm. Thanks for the quick response!
Comment by k3v0 — November 4, 2008 @ 4:04 pm
This is very nice. I won’t use it yet though – I need it to start up not in motion, and for the motion to stop after the cursor leaves. Otherwise it’s just way too distracting.
Comment by Ryan — November 4, 2008 @ 4:05 pm
很好。很喜欢.good
Comment by laoliu — November 7, 2008 @ 8:21 am
A very innovative plugin dude!! keep it up..
Comment by Ahad Bokhari — November 9, 2008 @ 7:34 pm
It’s a very very nice plugin…
I installed it as a plugin in my sidebar, worked at once, without any trouble.
But, I also use NextGen Gallery with photos and the wp-cumulus is always in the foreground, in front of the thickbox when zooming a picture…
It’s really a shame!
Would you have any solution?
Comment by Tara — November 23, 2008 @ 7:45 pm
roy, fantastic fantastic job!!! thnk you SO much!! my blog looks more attractive now!! *hats off to ya*
Comment by maRCus — December 4, 2008 @ 6:35 pm
Hi, Is there a setting to keep this moving?
Comment by Derrick — December 6, 2008 @ 6:51 pm
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Comment by Pemsressy — December 8, 2008 @ 2:49 am
I love it, so long as you don’t have too many tags meshed up in there. Its a very cool way to make your blog a bit different than the rest. Thanks!
Comment by Twittonary — December 9, 2008 @ 10:14 pm
The fact that Google doesn’t handle flash very well is actually an advantage, not a disadvantage.
Most tag clouds will screw up how Google sees your websites internal linking structure – so you have to screw around with no follow rubbish if you want to stop that happening.
That is not a problem with this plugin. And it looks great.
Comment by Andy — December 15, 2008 @ 8:27 pm
I like it, but you can change for blogger, so i’m very happy
Comment by beck007 — December 16, 2008 @ 3:30 pm
It’s very nice but it could be more useful. For instance, you could zoom in an out to rearaging the tags based on granularity and semantic distance. Kinda like a Hubble picture.
Then again, that would probably be more heavy lifting in the server side than on the flash animation.
Comment by RaphaelM — December 23, 2008 @ 7:53 pm
I love the plugin it is great. It would be great to be able to include the tag cloud in the page body instead for example in the home page. Wordpress normally reserves home.php in the template folder for the home page mayb that can be used. The way around it now is I enable the plugin copy the html and paste it into the home.php page but offcourse this doesnt stay up to date. Any suggestions?
Comment by JayBlogger — December 31, 2008 @ 3:48 pm
@Jayblogger: I’m not quite sure what you mean, but between the widget, the in-post short-tag and the template tag function call I think I’ve pretty much already got you covered.
Comment by Roy — January 3, 2009 @ 7:53 pm
Great !
Comment by Roberto — January 10, 2009 @ 8:41 pm
Hey Roy, this is indeed an awesome plugin, kudos for developing!
However I am also receiving the error in Internet Explorer “Internet Explorer Cannot display the Webpage”. I have validated the code to ensure there are no errors there that may be causing the problem.
Interestingly the first time I try loading the page IE flips out and takes me to the error page, however if I hit ‘back’ on the browser it takes me back to the page with WP Cumulus working fine!
I’m using it as a widget in my sidebar – just wondered if you had any ideas why this could be?
Many thanks,
Al.
Comment by Big Al — January 15, 2009 @ 12:46 am
nice plugin..! and thanks for sharing.. =)
Comment by story between us — January 16, 2009 @ 5:20 am
Thank you – I love this tag-cloud (found it in another blog) and I use it, too
Comment by plerzelwupp — January 17, 2009 @ 11:59 am
Is there now an option, that the cloud will move all the time when the mouse is NOT in the sphere?
Comment by Roman — January 19, 2009 @ 11:53 am
@Roman: That was the way it originally worked. I was bombarded with email asking me to please remove that from the plugin. I think it’s best not to have it moving all the time and allow people to read your posts without distractions. Still, I’ll consider making it an option.
Comment by Roy — January 20, 2009 @ 11:33 am
Hei Roy!
First, this is just amazing ! I love it!
And the second – it would be a perfect presentation for my thesis.
First I want to know am I allowed to use this? I mean, if I put some
links or if I in someway tell it is not my work?
My thesis is about product development and it’s historic values etc,
so it would be perfect ! One of my main thread for the presentation
is “the 3D space for product development”.
Hope you got the point
Let me know and anyhow, even if I couldn’t use it I love it !
Greet,
Stiina
Comment by Stiina — January 20, 2009 @ 11:44 am
@Stiina: WP-Cumulus is open source software. You’re welcome to use it for pretty much anything. So by all means, go ahead.
Comment by Roy — January 20, 2009 @ 11:50 am
You just made my day !
Thanx for creating such an awesome software!
I’ll give all the credits for you
Greets! xxx
Comment by Stiina — January 20, 2009 @ 11:52 am
Hello, can you create a version without the border effect on mouse over?
Please, its a great plugin…
Many greetings from germany
fridoo
Comment by fridoo — January 21, 2009 @ 2:39 am
Hi Fridoo. If you download the source files you can quite easily remove the border by editing the Tag.as class. Commenting out the ‘lineStyle’ line should do the trick. After that you compile the movie and overwrite the swf on your server with the new one.
Comment by Roy — January 21, 2009 @ 8:57 am
much worthier than the static virtual geegaw to which everyone has grown accustomed &, which, itself, has grown tired. beautiful job–particularly the rate of flow.
Comment by poltergasm::where the rats unpack — January 29, 2009 @ 5:50 pm
Thx for the such nice plugin
It makes my website @alive@. And btw thanks for explaing how to add aditional languages. Greets from Poland
Comment by Konstanty — February 1, 2009 @ 9:28 pm
Hi Roy, great job. Love it!
Looks like it’s waiting to be developed as Chris More did. I’m wondering what else can I do then..
Greets from Indonesia.
Comment by Salsabel — February 3, 2009 @ 5:19 am
A wee bit late on this, but I just now read some comments about transparency. Apologies if you’ve figured this out already…
Transparency can be achieved with by setting the “wmode” parameter to “transparent” in the SWFObject script. You could also change the “background” color with the respective HEX string. This is all assuming the SWF doesn’t have a solid shape as a background, of course.
Comment by James Hicks — February 3, 2009 @ 7:12 pm
Hi James. Transparency has worked that way since the very first version. But only since Firefox 3 and Flash 10 does Linux support it. That’s why I still warn of possible browser incompatibilities.
Comment by Roy — February 3, 2009 @ 8:21 pm
Nice pluggin. It just looks great.
Comment by Rahul — February 10, 2009 @ 12:15 pm
Hey.
I think you plugin is amazing !!!
I wonder, is it possible to change/modify it, så that instead of the tags it could display pictures ?
Just a thought ?
Best regards.
Comment by Roar Johansen — February 11, 2009 @ 1:34 pm
Hi Roar. I’ve done a few custom version with images, but it’s very tricky. The images would jump in front of each other when they’d overtake in terms of depth.
Besides, WordPress only has category images through a plugin, and none for tags as far as I know.
I’m looking into possibly doing a flickr version though. That could be nice.
Comment by Roy — February 11, 2009 @ 3:25 pm
Hi roy,
First of all, compliments on the amazing plugin! Fantastic!
Just one problem on my side, it doesn’t seem to renew the tags/show all the tags in my blog…
Do you have any idea on why?
thanks!
Comment by Arvid — February 11, 2009 @ 4:32 pm
@Arvid: By default it shows only the top 45 tags on your blog. Also, if you have a caching plugin installed the tag cloud might be cached.
Comment by Roy — February 11, 2009 @ 4:44 pm
hey, just one thing I noticed on this sample page. If you click inside one of the tag clouds… the other one moves… weird!! Why does that happen?
Comment by Joe Pea — February 17, 2009 @ 10:17 pm
Hi Joe. I’ve tried to recreate that behavior in every browser at my disposal, but I can’t seem to get one cloud to move when clicking the other. Are you sure you weren’t seeing a page refresh (all clouds move a little when first loaded).
Comment by Roy — February 18, 2009 @ 9:29 am
Fantastic plugin, good work guys!
Comment by Cris — February 25, 2009 @ 3:36 am
wow this is great! i really like this tag cloud
cheers,
Adrian
Comment by adrian — February 26, 2009 @ 3:18 am
Used it there:
http://letourweb.fr
Exactly what I needed! It perfectly works on all the browsers, simple to use, and the compatibilty with WP 2.7.1 is ok.
Thanks a lot. Good work!
Comment by Jerome — February 26, 2009 @ 5:00 pm
Roy,
I deleted a tag but for some reason it still shows up-the tag in question is Saint Joseph North Pier Lighthouse-yes I know it’s too long.
That brings me to another question-If I try to increase the size of the tag cloud it seems to remain the same. Do I need to actually change that within the code?
Thanks again-Your plugin is great!
Dick
Comment by Dick — March 6, 2009 @ 12:22 am
Hi Dick. No need to edit the code. The smallest dimension will determine the sphere’s size. So if your flash movie is already landscape, making it wider will not affect the sphere’s size at all. Also, please make sure you’re editing the right set of options. For the widget, go to appearance->widgets and open up the widget.
The tag you’re referring to is also a category. Are you using the mixed categories and tags setting (’both’)? That would explain why it still shows up.
Comment by Roy — March 6, 2009 @ 11:11 am
Roy,
Thanks for the info and help-I will try your suggestions and let you know what happens
Again thanks for your help!
DLB
Comment by Dick Berry — March 6, 2009 @ 2:08 pm
Got it-Your a genius! How many tags will work in the cumulus cloud?
Thanks,
Dick
Comment by Dick Berry — March 6, 2009 @ 7:21 pm
hi
verynice plugin, i’m so sad i cant use it! it doesnt soppurt Persian/Farsi and there is nothing to be displayed on it in my blog so i had to disable it, i wish i could help to develop it in Farsi but i realy dont know much about Flash.
Comment by amir — March 6, 2009 @ 8:24 pm
Hello, I can’t understand how to add your blog in my rss reader.plz tell me thank you.johnhoma
Comment by johnhoma — March 7, 2009 @ 10:59 pm
Hi johnhoma. It depends on which reader you’re using. The little orange icon in my header links to the feed. You can right-click it to copy the url.
Comment by Roy — March 8, 2009 @ 9:26 am
Hy Roy…
Why is my cumulus must be clicked if i visit my webblog??
Comment by nunu — March 18, 2009 @ 1:10 am
Hi nunu. This is one of the trade-offs when using the new compatibility mode. It will occur only in IE6 as far as I know.
Comment by Roy — March 18, 2009 @ 11:31 am
Dose This plug in support Arabic ?
Comment by Garebooo — March 18, 2009 @ 8:38 pm
Hi Gareboo. I’m completely unfamiliar with RTL text in Flash, but you might try following this tutorial and see how it turns out. I guess it should simply work.
Comment by Roy — March 19, 2009 @ 9:12 am
hi Roy , i interested with your plugin, have you plugin in html based ? , not in flash.
Thank’s
Comment by Jenie — March 23, 2009 @ 7:17 pm
This tag ball is SUPER cool!!
Unfortunately, it breaks my my special fonts which are very important for my website, since it keeps nice titles and seo value.
It uses canvas tags to render the text and a .js external file for calling the font.
Does anybody knows how to fix it?
Thanks.
Comment by sergio — March 26, 2009 @ 11:25 pm
Hello ! i love this plugin ! it’s beautiful !
How can i make it moves all the time without clicking on it ? Thank you
Comment by ben — March 27, 2009 @ 4:29 pm
@Ben: That’s currently not possible.
Comment by Roy — March 27, 2009 @ 8:57 pm
Hi Roy:
Cool stuff! Do you know of an existing hack to get it to display the blogroll/ links instead of categories and tags? My non-profit wants to use it to list recent donors… and I’m thinking blogroll could be the quickest work-around.
Thoughts? Suggestions?
Any leads you could offer about where to start (or “never start because it won’t be possible”) my trial and error hacking methods would be huge.
Thanks!
Comment by Kathryn — March 27, 2009 @ 10:49 pm
@Kathryn: You should see if you can replace the call to wp_tag_cloud in wp-cumulus.php with a call to wp_list_bookmarks, and use the parameters for that function to get a simple list, with no subdivisions and no list items. Something like wp_list_bookmarks(’categorize=0&title_li=&before=&after=’); .
Comment by Roy — March 28, 2009 @ 12:39 pm
Hi!
Great plugin. I am new to this and just downloaded it. But I cant find the plugin directory. I am using Wordpress (just registered today).
Can someone show me what to do?
Thank you!
Vincent Smit
Netherlands
Comment by Vincent Smit — April 21, 2009 @ 1:17 pm
Have used this tag cloud on several WP-blogs and all visitors liked it. Really great. Thank you!
Comment by Webdesign Amsterdam — April 23, 2009 @ 12:47 pm
Fantastic plugin, good job.
Question – Can you introduce an option to limit the number of tags and catergories that are used in the globe? As over time it gets really hard to distinguish between them all…
much appreciated!
Alex
Comment by Alex — April 24, 2009 @ 5:45 pm
@Alex. The tags are limited to 45 by default. You can change that number using the wp_tag_cloud parameters setting. As for categories, they can not be limited, but if you have nested categories, you could use the hack described here (number 3) to display only the top ones.
Comment by Roy — April 24, 2009 @ 7:05 pm
Hi Roy! You’ve done a great job here.
I’ve got only one question – do you have a version of plugin with the Cyrillic character set?
Or maybe you would explain to me how to make your plugin work with it…
Comment by Ridge — April 26, 2009 @ 7:28 pm
Hi Roy,
The tag cloud widget rocks. I would love to use soemthing lke this for my site. I am not using wordpress, most of my pages are created using dreamweaver. Is there a way to use this in my site?
Comment by MG — April 26, 2009 @ 8:06 pm
Hi MG. Please see this tutorial.
Comment by Roy — April 26, 2009 @ 10:03 pm
Hi Ridge. There’s a tutorial here.
Comment by Roy — April 26, 2009 @ 10:04 pm
Hi there,
First – LOVE this plugin!
Second – I’m trying to change the font sizes, but I don’t understand what the syntax should be for the wp_tag_cloud parameters input fields in the admin for both the plugin and the widget.
I read the codex and copied this:
?php wp_tag_cloud(’smallest=8&largest=22&number=30&orderby=count’); ?
and changed it to:
?php wp_tag_cloud(’smallest=7&largest=12&number=30′); ?
but the font size remains unaffected.
What should I be entering into the input fields to get the results I’m looking for?
Thanks in advance for your help
Comment by Kelly — April 27, 2009 @ 6:12 am
FYI – in the input fields, the code above included the appropriate angle brackets. I removed them in the comment to keep the text from disappearing.
Comment by Kelly — April 27, 2009 @ 6:14 am
Hi Kelly. I think this post will help you.
Comment by Roy — April 27, 2009 @ 12:09 pm
Hi there Roy, I have two questions about the Cumulus plugin:
1) Is it possible to tweak the plugin in a way the contents are rebuilt occasionally?
I ask because it looks like the swf load takes some 2/4 seconds, so I thought it could be due to the plugin rebuilding the contents on each page load.
2) Is there a way to build a placeholder using the same area of the Cumuls plugin, in case the browser doesn’t support Flash 9?
Thanks!
Comment by Hermann — April 28, 2009 @ 2:48 pm
Hi Hermann. It would be possible to have the Flash movie refresh itself more often, but not less. The load time you’re seeing is part movie load time, plugin initialization, javascript execution time (SWFObject). Once loaded, the movie only needs a very short time to actually parse the tag cloud and display it (less than 1/30 of a second usually). Since the plugin gets the tag cloud from WordPress and does not keep a cached copy there’s very little I can tweak to improve this.
As for creating a placeholder, you could do that by editing the plugin. Look for the ‘alternate content’ in wp-cumulus.php. I’ll see if I can improve the default alternate content in future versions.
Comment by Roy — April 28, 2009 @ 3:01 pm
Thanks Roy for the quick reply. I may consider an alternate Internet provider to improve download speed…
Comment by Hermann — April 28, 2009 @ 9:58 pm
Here’s a suggestion, fallback to the default wp tag cloud if they don’t have Flash…
…and here’s the solution (I couldn’t believe it was so simple):
Replace two instances of…
$flashtag .= ‘WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck requires Flash Player 9 or better.’;
With this…
$flashtag .= wp_tag_cloud();
Bang! Now it works on devices that don’t have Flash support.
Comment by Psylem — May 7, 2009 @ 9:57 am
…ok, so maybe that doesn’t quite work. Looks like calling that function renders the default tag cloud right away (it doesn’t return a string containing it like I’d hoped.
Comment by Psylem — May 7, 2009 @ 10:08 am
Looks like you might be able to do this in WP Version 2.8 using the echo option, but even that’s not clear. If you can it might work using the following syntax…
$html = wp_tag_cloud(’echo=0′ );
Here’s the doco…
http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/wp_tag_cloud#Parameters
Comment by Psylem — May 7, 2009 @ 10:25 am
Hi Psylem. I’ve experimented with various options when it comes to this. The main issue is that SWFObject takes a second or so to replace the alternate content with the flash movie. Most of the times the regular tag cloud takes more space, so there would be a nasty ‘twitch’ after the page is loaded. This is why I removed (or rather hid, it’s still there in the code) the regular cloud.
Comment by Roy — May 7, 2009 @ 10:58 am
Lol, yeah I just noticed the p style=”display:none;” tag. Removing that style does exactly what I want. Maybe have it as a configurable option?
Comment by Psylem — May 7, 2009 @ 11:36 am
That’s what I’m considering for the next release.
Comment by Roy — May 7, 2009 @ 12:20 pm
Nice Plug, How about adding a tips on mouse over with the count. So i know how many posts with that category or tags.
Thanks Roy for the great work
Comment by shahin — May 9, 2009 @ 3:46 am
Thanks dude! love it!
Comment by PP — May 12, 2009 @ 8:07 pm
good work man. looks really nice. I was wondering… I have a wordpress blog hosted on the wordpress site… how am i able to implement this on their without the ability to upload files to the necessary directories? thanks in advance!
Comment by john — May 13, 2009 @ 8:42 am
Hi John. Wordpress.com actively blocks anything that even smells like Flash. Well, except for a few exceptions, such as YouTube. Until their policies change, Cumulus is no-go on wordpress.com.
Comment by Roy — May 13, 2009 @ 9:06 am
Dumbest plugin ever. Horrible. Looks cool but that’s it. Completely useless and impossible to use. It doesn’t matter how “cool” something is if trying to use it makes your brain hemorrhage a little bit over your left eye.
Comment by Guy — May 21, 2009 @ 7:32 pm
Sadly… 99% of web designers will look at this and say “Oooooooooo!!!! Coooooooool!!!!” and install it while 100% of their users will go to the website and say “Ooooooooooooo!!!! Coooooooool!!!!” and then smash their monitor with a brick after actually trying to use it.
Comment by Guy — May 21, 2009 @ 7:38 pm
Very cool. Thank you.
Comment by nuvem — May 22, 2009 @ 6:45 pm
Just love it. Had to install it on my blog as well and you can find it at http://www.merkalt.no. Thanks for a great plug in!
Comment by Andreas — May 29, 2009 @ 12:05 pm
Awesome…nice job. I was lookin for a cool way to display my tags on a separate page and this fits the bill.
Nice presentation and works perfectly. I also love the option that displays old school tags if flash isn’t available.
peace,
zOnk.oNe
Comment by zOnk.oNe — June 11, 2009 @ 3:35 am
Does anyone know how to create Tag Cloud that using image or pictures, instead of text?
Besides, there’s little things to share, The following URL is a site which u can generate ur Tag cloud online…and it’d free
http://www.tagcloud-generator.com
Comment by Janice — June 12, 2009 @ 4:22 am
Hi Janice. There’s a picture version right here on this blog… did you check the sidebar?
Comment by Roy — June 12, 2009 @ 9:52 am
HI
I liked the plugin, but I have few questions in mind. Can we change the animation type,like now it is looking too overlapped, and also will it be SEO friendly?
Comment by Vaishali Kapote — June 17, 2009 @ 7:05 am
Hi Viashali. SEO is affected somewhat because by default the regular html tag cloud is hidden through CSS. In the latest version there’s an option to unhide it if you want. The ‘distribute evenly’ setting will make tags overlap a lot less, and you could also consider lowering the total number of tags though the wp_tag_cloud options.
Comment by Roy — June 17, 2009 @ 10:36 am
I wondered if someone would be kind enough to share the file base. fla (editable flash) I need it for work of the faculty (faculty of architecture and urban design – santa fe – argentina) only need to edit to build an interactive menu. I would give all credit to usted.Sorry for not knowing English well. thanks. THANKS ROY now.
Comment by martin — June 17, 2009 @ 2:09 pm
Hi Martin. The fla is available from wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-cumulus/download. Get the ‘developer version’. Please keep in mind that this project is open source, which restricts your options for redistribution somewhat.
Comment by Roy — June 17, 2009 @ 6:22 pm
hello good morning sir, am preetham, i saw your invention its amazing, sir actually i need a help from you, sir am dwveloping a website by using asp.net and c#, sir i need to capture a visitors image at client side, so am thinking of using a flash, because it will work on client side( i need to access clients webcam), so till now am able to display the live video from the webcam, i took it from some other site, but i need to stop the displaying video on the screen, and to capture the image display in the flash, and to save that image to server, sir am stranger to flash technology, so please help me regarding this, or you just send me some links where i can find the solution,……. thanks in advance sir……
i am waiting for your response……..
Comment by preetham — June 18, 2009 @ 8:24 am
Hi Preetham. I’ve yet to come across a good tutorial for that. It’s the kind of thing that would be easy using Flash Media Server, but not with just Flash. This tutorial might help, but it sends the image as pixels, which is terribly inefficient.
Comment by Roy — June 18, 2009 @ 9:09 am
I’ve found a tool, ajax based, that gets rid of the need to write any xml wrapper for other systems. It simply converts any html tag cloud to your flash tag cloud and vice versa:
http://www.artviper.net/html-tag-cloud-to-flash-converter.php
Very easy and straightforward.
cheers
James
Comment by James — June 19, 2009 @ 9:14 am
Hi James. The artviper people again… They’ve created derived works before, and it seems this is another violation of the GPL license. They are obligated to bundle the source code for the Flash movie, or at least provide a download link for it. They’ve also removed my copyright notice.
I’m assuming their flash movie is based on mine because I decompiled a previous effort of theirs and found some very familiar code inside. Unsure what to do about all this though.
Comment by Roy — June 19, 2009 @ 11:29 am
Hi Roy,
hm, I just wrote them and they agreed to add the sources to their distribution package. They also said that the source is revamped of yours, but they are not charging anything for it nor do they claim the cloud to be theirs. I’ve just downloaded the pack and in ImageCloud.as it says “orignal taken from http://www.roytanck.com – modified by artviper.
So can I use this now or would that be a violation of your terms?
Furthermore, what about the script I’ve been reporting about, rendering any xml wrapper obsolete?
cheers
James
Comment by James — June 19, 2009 @ 1:23 pm
Roy surprising …
I managed to basically understand the get-wp comulus but I have not been able to get the my flickr widget. Is it necessary to link the images to http://www.flickr.com/ or you can do to a url inside my computer?
thanks roy
Comment by martin — June 19, 2009 @ 1:31 pm
Hi James. I’d like to be credited outside the source code, which no one will ever see, other than developers. But I’ll admit I’m not sure I could make you. They’re not so much ‘my’ terms, GPL is a complicated license that governs the entire free software movement.
One thing that would definitely be required is that you allow everyone who downloads the project to redistribute it. Since it’s a free download I assume you’re OK with that.
I quite like what you’ve done with the wrapper. I’ve seen something similar done in Javascript a while ago and I’m looking into applying something like that to my plugin if it makes it more robust. It’s not that I don’t like your project or want to obstruct you in any way. I’d just like to keep it legal.
Comment by Roy — June 19, 2009 @ 2:30 pm
Hi Martin. The Flickr widget has a little brother that lets you run it off your own website. It’s a little more DIY than the hosted version. ( http://www.roytanck.com/2009/04/09/introducing-photo-widget-floating-thumbnails-for-your-website/ )
Comment by Roy — June 19, 2009 @ 2:32 pm
Hello Roy
We are grateful for the chance to explore this work. I wanted to ask if we may use these codes to build the website of the library of our faculty. THIS IS THE LINK http://www.fadu.unl.edu.ar/ (among others your name and link to your website)
We could not edit the font in WP_Cumulus (Tag.as on file at line 58)
and you do the last question. Is it possible to generate a link between WP-Cumulus and the widget and that widget appears as a window in front of WP-Cumulus?
A million thanks and Excuse for not knowing English well. THANKS ROY
Comment by martin — June 23, 2009 @ 9:44 pm
Hi Martin. You’re perfectly welcome to use Cumulus on any site as long as you don’t sell the template or distribute it without sources. Proper credits would be appreciated.
Did you see this tutorial about adding fonts and characters? You need to change the font in two places and make the makes match exactly.
As for your last question, I’m not quite sure what you’re saying. WP-Cumulus itself is (in many cases) a widget. Because it’s Flash it’s not so easy to put anything over it, but the code can be hacked to open new windows or popups.
Comment by Roy — June 24, 2009 @ 10:30 am
Hi Roy
I again thank custom fonts.
My second question is how and where to set the size of new windows (popups) on the first window.
thanks Roy
Comment by martin — June 24, 2009 @ 2:22 pm
Hi Martin. Since the clicks are handled by Flash you’d need to rewrite the Tag.as clickhandler function to make it call a javascript function. Yuo could either call window.open directly or through a function.
Comment by Roy — June 24, 2009 @ 2:41 pm
Hi!
First, great plugin! looks very nice!
I was woundering if there is something similar, or mabye u got what i need allready.
I want this but it scould be with links, only links to other sites, and nothing about my blog and tags and stuff… Why? Becouse i dont use the blog as a blog, iam not “bloging”, and I was just thinking of having links in a cloud, like this one, in the sidebar.
I woulde be greatful if u could help me
Cheers
Kim
Comment by Kim — June 27, 2009 @ 12:21 am
sir I appreciate your effort so I must ask what one has to do to display the tagcloud? I unzipped the folder in the wp-content/plugins folder, I activated the plugin, I checked out and changed some minor options from Settings->Wp-Cumulus…
but I couldn’t find any option to place the tagcloud on any specific place, neither is displaying at all.
What -I- am doing wrong?
Comment by eliezer — June 28, 2009 @ 1:56 am
nevermind,
=)
is working GREAT!
Comment by eliezer — June 28, 2009 @ 2:00 am
Hi Roy,
can I use your Cumulus Tag-Cloud Plugin without Wordpress as well?
I would like to use it on my personal page, however I don´t have Wordpress running there (my hosting plan does not support it) and I also don´t have php.
Flash is supported and I can upload files via FTP.
I would like to use is with “static” links, so no live tags or anything. I thought about placing the links in an xml file or so and that the flash is using the information in the xml to display the cloud.
Is this possible?
Thanks
Mark
Comment by Mark — June 29, 2009 @ 6:48 am
Hi Mark. Yes you can. The example files are here.
Comment by Roy — June 30, 2009 @ 10:39 am