WP-Cumulus 1.16: A quick fix…

Yesterday’s 1.15 version of WP-Cumulus caused a serious issue for some users. If the plugin was set to display categories, and all of them contained the same number of posts, the color assignment algorithm would fail and tags would turn black. I was able to quickly fix this and while doing so I also decided to try and lower CPU usage.

The tag cloud page on this blog takes about 30% of my E6600 (dual core, 2.4 GHz) CPU. Even when the clouds aren’t visibly moving. As it turns out, most of the math and redrawing happening while your mouse is nowhere near the Flash movie could be skipped. With this version, CPU usage for a single instance on my system drops from an average of 22% to zero when the tag cloud stops spinning. It took only a few lines of code and I should have done this ages ago.

So, sorry for the trouble of having to upgrade twice, but 1.16 comes highly recommended.

Related posts:
  1. Another quick WP-Cumulus update
  2. Finally, a new WP-Cumulus update
  3. How to use WP-Cumulus shortcodes
  4. Cumulus as a Flex component
  5. WP-Cumulus for Drupal is simply called “Cumulus”
Roy | October 31, 2008 | English,WordPress plugins | Comments (13)
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13 Comments

  1. Link: WP-Cumulus – nach Update defekt | Teigfladens Alltag

  2. Hi Roy,

    I made update by WordPress automatic update. There is no porblem apears on update but no tags displaying on the page after update.

    Comment by RecNes — October 31, 2008 @ 4:46 pm

  3. By the way, can you convert UTF-8 chars to similar chars for example:
    Ç = C
    Ğ = G etc..

    This will be solves our display problems temporary.

    Comment by RecNes — October 31, 2008 @ 4:51 pm

  4. I’m running into the same problem at RecNes…no tags displaying nor categories, nor both together if so set.

    Comment by M — October 31, 2008 @ 10:54 pm

  5. The automatic plugin upgrade (for some users) seems to kill the swf file. If you’re having trouble after an automatic upgrade, please uninstall the plugin and reinstall the latest version through FTP.

    Comment by Roy — November 1, 2008 @ 9:03 am

  6. Well done, manual installation has been works.

    Comment by RecNes — November 1, 2008 @ 11:23 am

  7. Thanks for this fine plugin,

    Really cool,

    But after update, now on my dual core AMD Processor, it utilizing 25-28% cup, is it normal??

    Comment by Saugata Datta — November 3, 2008 @ 6:01 am

  8. Yeah, I’m afraid that’s normal. When the cloud stops spinning the cpu load should drop to (near0 zero. With previous versions it would remain at 20-30 precent on modern dual core computers.

    However, Flash seems to allocate a lot of cpu time, just to be on the safe side. On my Atom-based netbook, most browsers will run at near 100% with cumulus active, but the movie will play smoothly and both the browser and the OS remain very responsive.

    Comment by Roy — November 3, 2008 @ 9:19 am

  9. Hi there and thanks for great plugin. But I have a small problem with it. Some of the tags are displaying in a very small size. You can check it here http://www.almanews.kz on the right side. This problem exists in all versions of plugin.

    Comment by masya — November 11, 2008 @ 6:25 am

  10. Hi Masya. This issue has been reported by more users, and I’m working on a fix. For now, a quick fix is to turn of localization. The problem occurs when a comma is used instead of a dot in the tag style declarations.

    Comment by Roy — November 14, 2008 @ 10:57 am

  11. Hi Roy,

    Thanks for creating such a cool tag cloud alternative.
    I’m looking to have an image in the background, is there an easy way to do this? I’m just getting to know PHP so didn’t want to mess with your code.

    Thanks
    Graham

    Comment by graham — November 14, 2008 @ 9:07 pm

  12. Hi Graham. The plugin can be set to transparant, so that would allow any background you have to show underneath the tags. Another option is to download the developer version and use Flash to paint/place whatever you like on the movie’s stage. Because the movie is scaled to match the plugin’s width and height settings you should probably experiment with this a little.

    Comment by Roy — November 15, 2008 @ 9:06 am

  13. the best plugin ever! totally enhances the overall feel of the page! has an issue though…even if i change the setting from WP-Cumulus options, the change does not reflect on the page…i even tried to put output display as Categories as i have only 2 of them, but it just doesn’t work…

    Comment by Aditya Kulkarni — January 9, 2009 @ 2:51 pm