Tag/Category Cloud Plugin For WordPress

If you ever wanted to create a tag cloud for your WordPress powered blog, I’ve found a really nice plugin for you!

Category Cloud (v. 1.5) is a WordPress plugin that shows categories as a colored tag cloud. You can see it live in my sidebar. Take a look at the “Top Categories” section.

The plugin installation process is pretty easy. Download the plugin, unzip it, upload ‘category-cloud.php’ to your WordPress plugins directory and activate the plugin. You need to insert <?php category_cloud();?> where you want your category cloud to appear. That’s all.

Main Features:

Support for Wordpress 2.1 (should work on older wordpress versions, but it�s not tested, I�ll be happy to have some feedbacks)
Customizable max and min font size and unit (px, pt, em)
Categories shown in ascending, descending or random order
Possibility to exclude given categories
Possibility to exclude categories with less than a given number of posts
Full integration with wordpress administration panel
before and after tags – You can use this option to put your categories (tags) between <li></li>
Categories can be sort by ascending or descending number of posts
Option to show a fixed number of categories (this way you can do a �top 10 categories�) - My favorite option! If you haven’t already noticed, I’m using this option to show the “Top Categories” section in my sidebar.
Colored cloud, with colors based on the importance of each category

For the people who want to know if it works on WordPress 2.1.2, my answer is: Yes, it works perfectly on WordPress 2.1.2 because my blog is powered by WP 2.1.2 and you can see this plugin working in my sidebar!

In case you are using a hosted WordPress.COM blog, you may want to read my previous article: “Tag Cloud Generator For WordPress.COM Blogs“.

[tags]Blogging, WordPress, WordPress Plugins, Tags, Tag Clouds, Category Clouds, Category Cloud 1.5[/tags]

Miniblog

§ Need a smooth programming language to start writing your applications? Choose Python. I was reading Steve Holden’s blog where I found this humorous peace on Python vs C++. (0)

§ What’s the use of spending tons of money in building such a site that’s completely useless for mobile users?

I used to love Streamy since the day I received an invite to try it. Its developers are very intelligent for what they’ve come up with – a really powerful platform for power bloggers. But Streamy is attractive and all that only if you’re using it from your desktop/laptop/tablet pcs. I don’t know how does it work on iPhone & similar gadgets but I never got it to work on my Nokia Eseries phones.

The reason? – It’s too AJAXY. While all other web feed readers (including full web versions of Google Reader, Bloglines, etc.) work perfectly well on my Eseries devices, Streamy won’t even load.

You’ll face two problems while trying to use Streamy from your mobile phones. First problem is that Streamy doesn’t have an interface for mobile users (like Google Reader Mobile, Bloglines Mobile, etc.) and second, even the full web version doesn’t work.

I had stopped using all other feed readers since I became a Streamy member but their poorly built design (from the accessibility point of view) leaves me no choice but to switch back to my ex-feedreader.

Note: I still recommend Streamy over other web feed readers, if your only device to access the Internet is a computer. (0)

§ Raw HTML is a WordPress plugin that allows you to put any code or script in your posts and display it to the visitor unmodified. Note: The plugin is new and I’ve not tested it on any of my blogs so use it at your own risk. (0)

§ Money For Nothing is Seth Godin’s new ebook for people who have more talent than cash.

It turns out that the new playing field enforced by the search engines is eliminating many of the shortcuts that used to be effective. In other words, the best way is the long way. The long way is to create content that is updated, unique and useful. Again and again we see that sites that do all three manage to get more than their fair share of traffic. So, I guess the title of the ebook is a bit misleading. The clicks don’t cost money, but they do take effort. That’s good news for people who have more talent than cash.

(0)

§ � using Shorty. From the page:

Shorty is a simple tool for creating shorter, human- readable links from long URLs. You install Shorty on your server, so the links you create with it never go away. You can also manage your links and see how often people click on them.

Check out the live demo.

(0)

§ Question: What is an SSB (Site Specific Browser)? Answer: An SSB is not your usual browser. It lacks navigation, menus, tabs, and even the address bar! These browsers are designed to work exclusively with a single web application. In other words, you can think of an SSB as a stripped-down version of Firefox. I won’t go in detail about Site Specific Browsers and the idea behind ‘em ’cause this topic has already been discussed by too many awesome people. I’ve been playing with SSBs ever since I created the first SSB bundle for Streamy. The Streamy bundle is meant to work only with WebRunner (now Prism) ’cause currently, WebRunner is the only SSB application that can be installed on Linux, Mac and Windows platforms. Mac also has Fluid, a free SSB application available only for Mac OS X. If you’re a Web 2.0 startup, you should try one of these applications to create a desktop version of your Web application. Since SSBs like WebRunner are open source apps, you can easily modify the code to add additional functionalities. (0)

§ So many people blog about new Web 2.0 startups. People take inspirations from these startups and come up with their own unique ideas to launch new Web 2.0 companies. Many people like being copy-cats. They not only take inspirations from big players, e.g. Digg, but also try to copy the whole concept. No matter if you’re a copy-cat startup or someone with an unique Web 2.0 business concept, once you launch a company, there’s always risk involved. A small mistake in the idea-execution-process and you end up biting the dust. What can you do to save your company from getting lost in history? Learn from the deads. Yup. That’s the answer. Try to catch the weak points that sent so many companies to the TC deadpool and learn from their mistakes. (0)

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