Review of Popular WordPress Plugins: WP-Cumulus
If you display tags or categories in a sidebar of your WordPress blog, you might like to take a look at the WP-Cumulus plugin. It gets 5 stars by all the reviewers so far and definitely hits the top on the cool factor.
WP-Cumulus displays your tags and/or categories but in a visually-striking way. A rotating cloud of words is presented instead of a plain old list.
Here’s an example of WP-Cumulus in action:
WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck and Luke Morton requires Flash Player 9 or better.
Move your cursor over the display and the rotation will change direction and speed. Click on a word once it has a box around it to get a listing of posts containing that tag or filed in that category. Pretty cool, eh?
The only caution here is that you must be running WP 2.3 or later. WP-Cumulus will not work with earlier versions.
Installation follows the typical plugin format. Simply download the plugin, unpack it, and FTP the plugin folder, called wp-cumulus, to your wp-content/plugins directory.
There are three ways to display your WP-Cumulus cloud:
- In a page or post like above, using the key
[WP-CUMULUS]. Features can be modified under Settings/WP-Cumulus. - In your theme anywhere that you insert
<?php wp_cumulus_insert(); ?>, probably in a sidebar. Just make sure the sidebar is big enough to display the cloud nicely. - As a widget, via ‘Design’->’Widgets’. Edit the widget to modify the size of the cloud and the colors used for the text and background.
Really nice, don’t you think?
I really like it. It’s very awesome. I discovered it just last week, and I’m proud that my blog uses it.
It is pretty cool, isn’t it? I use it on a couple sites that aren’t all business. We have to get our fun where we can, ya’ know. Fun and useful at the same time makes for a pretty good WP plug-in.