WP Cumulus released!

WP-Cumulus has moved to WordPress.org. The information on this page is no longer maintained. Please see http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-cumulus/ for the latest version of the plugin and documentation.

A little while ago I posted a Flash based tag cloud frontend here that was hoping to convert into a plugin for WordPress. I had some time on my hands tonight, so I decided to finish it. The actionscript needed a major overhaul, and in order to allow decent integration into as many layouts as possible the plugin itself needed an options page. Thanks to WP’s brilliant documentation, and lots of helpful posts by people who’s PHP skills far exceed mine, it’s now done.

Download WP Cumulus at WordPress.org

You can see it in action here.

Version history

Version	Changes
Version 1.12+	Moved to WordPress.org/extend.
Version 1.11	Restores an earlier fix for IE to force loading of the Flash movie.
Version 1.1	Complete rewrite of the Flash movie (Actionscript 3, requires Flash Player 9 or better). Better mouse detection. Adds option to distribute the tags evenly over the sphere. Adds support for categories. Adds the ability to pass parameters to the WordPress wp_tag_cloud function. Several smaller enhancements.
Version 1.05	Fixes several issues with IE, including an issue where it was impossible to use the regular version and the widget on the same page. Thanks to Fadi for alerting me to these.
Version 1.04	Fixes the “it kills my blog” error for people using PHP 5.2 or newer. Thanks to Mujahid for helping me debug this. Speed improvements in the Flash code.
Version 1.03	Removes the wp_head hook in yet another attempt to fix issues with some other plugins and themes. Reduces system overhead by storing less options. Adds setting for speed. Adds a widget with seperate options (size, colors, speeds, etc). Attemps to detect when the mouse leaves the movie, reducing the ’spinning, but not out of control’ effect. Several minor fixes.
Version 1.02	Fixes issues with sites not loading after activation, reduces server load and fixes lost spaces in tags. Thanks to Dimitry for helping me debug these issues.
Version 1.01	Fixes an issue where the cloud would spin out of control when the browsers loses focus on OSX.
Version 1.00	Initial release version.

Here’s what you should know about “WP Cumulus”:

Installation

1. Make sure you’re running WordPress version 2.3 or better. It really won’t work with older versions. Really.
2. Download the zip file and extract the contents.
3. Upload the “wp-cumulus” folder to your plugins directory (wp-content/plugins/)
4. Activate the plugin through the ‘plugins’ page in WP.
5. See “Options->WP Cumulus” to adjust things like display size, etc…

Using WP Cumulus

In order to actually display the tag cloud, you have three options.

1. Create a page or post and type [WP-CUMULUS ] anywhere in the content, but without the space before the last bracket. This ‘tag’ will be replaced by the flash movie when viewing the page.
2. Add the following code anywhere in your theme to display the cloud. This can be used to add WP Cumulus to your sidebar, although it may not actually be wide enough in many cases to keep the tags readable.
3. The plugin adds a widget, so you can place it on your sidebar through ‘Design’->’Widgets’. The widget uses a separate set of settings, so it’s possible to have different background colors, sizes, etc.