Clouds and Drop Downs
Since I’m the newest member of the Automattic team perhaps a little introduction is in order. In the past I’ve been a jack of all trades IT guy: system admin, programmer, DBA, et cetera. Now my focus is on WordPress. My off time is spent mostly with my wife and two daughters, with the occasional basketball game thrown in there for good measure.
Now on to the news: another new widget, and a new option for a few others.
For those of you who are really into tag clouds you’re in luck, now you can display your blog categories as cloud using the new Tag Cloud widget.
If you aren’t into tag clouds, but still looking for something a little different in the way you display categories we have something for you too. The Categories and Archives widgets now have options to use a drop down menu. This will be especially helpful to those of you who want your categories and archives list to take up less room on the sidebar.
April 27th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
Wow, as a space-saver it’s excellent.
Only, the post-count does not work when you use as drop-down. And when I remove drop-down and use post-count, then the number in the category is on a separate line, and so looks messy (visually). So I’ve resolved to use just drop down.
Thanks for all this. Category and Archives drop-downs shown here: http://regenerationayk.wordpress.com
April 27th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
Thanks for that! very nice
April 27th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
The tag cloud is terrific…I’m already using it and it works like a charm. Thank you so much!
April 27th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Absolutely amazing. WP.com is already over the top (“off the hook,” as my students like to say), but this goes several step further. Thank you so much.
April 27th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
Welcome Josephscott!
I like clouds – great! thanks. I enjoy all these “games”…playing with my blog is my favorite past time these days. May use the drop down for archives.
Susan
April 27th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Nice! I thought my tag list was getting kinda long for my taste.
Re: drop downs – Why not have this option for blogroll as well?
April 27th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
Welcome to the WordPress.com community, Joseph!
What a beautiful start you’ve given us.
THANK YOU!
April 27th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
Very interesting widget here
April 27th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Very cool. Thanks!
April 27th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
OMG.. this is too good!
Recently on Tuesday I was reading some forums about tag clouds and I was so sad just seeing my partners in blogger having the posibility to have them in their blogs and also a posibility to have drop-down list!!!
I cannot wait to go to my blog and modify it right now!!!
P.S. you are so bad… today, I won’t be able to finish my job report either!
April 27th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Way cool… keep the good job!
April 27th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Excellent!
I’m not cloud crazy, but I do like the drop-down options in the other widgets.
Nice job, guys.
April 27th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Cool.
For the people who want to put tag clouds on their own page (instead of in a sidebar) there is still my Tag Cloud Generator that works with any WordPress or WordPress Multi-user blog.
April 27th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
(example of what my tag generator looks like)
April 27th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
nice job, cheers
April 27th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
Damn! How COOOL! You guys rock! I LOVE WordPress!
Thank you Joseph, and thank you all at Wp.
April 27th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
EEEK!
April 27th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
Voy a probarlo ahora mismo, ésto va mejorando, me gusta.
Thanks!!
April 27th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
Great work!!!
Now I won’t have to manually update my tag clouds like I used to!
April 27th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
I could rant and rave and say how cool and awesome and fantastic it is – but I won’t. I’ll just say two things – it’s amazing and thankyou.
April 27th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
This is a neat idea.
April 27th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
These are awesome options. Thanks!
April 27th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
I just added this cool new widget. Thanks!
April 27th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
The Cloud of Topics is very misleading. It’s a Tag Cloud, right? A Cloud of Categories. A Cloud of Tags. But topics?
Anyway, this is long been requested and much thanks for helping to see this through. And welcome to the world of WordPress.
April 27th, 2007 at 11:46 pm
Cool! I thought about clouds in these day! Thanks!
April 27th, 2007 at 11:47 pm
thank you!
April 27th, 2007 at 11:47 pm
Oh, I got it now. Sorry about that. The user has the option to title it whatever they want. You chose “topics”. The example was a little confusing. WordPress has a reputation for choosing dumb names for things, as does Google and other brilliant folks who come up with brilliant things and give them dumb names. I just wanted to make sure I understand what the example was. Sorry.
This is fabulous. It will be even better when the tags are added! Thank you.
April 28th, 2007 at 12:22 am
I like the compact but readable version of the cloud in the sidebar, but //engtech’s is super, too.
I notice that the cloud is sorted alphabetically and size = number of posts. (good)
The drop down isn’t sorted by alpha or by numeric. Any way that will be alphabetized?
How much of the display is theme-specific? That is some themes add numbers of posts to cat/tags and some don’t
Camai! Bula!
April 28th, 2007 at 12:25 am
I know the answer to the display of drop down categories– it is theme specific; at least number of posts don’t show in K2
April 28th, 2007 at 12:32 am
Yeah!! Thank you!!
April 28th, 2007 at 12:42 am
I’ve been waiting for this… Thanks!
April 28th, 2007 at 1:04 am
I’ve been waiting for this one; my archives extend infinitely down my sidebar. Thank you! Now I feel like me and me blog are finally fully attuned.
April 28th, 2007 at 1:07 am
Suggestion. Add a way to limit the number of categories to only the top 30 or so instead of automatically listing every one.
April 28th, 2007 at 1:25 am
Is there any way of limiting the number of tags? A tag cloud would be great for my blog but I have so many categories and subcategories that it just is way too big. If the option of putting a number of tags was available, this feature would be close to perfect!
April 28th, 2007 at 1:34 am
Welcome to wordpress. Seems like tehre is more staff every day?
Not too sure on the look of this, I think for the time being I prefer engtech’s and the fact that it can be on it’s own page.
Nevertheless, nice work, guys.
April 28th, 2007 at 1:40 am
Beautiful! Keep these things coming on!
April 28th, 2007 at 1:42 am
Wow!! Thank you!! Cloud tags are so cute! I’m so glad this is now possible. Thanks again!
April 28th, 2007 at 1:44 am
Sweet, you guys are really kicking this month!
*worship!*
April 28th, 2007 at 1:55 am
Thanks a lot for those upgrades.
I wanted a tag cloud widget for quite some time now. Oh, and the drop down is good thinking – now I can display both methods without taking too much space.
Excellent job and thanks again!
April 28th, 2007 at 1:57 am
Oooo! I can’t wait to try this out. Thanks!
April 28th, 2007 at 1:57 am
very cool. I just would like to see a few more changes so then i could finally migrate my blogger blogs into wordpress!
April 28th, 2007 at 1:58 am
Perfect! Thanx. Love the cloud!
April 28th, 2007 at 2:09 am
a bit in shock !!!!!! coooooooollllllll
April 28th, 2007 at 2:14 am
the new one is a good one, too!
April 28th, 2007 at 2:16 am
Oh wow.
New toys to play with!
Thanks WP Team.
April 28th, 2007 at 2:33 am
love it! the clouds are rockin’!
April 28th, 2007 at 2:34 am
Nice. However, the tag cloud can be a bit too wide for some themes. (See the right sidebar of my blog.)
April 28th, 2007 at 2:40 am
reallyyyyy nice!! too cooooooll!!
April 28th, 2007 at 2:43 am
I love the clouds
thank you!
April 28th, 2007 at 2:59 am
Very Nice!
April 28th, 2007 at 3:01 am
its good
April 28th, 2007 at 3:01 am
I’ve been waiting for this.
Thank you.
April 28th, 2007 at 3:03 am
Cool stuff…just some of the things we were waiting for. But I’m counting on you guys to include the post-counts in the drop-down list!
April 28th, 2007 at 3:16 am
Welcome to WP Joseph Scott. I was just wondering whether this drop down could also be extended to bookmarks/blogroll or pages?
April 28th, 2007 at 3:26 am
This rocks! thanks a lot. I love the speed of development here
April 28th, 2007 at 3:44 am
This was a long needed feature. A real space saver. Now less clutter,thanks.
April 28th, 2007 at 3:51 am
You guys rock!
April 28th, 2007 at 3:54 am
I’ve used both the tag cloud and the archives drop down and in fact I quite liked the line “Topics I write about” and have used that.
April 28th, 2007 at 3:58 am
Been waiting for this for over a year. Thanks. The archives drop-down is awesome too.
April 28th, 2007 at 4:20 am
@lorelle: Yeah sure, this should be named as Could of Categories but Tag Could is much more popular
April 28th, 2007 at 4:33 am
You guys are really responsive to user requests. What a great feature. Thanks!
April 28th, 2007 at 4:40 am
Woohoo! Been waiting for this for a while!
With my Categories-fever, it’ll be a grrrrrrreat help!
April 28th, 2007 at 4:41 am
Finally!!!
April 28th, 2007 at 4:41 am
hey man it so deliciuse !!!
April 28th, 2007 at 4:43 am
Well, ok, as it turns out, the sidebar for the Andreas09 theme is too narrow and my cloud is way too long. Ah, well…
April 28th, 2007 at 4:57 am
Welcome to to the team Joseph! Good stuff!
Trent
April 28th, 2007 at 5:06 am
That saves so much space. For my archives I was just making a page and putting in a link to each month. This is a good thing. Thanks.
Austin
April 28th, 2007 at 5:08 am
Wow, thanks a lot. Right after I sent that feedback form too. Thanks. (:
April 28th, 2007 at 5:23 am
Brilliant. I just spent the last few days looking for a way to put a tag cloud in my sidebar. You read my freakin’ mind.
April 28th, 2007 at 5:28 am
Thank you! One of the few things I missed from Typepad was the category clouds!
April 28th, 2007 at 5:54 am
Oooh…
nice…
I like…
I’m going to use that on one of my blogs…
April 28th, 2007 at 6:15 am
Not sure I like the tag cloud myself yet, but I appreciate it’s there as an option. I’ve been waiting for the space saving drop down menu though, thanks for that. It’s not often I implement a new widget when it’s announced, or even comment on the announcement……but I thought this was an exception.
April 28th, 2007 at 6:43 am
Hey Jack and WP, you know what.. THIS IS WHAT I AM LOOKING FOR………. You guys read my mind…
Thanks a ton..
x
April 28th, 2007 at 6:51 am
GREAT – have been waiting for this one. Tnx.
April 28th, 2007 at 7:22 am
a cool widget – nice
I will test it
April 28th, 2007 at 7:27 am
Thanks for adding there wonderful features. I got two bugs for you to fix though. First, the padding under the drop down menu is a too small, making it stick to the title of the next widget. Then, there’s the maximum tag size in the tag cloud; it’s can get way too big. I’m using the Garland theme.
April 28th, 2007 at 7:41 am
i was expecting that, excellent
April 28th, 2007 at 7:54 am
Thanks. I like this new Tag Cloud widget.
April 28th, 2007 at 8:02 am
very nice feature
April 28th, 2007 at 8:30 am
Good job
April 28th, 2007 at 8:36 am
nice touch, welcome on board
April 28th, 2007 at 9:59 am
Excellent!
April 28th, 2007 at 10:23 am
Yep. Not that useful until tags are added. There needs to be a difference between tags and categories.
April 28th, 2007 at 10:45 am
The drop down option is something I’ve been wanting for a while. Thanks for implementing it.
April 28th, 2007 at 10:52 am
excellent! welcome to the wordpress family, josephscott. come join us at the wp.com forums some time!
April 28th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Nice addition but doesn’t a couple of themes has “Archives” functionality already? I would prefer the dropdown menu though. Thanks for this.
April 28th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
cool. Definitely going to add this into my site.
April 28th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Great, I was considering dropping the archives altogether as they were taking too much space.
April 28th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
The tag cloud is cool! And the dropdown feature is a very good improvement. Thanks!
April 28th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Ooooh, yes, space-saving, cool!
I agree with ChenZhen: why don’t do the same think for the blogroll? It will be useful.
Thank you again
(welcome, Joseph ^_^)
April 28th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Thank you Joseph, TagClouds are among my favorites inside socialweb and socialbookmarking. It releases one from the weight of equivalent terms in alphabetical lists and I’m glad I can add this widget to my sidebar. Drop-down options are very good options to save room. I agree with ChenZen, why not a similar option for Blogroll or at least, a way to escape (again) alphabetical order. I know, one way come be to add a number at the beginning…
April 28th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
I love the tag cloud – thanks.
April 28th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
Loved the improvements, especially the tag cloud. I wish the dropdown for categories would list the tags in alphabetical order.