1 Comment January 7, 2009 – 3:18 am popping..

Continued from page 1…

Dress-Up Plugins

Worth mentioning are three of the cool plugins this site is using.

1 WP-Cumulus by Roy Tanck- this is a flash based tag cloud that is highly configurable from sizing to colors. See it live at the bottom part of the site. Very easy to install as a sidebar widget or outside the loop like what I have here at the bottom part.

2. Currently Reading Posts by Sajith MR

This is one helpful tool to see what visitors are reading on your site as it happens! More like that one on YouTube: “videos being watched right now…” Everytime someone clicks a post, the thumbnail image changes dynamically to the one currently being read. See it live just atop this post.

The drawback is it does not work with other plugins and has issues with certain scripts and coding. I couldn’t add this to my other sites because it conflicts with other stuff and is difficult to pinpoint which. The creator of this plugin isn’t too keen on answering support and queries either! In October he said on his blog that he would update the plugin soon. How soon is soon? It is now 6 months since he designed it.

If you’re also reading this post on an Internet Explorer browser, you will see that the plugin appears vertically taking up a huge area at the top and pushing this post and everything else further down. No offense to IE users but it is really high time you discover . What’s keeping you from switching? Majority of the websites out there are best viewed using Firefox. It is safer, faster and way better than IE by a long shot. Anyway, I really LOVE this plugin despite the lack of support from the developer so my apologies to non-Firefox users if this plugin appears weird on your page. Try Firefox, feel and see the difference in all your browsing experience!

3 Flash Tag Cloud by Meiclamo.net

What an undiscovered great plugin! Unfortunately, the author’s site is down, has been down or permanently not available. This is included on the Purplefever theme and I’d like to share it with anyone who is interested to add it on their sites without downloading the theme.

This plugin works in the way the WP-Cumulus can’t as it allows you to add a flash based tags right within your posts or pages. Since WP-Cumulus is PHP based, you can only use it either by widget or by adding the code directly in your PHP files when using outside the loop. With the Flash Tag Cloud, you can put the tags in pages and posts of your choice by a simple call of “flashtagcloud”  in the editor.

Assuming you know how to install plugins: Just upload this zip folder into your wp-content/plugins folder in the Cpanel. Extract. Go to your Admin Dashboard in Wordpress to activate the plugin. No editing required. There are options to change colors and sizing and number of tags to be displayed found under settings-Flash Tag Cloud in the Admin dashboard. There is a read me file included on the download if you need further assistance. Place the tag { flashtagcloud } without spaces in between on any page or post and voila you have a flash based tag cloud!

The zip file for the plugin: (When clicked, the download should start automatically).

flash-tag-cloud

That’s it! Will work on essential Wordpress plugins list for next time. See you then!

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