Over two years ago
Amanda from Blogger Buster ported the wordpress cumulus tag cloud to blogger, this flash based tag cloud was and perhaps still is the best tag looking tag cloud for blogger.
Unfortunately this tag cloud stopped functioning for over 6 months, after numerous comments and emails the tag cloud is still non functional.
But today Blogger Blog Templates is giving you a permanent solution for your blogspot flash tag cloud. If you would like to see how it looks take a look at the tag cloud in the sidebar.
Firstly you would require to download two files, right click on the links below and save target as.
swfobject.js
blogumus.swf
Now that you have these two files, upload it on your hosting account and then save the links.
Go to your blogger dashboard -> design -> edit html
Once your there first back up your template.
Now expand widgets and look for this line:
<b:section class='sidebar' id='sidebar' preferred='yes'>
Immediately after this line paste the code given below, though in some templates you may not be able to paste it immediately and will have to scout for a spot where you don't get an error.
<b:widget id='Label99' locked='false' title='Labels' type='Label'>
<b:includable id='main'>
<b:if cond='data:title'>
<h2><data:title/></h2>
</b:if>
<div class='widget-content'>
<script src='Your swfobject.js Link Comes Here' type='text/javascript'></script>
<div id='flashcontent'></div>
<script type='text/javascript'>
var so = new SWFObject("Your blogumus.swf Link Comes Here", "tagcloud", "240", "300", "7", "#ffffff");
// uncomment next line to enable transparency
//so.addParam("wmode", "transparent");
so.addVariable("tcolor", "0x333333");
so.addVariable("mode", "tags");
so.addVariable("distr", "true");
so.addVariable("tspeed", "100");
so.addVariable("tagcloud", "<tags><b:loop values='data:labels' var='label'><a expr:href='data:label.url' style='12'><data:label.name/></a></b:loop></tags>");
so.addParam("allowScriptAccess", "always");
so.write("flashcontent");
</script>
</div>
</b:includable>
</b:widget>
Once you insert this code you need to replace the two links in the code with your own hosting links
Your swfobject.js Link Comes Here
Your blogumus.swf Link Comes Here
Once you change those links you can preview the template, the blogumus widget should appear in your sidebar.
This is very important, if you have an apostrophe or quote character (' or ") in your labels, the tag cloud appears blank.
Certain features of blogumus can be customized:
The width, height and background color can be change from the line below that you will find in the code
"tagcloud", "240", "300", "7", "#ffffff");
where 240 = width, 300 = height and ffffff = back ground color
but you can also have a transparent background where the labels float on your current blog background
look for //so.addParam("wmode", "transparent");
and remove the //
and your blogumus will be transparent
if you want to change the text color of the labels look for
so.addVariable("tcolor", "0x333333");
change the 333333 to a color of your choice
if you want to change the text size look for
values='data:labels' var='label'><a expr:href='data:label.url' style='12'>
and change the value 12 to a font size you prefer
if you want to change the speed of the tag cloud rotation, look for
so.addVariable("tspeed", "100");
change the value 100 to what you like
We do hope you can finally get your blogumus tag cloud working again, hope to see you soon! A special thanks to DualTranz for bringing back this widget to life!
This was a hack that I always wanted for a long time, especially since most of us have our ads under the headlines of the post which is a very very hot spot :) It does look ugly to an extent and sometimes you would like a particular post or page to look neat, like a contact page or a page displaying some particular art work you would like to sell.
