Comments on: How To Customize WordPress’s Tag Cloud Widget

By: slotenmaker hasselt

slotenmaker hasselt — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 09:06:51 +0000

Finally! I was looking for this ‘trick’ for some time but with your post everyting was clear and my tagcloud is better looking now. Many thanks!

By: Modify the Wordpress Tag Cloud Widget Easily | Bryan Veloso

Modify the Wordpress Tag Cloud Widget Easily | Bryan Veloso — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 09:32:58 +0000

[...] such, and landed on different blogs sharing different methods to modify the widget. I also landed on this page which tells everyone to modify the WordPress core. But I don’t think it’s the best [...]

By: Gringo

Gringo — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 11:03:06 +0000

TYVM for this info. I was cracking my head to find out how to solve this problem in my custom template, and I finally found the answer here.

I also had a problem setting a new css to this tag cloud while I wanted to specify a background and different color schemes from my other template links. Knowing about this file helped me out in this issue too. I was able to add a “span class” between the “a href” insert in the code (line 681 for me) and now everything just works wonderful. I hope this can help someone else with the same issue.

Thanks a lot!

By: Esther

Esther — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 07:10:20 +0000

Thanks Maria for bringing this up and special thanks for BoiteaWeb for this perfect solution. Works like a charm.

By: Sagive

Sagive — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 18:56:47 +0000

Can anyone add a code to first one
that include comma, meaning –> ,
between tags ?

By: BLeavitt

BLeavitt — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 19:52:44 +0000

Maria,

Thanks for posting and letting this discussion continue on.

Boitea,

This is exactly what I was looking for. Your remedy allows for the core to be updated without killing the hack, and without having to install another plugin.

Much Thanks,
Brent

By: BoiteaWeb

BoiteaWeb — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 20:56:54 +0000

NEVER HACK CORE !

use my trick in your functions themes :

function my_tag_cloud($defaults) {
$args = array(
‘smallest’ => 8, ‘largest’ => 16, ‘unit’ => ‘pt’, ‘number’ => 25,
‘format’ => ‘flat’, ‘separator’ => “\n”, ‘orderby’ => ‘name’, ‘order’ => ‘ASC’,
‘exclude’ => ”, ‘include’ => ”, ‘link’ => ‘view’, ‘taxonomy’ => ‘post_tag’, ‘echo’ => true
);
$args = wp_parse_args( $args, $defaults );
$tags = get_terms( $args['taxonomy'], array_merge( $args, array( ‘orderby’ => ‘count’, ‘order’ => ‘DESC’ ) ) ); // Always query top tags

if ( empty( $tags ) )
return;

foreach ( $tags as $key => $tag ) {
if ( ‘edit’ == $args['link'] )
$link = get_edit_tag_link( $tag->term_id, $args['taxonomy'] );
else
$link = get_term_link( intval($tag->term_id), $args['taxonomy'] );
if ( is_wp_error( $link ) )
return false;

$tags[ $key ]->link = $link;
$tags[ $key ]->id = $tag->term_id;
}

$return = wp_generate_tag_cloud( $tags, $args ); // Here’s where those top tags get sorted according to $args

$return = apply_filters( ‘my_tag_cloud’, $return, $args );

if ( ‘array’ == $args['format'] || empty($args['echo']) )
return $return;

echo $return;
}

add_filter(‘wp_tag_cloud’, ‘my_tag_cloud’);

Now you can change the default value, etc.

See u

By: Jerome

Jerome — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 13:10:03 +0000

Nice tip! in case you don’t use animated tag cloud;) I prefer this type of clouds (like CircumTags cloud widget) cause the look much cooler!

By: Tom

Tom — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 12:59:21 +0000

Thanks!
Another few lines (601) down is where you can change the link hint to say “posts” instead of “topics”. I’ve never understood why the default is “topics” when it’s linking to posts.

function default_topic_count_text( $count ) {
return sprintf( _n(‘%s post’, ‘%s posts’, $count), number_format_i18n( $count ) );
}

cheers!

By: Graham Soult

Graham Soult — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 09:05:24 +0000

Thanks Maria, I’ll do that!

By: Maria Langer

Maria Langer — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:10:27 +0000

@Graham
You’re welcome! The drawback is that you might lose your changes when you upgrade WordPress. I’ve started using the Better Tag Cloud plugin and widget instead. You might want to check it out.

By: Graham Soult

Graham Soult — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:00:27 +0000

Thanks Maria! I was Googling how to do exactly this, and your advice was spot on. I now have an expanded tag cloud, but using smaller fonts throughout. Perfect!

By: BJ

BJ — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 21:31:36 +0000

Thanks so much, I knew this snippet of code had to be in there somewhere.. I saw so many other worse ways of doing it before finding this.

By: Kim

Kim — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 09:19:48 +0000

You guys rock. Your discussion has saved me many hours of work. So simple when we all share what we love!!

By: Maria Langer

Maria Langer — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 13:14:48 +0000

Dave: You’re right, of course. The problem with hacking — even a simple hack like this — is that when you update the software, the hack is overwritten with the new files.

I’ve since found a plugin that does what I need: Simple Tags. Not only does it offer a customizable Tag Cloud widget, but it adds a bunch of tag management features.

Thanks for the reality check!