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Community Cloud WordPress Plugin Released

117 Comments 04 September 2007

Update (08-Feb-2008): New version of the Community Cloud plugin is available here.

When I first announced the new design for our blog, I mentioned our new Community Cloud, which displays a “tag cloud” of all the people in our community who have contributed to our blog by commenting. The more someone has commented, the bigger and bolder the link. Sound good? Then get one for your wordpress blog. I’ve released the Community Cloud as a plugin for you to download here.

How do you Install it?

  1. Download and Extract the Community Cloud plugin
  2. Upload it via FTP to your wordpress plugins directory (/wp-content/plugins/)
  3. Activate the Community Cloud in the Plugins section of your blog’s admin.
  4. In the Options -> Community Cloud section change the default settings to fit your blog.

Ok, it’s Installed. How do I use it?

Once installed, to display the community cloud on your blog you can either

  1. Create a new Page on your blog and in the Page Content area, enter the following tag where you want the community cloud to appear, <!–community cloud–> and publish.
  2. Or, there is also sidebar widget. So you can just go to the Widgets tab within the Presentations menu and drag-n-drop the Community Cloud widget into your sidebar.


Click here to download the latest version of the Community Cloud

Have Fun. :)

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  • http://nicharalambous.com Nic

    Looks great on your site and I think it’s a brilliant plugin… but it’s not working. I have uploaded the plugin folder to the WP plugin folder, nothing, I also uploaded each individual php file for the plugin, but still nothing.

    The plugin itself does’nt seem to be registering in the backend WP plugin section… any ideas?

  • http://www.morethan.co.za Miguel dos Santos

    Thanks for letting me know. Hmm.. I created this plugin by modifying an existing wordpress plugin. Do you have the latest version of wordpress (version 2.2 I think it is).

    I’ve installed this plugin on another wordpress setup as I described about, and it worked fine for me.

    Does it give you any sort of error message, or does it just not show up in the list of plugins?

  • http://nicharalambous.com Nic

    No error message, it uploads on the server perfectly, I can see the files but in the WordPress admin, nothing in the plugins section.

  • http://www.morethan.co.za Miguel dos Santos

    Are you running WordPress version 2.x?

  • http://www.morethan.co.za Miguel dos Santos

    I’ve tried the plugin on 2 other blogs now, and it’s worked both times for me. Perhaps check that plugin files look like this.

  • http://www.miguel.co.za Miguel dos Santos

    I got the same problem that Nic got with the plugin yesterday installing the Community Cloud plugin.

    The problem is not with the plugin itself, but you need to make sure the the file permissions on the plugin is set correctly. In geek speak you need to CHMOD the files to 755, or 777 just to be safe.

    Once I did that the plugin showed up in the wordpress plugins list.

  • http://ruralpinoybiker.com rino

    Hi Miguel,

    I just installed this plugin and I am very pleased. At first it didn’t work just like what happened to Nic. I did what you suggested and it worked after I changed the permission for the two files within the community cloud folder, not just the main folder itse.f

    Thanks a lot.

  • http://www.cs-internet.de Christian Schmidt

    nice plugin but escape $comment->comment_author to eliminate some mysql errors!

    mysql_escape_string($comment->comment_author) on line 33…

    greetz chris

  • http://www.miguel.co.za Miguel dos Santos

    Thanks Chris, I’ve updated the plugin. Glad you all liked it :)

  • http://www.happinesz.cn sofish

    Good job! I love it…

  • http://happinesz.cn sofish

    Yeah,it is now show in my “About All “to show the blog & freinds & me…it is beauty as a tag cloud…

  • http://justemaristel.com Mats

    Nice one!! But the thing is it won’t work on my blog site… How is it?

  • http://www.logiste.be/wordpress Arkan

    Hi Miguel,

    thanks for this plugin, i made a translation for frenchies bloggers on my blog ;)

    http://www.logiste.be/wordpress/2007/10/16/mettez-votre-communaute-dans-un-nuage/

    Thanks again, regards
    Arkan

  • http://justemaristel.com mats

    This is what appeared on my page…
    http://justemaristel.com/173/

  • http://www.miguel.co.za Miguel dos Santos

    Thanks Arkan for the translation.
    mats, I think you need to check the plugin options that you get once you activated the plugin. It might be that the maximum text size is way too large, or maybe the maximum text size is set to 240px rather than 240%. Is it any of those things?
    Let me know. Thanks

  • http://www.avgjoeblogger.com Average Joe Blogger

    Is this something that could easily be added to a sidebar?

  • http://www.miguel.co.za Miguel dos Santos

    Although I didn’t create the plugin specifically to be added to the sidebar, you can add make the community cloud display in your blog’s sidebar by copying the following code into the sidebar.php file of your blog template:

    <?php echo cc_community_cloud(“<!–community cloud–>”); ?>

  • http://www.thenhbushman.com MJ Klein

    changing permissions worked for me too.

  • http://www.miguel.co.za Miguel dos Santos

    I’ve updated the plugin. You can see the changed I’ve made in my blog post here

  • http://ivo.co.za/ Ivo Vegter

    Excellent plugin, guys. I likes it. But I has a problem. Two, in fact.

    When you exclude specific commenters using the comma-delimited list in the options panel, only the first name mentioned actually gets excluded. This appears to be a bug, albeit a simple one.

    While testing, I had my own name later in the list, and found that if the maximum font size is set too high, it doesn’t scale back down to the width of the sidebar. I don’t have the longest name on the planet, so this will certainly become a problem when someone called Count Belthazar de Freitas Comminotto starts leading the comment pack.

    Finally, a feature request: I’d prefer if the names didn’t scale linearly with their absolute number of posts, as I think they do now. Low-end changes should show up more rapidly in the scaling of the names. One simple way to do this, which will work on any comment set, is to scale them by ranking their number of posts, rather than by the absolute number of posts. (A more sophisticated formula could be contrived, I’m sure.) This option would prevent every name appearing small, or a few regular commenters dominating the cloud. (See the category cloud on my blog for an illustration of the same problem.)

  • http://www.miguel.co.za Miguel dos Santos

    Thanks Ivo for the great feedback. I’ve fixed the first issue you had, and I’ll have a look see at what I can do about the other stuff.

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  • http://n-blue.nblogz.net n-blue

    Thank you for the update.

  • http://n-blue.nblogz.net n-blue

    @mats
    you may need to warp it with div.

  • estra

    maybe you can make a similar plugin with authors of a blog instead of commenters (with a link to their posts -> /authors/username/ ). would love to see that. :-)

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  • http://littlelioness.net Fiona

    Excellent! I’ll need a few more comments to se how it all weighs out, but looks good so far!

  • http://improvisto.com.ve impropio

    nice plugins! :)

  • http://www.paulngaynor.co.uk Paul

    I don’t use widgets but really want this in my sidebar. I’ve tried
    �); ?>
    in my sidebar but get an error that shuts down both sidebars.

    Not being that techie when it comes to coding, am I missing something?

  • http://www.miguel.co.za Miguel dos Santos

    Hi Paul, I had a look at your blog and it looks like you came right, I see the community cloud in your sidebar. thanks and enjoy :)

  • http://www.paulngaynor.co.uk Paul

    Hi Miguel,

    Yes I decided to opt for the widgets in my left sidebar so it works a dream. Lets hope that it fills up soon!!! I assume the link to you will always be there :-)

  • http://www.miguel.co.za Miguel dos Santos

    The link to us is optional, you can enable/disable it in the Community Cloud options page if you like.
    It enabled by default :P because we like the link love, but it’s not mandatory.

  • http://www.kutsalodun.com Kutsalodun

    Nice plugin. I was dreaming of such a plugin.

  • http://littlelioness.net Fiona

    Sweet little plugin!

    I have only so far got people with or two comments, so that could be a reason behind it, but mine aren’t weighting yet.

    http://littlelioness.net/cloud/

    Any ideas? Or should i just be more patient?

  • http://www.plunderbund.com Eric

    created a page and put the tag in, but it only displays the tag. i keep removing the extra space in the tag, but it gets stripped out.

  • http://www.miguel.co.za Miguel dos Santos

    I think the problem could be that the WYSIWYG editor is converting the tag into something else when you save the page. You should select the Code view before entering the tag.
    That way when you save the page it will not be altered in any way by the WYSIWYG editor.

  • http://littlelioness.net Fiona

    Ok, I just needed to be patient. I’m weighting now :)

  • http://willnotbetelevised.com/tv/?page_id=410 Doc

    nbot working: i’ve put it in both Visual and Code – still just displays as written.

    I suppose it might be permissions, but I don’t know how to change those…

  • http://www.kusanagi.com.cn kusanagi

    When I put the code in my Page Content area,it appears nothing,but the widget works well,I really don’t why.

  • http://www.miguel.co.za Miguel dos Santos

    Hi kusanagi, I think you might be having the same problem as Doc had. I replied to him via email, but I’ll tell you what I told him think it could be.

    I think some wordpress installations might have a problem with the WYSIWYG editor in that when you create a new page and you enter the under the “code” tab and you publish or save the page, the WordPress system automatically changes the contents because it sees the content as an HTML comment.

    If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, I think please try and update your wordpress, or update your rich text editor plugin, like advanced tinymce.

    I hope this makes sense and helps.

  • http://willnotbetelevised.com doc

    …i solved the issue over theweekend – it was due to laziness on my part.

    if you read the instructions on this page, you believe you are tp put this in your code section:

    ahhhh: but if your read the README.TXT that comes with the download, you realize that you should be cutting & pasating this:

    which works just fine, no issues:

    http://willnotbetelevised.com/tv/?page_id=419

    so, given the nature of os guys to NOT read directions until we absolutely have to, i might edit this page to reflect the right entry you’ll get less trouble tickets…

    ; ‘ )

    Doc

  • http://willnotbetelevised.com Doc

    well…i like it.

    however…

    it writes to the DB over 4000 times whenever someone loads a page at my site; with it disabled, the DB querying knocks down to just about 40 times.

    i’ve had to disable the little critter, much as i like it.

    ; ‘ (

  • Roland

    Is there a way to put it in the Sidebar without using Widget so i can place it at any given place.. I dont use widgets but I would love to use this plugin

  • http://www.miguel.co.za Miguel dos Santos

    Hi there Roland, You can insert the php code into your template using the following code.

    < ?php echo cc_community_cloud('‘); ?>

    The above function also takes a second parameter that limits the number of links it will display.

    eg. < ?php echo cc_community_cloud('‘, 20); ?>
    will show up to 20 links in your community cloud.

    Thanks.

  • http://eLhabib.at Roland

    Hi Miguel..

    Thank you so much for the quick response.. Will put this in right now :)

  • chaoman

    Awesome, plug-in!! Thanks!

  • http://www.inicios.es Paul

    hi miguel!

    i love the idea of your plugin, but i don’t manage to get it working. i want it to appear in the sidebar and i tried with the < ?php echo… you recommended to roland, but it doesn’t work (i couldn’t find it working at rolands website either).

    any hints would be very much appreciated…

    best,

  • Willian

    worked for me with this:

    <?php echo cc_community_cloud( ““, 20); ?>

    thanks for the plugin

  • http://thesocalledme.net Jenny

    I put that in and got nothing. Am I doing somethign wrong? Or am I using the wrong version of WP?

  • Paul M.

    same here…

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