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Can I limit the tags that are shown in the cloud?

(New in 5.0) YES! You can now choose to limit the tags shown in the cloud by the number of posts they are attached to. For example, say you have one or two tags that are attached to 20 posts, but the rest only have one or two posts. Previously, these tags would be large, with the rest fairly small. Now, you can tell the plugin that you want to exclude tags that have more than 10 posts, and those tags will be excluded from the cloud, with the rest following a (hopefully) smoother gradient in both color and size. This also works for tags with fewer than a specified number of posts.

Do I have to manually set parameters for the template tag?

(New in 4.5) NO! I finally got around to adding an options page (located at Settings->CTC) for template tag usage. Now using the template tag is as easy as adding <?php ctc(); ?> to your theme's template. If you're using the array format, you'll still need to assign the function to an array and do post-processing (as mentioned in the example) to get it to work, but you can set all your options via the admin panel. All options for the template tag are stored separately in the database from the options for the widget, so you could (for example) have one cloud using the widget in the sidebar and a second, completely different cloud in your footer by using the template tag. You can also override any options set in the admin panel by using the respective parameters in the template tag call.

Does the plugin work with categories?

(New in 4.0) YES! After many failed attempts to make this work, I finally figured it out. By default, it doesn't display categories, but you can activate the option via the control panel, or using the showcats parameter for the template tag. You can also choose whether or not to show empty categories in the cloud. At present, there is no indication (other than the permalink) that a particular link in the cloud is a tag or a category. (New in 5.0) You can now also choose to not show tags, thereby giving you the capability of showing a category cloud along with your tag cloud.

Why are my tags black?

(New in 4.0) Because they're set to black in your theme's stylesheet. The function I'm using to generate the colors for the tag gradient used to return #000000 (black) if either (or both) of the color fields in the configuration form were left blank. This has been fixed in 4.0. Now, if you leave both fields blank, you get links in your cloud the same color as all other links in your page or sidebar (depending on how you have your links set up in your stylesheet). If you leave one or the other blank (i.e., you set a minimum color, but not a maximum, or vice versa), you get links of that color.

Will this work without widgets support?

(New in 3.0) YES! The function for the most part uses the same format as the stock WordPress tag cloud function, with some notable additions. Listed below are the arguments and defaults for the ctc() function. Note that when using the template tag, you need to specify the title manually. The function uses the standard query string format for arguments.

ARGUMENT                       FUNCTION                      DEFAULT VALUE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
smallest=#                     Smallest font size to use     8
largest=#                      Largest font size to use      22
unit=pt|em|%|px                Unit for font size            pt
minnum=#                       Minimum number of posts for   0
                               a tag or category to show
                               in the cloud
maxnum=#                       Maximum number of posts for   100
                               a tag or category to show
                               in the cloud
mincolor=#xxxxxx               Low color for gradient        none
maxcolor=#xxxxxx               High color for gradient       none
format=flat|list|array|drop    Format for tag cloud          flat
number=#                       Number of tags to show        all
orderby=name|count|rand        Sort field for tags           name
order=ASC|DESC                 Order of cloud                ASC
showcount=yes|no               Show post count after tags    no
showcats=yes|no                Show categories in the cloud  no
showtags=yes|no                Show tags in the cloud        yes
empty=yes|no                   Show empty categories         no

EXAMPLES

Basic template tag:

    <?php ctc(); ?>

This would display a cloud using the options set in the admin panel, or the defaults if no options have been set.

Template tag with parameters:

    <?php ctc('smallest=10&largest=18&unit=px&mincolor=#c0c0c0&maxcolor=#000000&showcount=yes&minnum=2&maxnum=10'); ?>

This would show a cloud with all tags that have at least 2 posts and no more than 10 posts displayed, font size from 10 to 18 pixels, a color gradient of #c0c0c0 to #000000, and post counts after each tag.

Array Example:

    <?php
            $tags = ctc('format=array&smallest=10&largest=18&unit=px&mincolor=#c0c0c0&maxcolor=#000000&showcount=yes&minnum=2&maxnum=10');

            foreach ($tags as $tag) {
                echo $tag."\n";
            }
        ?>

This would give you the same output as the second example, but output to the page using an array.