[wp-cumulus] can it do this?

  • pompey_john

    (@pompey_john)


    14 years, 4 months ago

    I am trying to build an educational site, and scratching my head sites as to how it can be done. What I would like to do is as follows….

    1. Show multiple clouds on the same page.
    2. Each could specific to a category…
    3. …and only showing tags for posts within that category.

    This is hurting my head. Please advise if it is possible!

    Many thanks in advance.

    Regards,
    John

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Roy Tanck

    (@roytanck)

    14 years, 4 months ago

    In short, 1 is a go, but the other two aren’t. Because Cumulus is a front-end for WordPress’ wp_tag_cloud function, it can’t do things that function doesn’t support. It doesn’t currently have a parameter to get tags for a certain category.

    Thread Starter pompey_john

    (@pompey_john)

    14 years, 4 months ago

    Thanks Roy. How about this for a hack then….

    So I can have multiple clouds, but essentially a one cloud to wp install relationship. How about if I were to have multiple wp installs on the same domain. Would it be possible to show the clouds from the child installs on the parent screen? Perhaps with an iframe?

    – parent
    – parent/child
    – parent/child

    Again, many many thanks in advance.

    Can you think of any other way of showing side-by-side clouds with separate information?

    – John

    Roy Tanck

    (@roytanck)

    14 years, 4 months ago

    Well, a separate cloud fro categories and one for tags is easy to do (using the shortcode functionality).

    Multiple installs won’t help. Cumulus on blog A will only show tags for blog A, with no way to embed it on blog B. With iframes you’d need to create an special (empty) page template in blog B to be put in an iframe on blog A, but it would still link to posts on blog B.

    Another option is to use the include and exclude parameters. You can specify which tags to use, or to leave out, for each cloud. This means you have to manually update the IDs from time to time, but it’s probably easier to maintain than separate blog installs would be.

    Thread Starter pompey_john

    (@pompey_john)

    14 years, 4 months ago

    Thanks again Roy.

    The number of tags will be growing exponentially at first so keeping a white/black list would be unfeasible.

    It is still looking like multiple installs are the ugly way forward, with one parent install acting as the menu, and all the others as children.

    It should be OK for tags from Blog A to show on Blog A. However I am wondering how the parent represent the results or clicking on side-by-side clouds.

    It is looking unlikely that having clouds side by side is feasible. Which is a real shame. The whole premise of this site was that a user could compare clouds without having to click between two pages.

    If it ends up being one cloud per blog, then i guess the best way forward would be to make all sites identical and hardcode the menus with outbound links.

    I tried to approach this problem from a different angle, and contracted joomla bear about the joomulus port. They have said an old version of joomulus called a tags function, and that if they can find then it should be possible to rewrite that to call the joomla tags table. Then with a bit of hacking I may be able to exclude tag results based on category/section. I have emailed them repeatedly asking if they have found the code and heard nothing yet. I am guessing in this case no news is not good news.

    So, again I am going to trouble you with some questions:

    1. If joomlabear are unable to find the old version of the module, could you suggest a version of cumulus that would be good to port from for a joomla module, or further develop as a wordpress plugin?

    2. As it is looking likely that I’ll be paying for custom development (either for a Joomla module or WordPress plugin) would you be interested?

    3. If not is there anybody you would recommend as having good cumulus knowledge to take on the port/wp customization.

    4. Am I crazy for even attempting this?

    Actually, don’t answer that last one!

    Regards,
    John

    yahyaayob

    (@yahyaayob)

    14 years ago

    Another option is to use the include and exclude parameters. You can specify which tags to use, or to leave out, for each cloud.

    You mentioned this. How do we include them into the <?php wp_cumulus_insert(); ?>

    or

    do we just do it in <?php wp_tag_cloud(); ?>

    and how do we do this?

    Roy Tanck

    (@roytanck)

    14 years ago

    The wp_tag_cloud parameters are an option in the shortcode version and the widget. The template tag wasn’t designed to handle arguments.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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