Using a tag cloud in sidebar with Link Library page

PS I found another topic which asked this question, but unfortunately I am too much of a WordPress newbie to understand your answer: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-to-get-link-library-tag-cloud/#post-11375056. I’ve posted there asking for elaboration on that topic, or perhaps you can explain fresh here, at a remedial level if possible. Thanks!

Thanks for your response. So far I have not found a tag cloud generator that supports custom post types. Can you list a few by name? I’ve tried “Tag Cloud” and “Ultimate Tag Cloud” and “Cool Tag CLoud.”

What is the name of the built-in tag generation function? Where do I access it to use it in a sidebar etc? When you say, “By default, the links don’t go anywhere though, but I could make them links to the categories” I don’t quite understand. I do not want to rely on categories only for tags, I really want to use tags in the tag cloud.

So to answer your questions:
1. What function would you like for the tag cloud?
– Would like to be able to configure the tag cloud to display tags from the link library, while excluding other tags
– Would like to add this tag cloud to a sidebar that I would make using “Content Aware Sidbars” (plugin) so I could tell it to display on one or more pages that show Link Library display
– I actually don’t really care about the “cloud” nature of the tag cloud. In other words, I don’t need frequency counts, or graphics. I just want a list of tags, so people can filter the links, not just by category, but by tag.
– In essence, the benefit of a tag is that you can have an entry in one category that has multiple tags, even if it doesn’t belong to multiple categories. With a tag cloud, the user can filter to all the links that share a tag.
– As an example, I am designing a list of resources for consumer health and finance. These are broad topics. I might just have two categories: health, and finance. But for each link that I list, I may want to use several tags from among dozens of possible tags, e.g. (using # to denote tag), #app, #book, #website, #article. Then someone could filter the links for all the books listed.

2. Would you want the link categories to be links to jump to these sections of the link page?
– Not sure I understand this question, I would want the tag cloud to provide links that “filter” the link libraries so only the links with the selected tag would be shown. I don’t really need categories in the tag cloud. Just tags. (Although perhaps others would want categories in there?)

3. Would you want to display this tag cloud on pages other than your library of links?
– Probably not
– However, I plan to have multiple pages displaying library of links in different display configurations. So would want to use the tag cloud, optionally, on multiple pages.

Thanks again for this great plugin!

PS Ultimate Tag Cloud widget plugin seemed like it should work, and would accomplish most or all of the above, but for some reason it does not “see” the Link Library tags.

Yannick, I’ve been experimenting, keep in mind my ignorance here!

1. When I add the [link-library-filters] shortcode to the WordPress html sidebar widget, somehow this makes the sidebar no longer display as a sidebar, instead it is above the page content.

I tried playing with CSS to change the widths of various elements, that I found by inspecting the page:
.linklibrary-filters {
width: 60%;
}
.sidebar-main {
width: 70%;
}
.secondary.widget-area.secondary {
width: 60%;
}
.ast.container {
width: 60%;
}

I can control the width of the sidebar using CSS, but the sidebar still appears above the page content.

When I delete the shortcode from the sidebar widget and add text there, the sidebar displays normally next to the page content.

2. For me, your extensions to the shortcode don’t work as controls. The simple shortcode [link-library-filters] gives me the same output as [link-library-filters includetagids=”57, 58″ tablabel=”Tags” showpricefilters=”false” settings=”1″]
– In particular, the price is shown, which I do not desire.

Please advise. I think this is the last barrier to my adoption of this plugin. I will be happy to make a donation. I would prefer if it would work out with this tag-filtering functionality (which is very cool)

Thanks!