Other Notes
In order to actually display the tag cloud, you have two options
- The Tag Heat Map is automatically replaced by the bb Cumulus Tag Cloud
- You can also add the following code anywhere in your theme to display the cloud.
<?php if (function_exists('bb_cumulus_insert')) bb_cumulus_insert(); ?>This can be used to add bb-Cumulus to your sidebar, although it may not actually be wide enough in many cases to keep the tags readable.
Options
The options page allows you to change the Flash movie's dimensions, change the text color as well as the background.
Width of the Flash tag cloud The movie will scale itself to fit inside whatever dimensions you decide to give it. If you make it really small, chances are people will not be able to read less-used tags that are further away. Anything up from 200 will work fine in most cases.
Height of the Flash tag cloud Ideally, the height should be something like 3/4 of the width. This will make the rotating cloud fit nicely, while the extra width allows for the tags to be displayed without cropping. Western text is horizontal by nature, which is why the ideal aspect is slightly landscape even though the cloud is circular.
Color of the tags Type the hexadecimal color value you'd like to use for the tags, but not the '#' that usually precedes those in HTML. Black (000000) will obviously work well with light backgrounds, white (ffffff) is recommended for use on dark backgrounds. Optionally, you can use the second input box to specify a different color. When two colors are available, each tag's color will be from a gradient between the two. This allows you to create a multi-colored tag cloud. The third input box lets you specify a mouseover highlight color.
Background color The hex value for the background color you'd like to use. This options has no effect when 'Use transparent mode' is selected.
Use transparent mode Turn on/off background transparency. Enabling this might cause issues with some (mostly older) browsers.
Rotation speed Allows you to change the speed of the sphere. Options between 25 and 500 work best.
Distribute tags evenly on sphere When enabled, the movie will attempt to distribute the tags evenly over the surface of the sphere.