Tag Cloud Label Cloud

Now if all has gone well, and you have posts already labeled, then if you preview the blog you should see some form of the Cloud appearing. If it doesn't appear, then something went wrong. You should probably back out and try it again from the start. Update : I've found 2 things to check for first if the label cloud isn't showing. First make sure that at least one of your labels has more than one entry. A bug in the script causes it to fail when all the labels have only one entry.(As soon as any label has more than one entry, then it should be ok from then on) Also, make sure that none of your labels contain quote marks " . Apostrophes or single ticks ' are ok. -----Most likely the cloud with it's default settings won't be what you ultimately want. But all the colors and sizes are configurable to match your tastes. If the cloud is appearing in preview then you can go about changing some of the variables so they suit. The settings in the Variables section will be where you make most of your adjustments. Here I'll explain what each setting does. var cloudMin= 1; This setting you can use to limit the number of labels shown (for example if you have a lot of labels). Leave the setting at 1 to show ALL labels. If you enter in a higher number, then only labels that have at least that number of entries will appear in the cloud. var maxFontSize = 20; var maxColor = [0,0,255]; var minFontSize = 10; var minColor = [0,0,0]; var lcShowCount = false; The lines for maxFontSize maxColor do what you may think they do. The first one sets the size (in pixels) of the label with the most amount entries. The maxColor sets the color of that entry (in RGB format). Similiar with the next two minFontSize minColor Just these are for the label with the least amount of entries. Again the size is in pixels, the color is in RGB format. Any labels between the two will get their color/sizes based on how many labels they are, and where their entry count falls, giving the much desired cloud effect. From my experimenting, there are many factors that make up a pleasant looking cloud. From color/size choice, to the number of actual labels, to how well dispersed the entries are amoung the labels. 3 Labels don't make a good cloud as there isn't much to work with. You just have to experiment around to see what looks good with your setup. IMPORTANT, when change the color settings, Keep them in the format supplied. In between the [] and

the numbers separated by commas. The default colors are BLUE for the max and BLACK for the min. You can select any valid RGB color combination. If you don't know what RGB colors are, don't worry. It's just a way of defining a color. You can use many charts on the Internet to get the correct RGB value for the color you want to try. Here's one that is fairly good. RGB Color Code Chart Remember, if you get the 3 sets of numbers to enter them in correctly. Inside the [ ] separated by commas. Also experiment with different font sizes. Again it depends on how many entries, how dispersed they are, and how much room for the cloud is available as to what looks good. The last variable there is lcShowCount This can either be false (default) or true. All this does is turn off/on the post count displayed next to the label. Usually in a 'traditional' cloud the count isn't used. But if you go to a 'flat' listing then it's sometimes useful to turn it on. Now to the CSS section. Most people won't need to tweak these much, and it's not necessary to understand what all those entries are for. Most are just to make sure that other styling elements from the rest of your page don't inherit in and ruin the cloud. But there are a few that you may want to change to suit. The first line #labelCloud {text-align:center;font-family:arial,sans-serif;} You could change the fonts used in the cloud here if you wanted. Also, the text-align statement can also be changed. I have it set to center by default but you could use text-align:justify; text-align:right; text-align:left; If those suit better. The next line #labelCloud .label-cloud li{display:inline;background-image:none !important;padding:0 5px;margin:0;vertical-align:baseline !important;border:0 !important;} Well don't worry about most of it unless you are a hardcore CSS'er. The only one of real importance is the first entry display:inline;

You can change that to display:block; To get the 'Flat' (each entry on it's own separate line) listing of the weighted entries. Usually if that is set to block you would probably want to change the sort frequency from alphabetical to frequency. You do that by editing the widget from the Page Elements tab in Blogger. And the last bit I'll mention is the line #labelCloud .label-count If you set the lcShowCount variable to true to show the post counts, you could change the color/size of those numbered entries with that line.