Lately I have learned what a tag cloud is and have seen them on many sites. I am not sure how to add one to a site. Is there a free service or a code? How is a tag cloud beneficial?
This is a very large and general question. Rather than asking the Sitepoint community to write a lengthy explanation for you, I’d suggest you start prowling the net for information. Here’s good places to start:
learn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud
create: http://stevethomas.com.au/php/how-to-make-a-tag-cloud-in-php-mysql-and-css.html
If you’re running WP2+ it’s pretty easy to set up a tag cloud widget
Tag clouds are used on blogs. When you create a blog post, you can add tags that describe the content of the post. For instance, if the post is about how to use the Autocopy extension in Firefox, you may use tags like ‘extensions’ and ‘Firefox’. Then, when your visitor reads the post and wants to read more posts about ‘extensions’ or ‘Firefox’ they click on the tag, and the link takes them to a page which lists all the posts with that particular tag.
So, it’s a way of organizing information on a blog.
Normally the tags are listed at the beginning or end of the post they belong to, and a tag cloud usually goes in the sidebar area and lists all the tags used by the blog. Some tag cloud widgets allow you to use colors and sizes to represent how many posts have that tag.
If you don’t have a blog, or you have one and it isn’t a WordPress blog, I don’t know how to implement a tagging system.
But if you do have a WordPress blog, and it is using the latest version, it’s the easiest thing to do.
You’re a good lady for answering, Trish. I was feeling ungenerous when I made my post. 
Don’t mention it.
Sometimes people ask general questions when they don’t know exactly what to ask or how to phrase it. Sometimes they don’t even know the keywords to use to google it successfully.
Then, as people offer suggestions and ask more questions about it, the person who originally asked the question can get clear about what exactly they want to do.
I can relate to that feeling and I had time to write a short answer. You pointed him to more information - there’s nothing wrong with that.
Well, it would have just been jerky not to throw some kind of info out there. There are plenty of design forums where it seems the raison d’etre is not to help people, but to mock those less accomplished than the poster. Sitepoint doesn’t do this, that’s why I’ve been around here for, what, eight years? (Not on these forums for that long–I actually used to write for Sitepoint, before I realized the audience knew more than I did.)
Well, I’m naturally a geek and seemed to have been born with the ability to troubleshoot in my veins. But I don’t expect everyone else to be like that. My husband and my mother both have no gift at all for technology, and through dealing with them I’ve learned to remember how it feels when you try something new - which I regularly do, anyway.
I wonder how much new stuff the mockers on those forums are learning?
They don’t tend to last too long, as a rule. I visit the Daily Kos regularly, and they have a wonderful technique for dealing with trolls and flamers: instead of engaging in pointless rhetorical battle, people just start posting recipes and ignore the loudmouth. Works wonders.
Off to bed, work in a few hours. Good talking with you.
Good to make new friends. That’s another thing trolls don’t do. 
Hi,
I’m trying to make a tag cloud for a blog I’m creating from scratch. I’m a little confused with how to go about it though. Here’s my thought process so far:
- Have an input field where tags can be entered and separated by a comma: “computers, plants, desk”.
- Use an explode command to transform all tags into an array
- Insert the array into a mysql table where each piece of the array is inserted into a different row, all with a unique id number (primary key)
- take the blog entry and insert it into a separate table (php_blog), use mysqli_fetch_id to get it’s id.
- this is where I’m getting lost :: somehow, take the id’s from all the rows that were added to the database from the tag array and, in a new table, put each one on the same row with the id from the entry that was added.
So, for example: computer, plant, desk are added into the category table with each it’s own id & row computer (id = 1), plant (id = 2), desk (id = 3). The entry that was also added goes into the php_blog table with an id of 1. On my joining table (entrycategory) I want to set 1 = 1, 1 = 2, 1 = 3 where the first column is my entry id & my second column is the tag/category id.
I hope this makes sense, and sorry for driving anybody crazy. I am basically trying to augment Kevin Yank’s build a database driven website but for a blog.
I’d appreciate any help! Thanks.