Recently, we were asked to review a plugin called Opacity Tag by its author George Gecewicz. Opacity Tags is a new plugin for WordPress that gives you an alternative to WordPress’ default tag cloud. Instead of the most popular tags being bigger in font size, the most popular tags are first in order and have nearly-full opacity. Then the least-popular tags gracefully fade away into the background. It’s really a nice effect and may look infinitely better than the default tag cloud depending on your design.
First thing you need to do is install and activate Opacity Tags. Once you activate the plugin, you will a new widget will be added to your Widgets area called Opacity Tags Tag cloud. This new widget lets you select font size, number of tags to display, pick the color you want. There is a neat color picker, so you can see what you are doing visually.
If you want this sort of fade away effect for your WordPress tag cloud, then download Opacity Tags.
How can you limit the number of tags in Tag cloud in Blogger
Eh I like that
In answer to your question “which one do you prefer?”
The opacity version gets my vote.
@Mohammad Munna yeah, Opacity Tags isn’t for everyone. Are there specific things you didn’t like about Opacity Tags though? I’d appreciate any feedback!
@ggwicz
My feedback – the important words are much more obvious in the opacity version.
Question – are there any SEO merits to using the tag cloud?
@easyP well, I wouldn’t focus on SEO just in general. But, since you asked, tag clouds can help visitors find your most popular content, which often leads to them browsing and spending more time on your site. Longer visit times are better for seo
@ggwicz
Appreciate the feedback.
Best of luck with the plugin George.
@easyP
Thanks! Best of luck to you, too
@Debra Leigh Wilson Great suggestion! A shortcode wouldn’t be too hard to add, I’ll add that to a to-do list and push that in an update. Thanks for the compliment!
@ggwicz@Debra Leigh Wilson
I actually ended up adding this plug in to another blog I run- one with less in the side bar and a small tag cloud and I love it. Definitely will be looking forward to that shortcode in the future though!
@inkdork thanks!
Tried it but removed it. My tag cloud is HUGE (I have a couple of thousand posts) and since there’s no shortcode for it to place it in a page, its either severely limit the number of tags, or look really bloated on my sidebar or footer. The fade is nice though and did look good with my Fall theme I did last night.
I’m going to try this one out. I just re-did all my graphics for Fall and this might look really good with the new layout.
for me Default Tag is better!