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Tag Clouds for iWeb revisited

A little while ago I published a post on how to add a tag cloud to your iWeb blog. Many of you visited the post and followed the tutorial but recently I received a comment on the post that said the link to ZoomClouds wasn’t working. Well, I have been investigating other methods of adding tag clouds to iWeb and have come up with the following new tutorial.

I won’t go into the whys and wherefores of adding a tag cloud to your iWeb blog in this post as I covered that in the previous one, so let’s crack on.

Before you start you need to have a published iWeb site live on the Internet. This method I am going to show you needs to ‘visit’ your site in order to decide your most commonly used words with which to create your tag cloud.

Once you have your URL point your browser to tagcloud-generator.com and enter it in the space provided and press the ‘Get Tags’ button. Your homepage (or blog depending on the URL you used) will be read and after a few seconds a list of ‘tags’ with their linking URLs will appear.

enter_your_url

In order not to overwhelm site visitors you may want to check the ‘The mostly used 30 words’ box so that the tag cloud is not too big, however you do not get the URLs.

Take some time now to read through the list. The beauty of this site is that if you are not happy with any of the tags it has picked you can delete them and add your own too.

all_the_tags_to_choose_from

Scrolling down past the customization section you will see an example of how your tag cloud will look.

first_tag_cloud

If you are happy with it press the ‘Generate HTML Code’ button; if not you can change to look of it. The colors, font and size are all changeable and really easy to do. It’s well worth spending a few minutes getting the colors right to blend with your site.

customize_your_iweb_tag_cloud

copy_the_code

Once you have generated your HTML code, open your blog in iWeb. A common place for tag clouds is the side-bar so insert a HTML Snippet where you want it. All you have to do now is copy/paste the HTML code from the tagcloud web site to your HTML Snippet and click ‘Apply’.

insert_html_snippet_iweb

You now have a beautifully, hand-crafted custom made tag cloud in your blog, from a web site that works. I added a border and a ‘Tag Cloud’ header just to finish things off.

iweb_tag_cloud_finished

Have you added a tag cloud to your iWeb blog? Leave a link in the comments so we can take a look.

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19 Comments

  1. Thank you very much for the tutorial, Tim! Just added a Tag Cloud to my iWeb site. http://www.chiksblog.com

  2. This looks awesome – but for some reason when I put my URL in, the page just refreshes but doesn’t come up with any tags. Any ideas why this might be happening? I’ve tried putting in the straight URL (as above) and also the direct blog URL…

  3. Not working for me either. Same problem as Maddie’s

  4. OCR and Maddie,

    I don’t know what to say?? I just tried it and it works for me. What are your URLs??

    Tim

    1. Hi OCR,

      Do you use domain masking?Are you hosted on MobileMe?

      Tim

  5. no I have my own web hosting service. Not sure about the masking part though…

  6. I’m having the same problem as Maddie and OCR, no tags appear.

  7. I added the tag cloud but now my RRS feed will not work and I linked to my archive page and that will not work either. Does anyone know if you can have a tag and have multiple blogs linked to it?

  8. Got everything to work but still am not sure if a tag can have multiple blogs since each full blog is on its own page. Does anyone know? Thanks.

  9. I have the same problem as OCR, Maddie, and iMaster, any ideas?

  10. Hi I’ve exactly the same 2 problems:
    – it wont come up with tags
    – when i manually input tags, i can only link 1 post per tag

    I am hosted on MobileMe. Is there any way I can have 1 tag for multiple posts?

  11. doesn’t work for me either…

  12. I can’t get it to generate a code. What am I doing wrong?

  13. This is the next feature I’d love to add. I appreciate what you do in educating all of us that choose iWeb. I’m passing along a Blog of Substance award to you. “I am constantly ranting about continuing education. Tim Bowden keeps me and Hodgepodgedad informed with plenty of substance on our favorite platform, iWeb. We’ve implemented several of his tutorials on widgets and other wonders. Still plenty more we’d like to do. One of my readers would like to subscribe via email? So grateful for the time Tim puts into his site!” http://www.hodgepodge.me/HodgePodge/Homeschool_Highlights/Entries/2010/7/13_A_Blog_With_Substance.html

    1. Tricia,

      Thanks very much.

      Tim

      1. hey, master Tim I was searching the web for tag clouds and I found this website, I would like to mention that it is a online sex toys website but pls don’t look into that I liked the way the designer integrated the tag clouds I found it very interested and I would like to know where can I learn how to do it could you pls help me on this one?, take a look on the middle of the page at the left hand side.
        Hope some body can help me thanks in advance regards jonathan

        http://www.theultimatesextoy.com/

  14. Thank you for this! I just started a blog using iweb and love your theory about the ability to do things in iweb. Definitely coming to this site again….

  15. Is it possible to have the background transparant ??

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