WordPress Plugin: Post Tags And Archive

Wordpress is the software I use for the blog here. This is a plugin I wrote to extend the functionality.

What it does

With this plugin you can add the Tag Cloud and the Archive into posts and pages. Example on this site: tag cloud and archives.

Download Post-tags-and-archives at the wordpress site.

Description

Tag clouds and Archives are useful for visitors, but also for search engines to find and index what topics your blog relates to. "Post Tags and Archives" allows you to easily add Tag Clouds or Archives to posts and pages via shortcodes. Before, you could only put it in the sidebar or widgets. But that hurts your search ranking for relevant terms, and crowds the sidebar. So one either had to truncate the cloud and archive - or get rid of them (or use some more complicated trickery.
Now you can just drop them in your posts and change the look easily via the options.

Post tag clouds Post archives

Installation

  1. Download the zip file and extract the contents.
  2. Upload the 'post-tags-and-archives' folder to your plugins directory (wp-content/plugins/).
  3. Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress.
  4. See 'Settings -> Post Tags & Archives'
  5. To display the Tag Cloud, add [POSTTAGS] in the post or page content.
  6. For the archive use [POSTARCHIVES] (Notice Plural in both cases!)
  7. Enjoy!

(For the mad tweakers, you can also add the php code '<?php pta_posttags(); ?>` ' or ''<?php pta_postarchives(); ?>' to your templates to show the cloud/archive. I guess it's basically the same as the default WordPress feature, just with easier options)

Options page use shortcodes PHP integration

Support

Please use the wordpress support forum for issues and requests.

Frequently Asked Questions

= How can I style the Cloud/Archive? =

The cloud is enclosed in <div class="pta-posttags"&rt;, and the archive in <div class="pta-postarchives"&rt;,so that you can use CSS for changing the look.

= Will it help with SEO and the google bot? =

Having the archive or cloud fully in your sidebar hurts your search ranking, since you have lots of links on your page. Less (but more relevant) links is better. Putting the archives and cloud on a separate page or post is better, as it allows bots to crawl - and interested readers to see all your content in a nice format. Don't add it repeatedly and redundantly though. Make sure it's useful for your visitors, then it's typically also welcome by google.

= Is there widget support? =

Not at the moment. Since there is the Wordpress internal TagCloud widget. If it's requested often, I'll add it.

Options

Should be self-explanatory.

The advanced features: Please be careful with the HTML parts. The archive-format setting "options for dropdown-menu" is for people who want to setup forms. You have to add a proper form yourself - with select/post and all. Then this feature will add all archives (in the type you chose) as <option&rt;.

Use example

Changelog

= 1.01 = //Feb 2013

* added php call feature, lots of tweaking

= 1.00 = //2012

* added archive feature

= 0.04 = //2011

* first tag cloud