I tried installing the wp cumulus Flash tag gloud onto my site. Unfortunately I could not get it to display correctly but I will talk you through what I did anyway just in case anyone can point out what it is that I have done wrong.

 Firstly I downloaded and unpacked the wp cumulus plugin from the site recommended by Yiannis. I then uploaded to my site by placing the Cloud into wp content/plugins folder using the ftp file manager in dreamweaver. I then activated and configured the plugin using the various options in the dashboard. In accordance with the instructions I then copied and pasted the code <?php wp_cumulus_insert (); ?> into various parts of the sidebar.php as this is where I wanted it to display:

Code Pasted at the Top:

Code Pasted at the Bottom:

When I pasted the code near the top it displayed the original static tag cloud over the top of my site banner and everything else disappeared apart from my background image which was very strange. I then tried pasting the code at the bottom of the sidebar.php. Although it displayed the new flash tag cloud the side bar was now missing the meta and search sections. Below is a screen shot of the flash tag cloud working incorrectly:

I could not afford to leave it like this as its vital that the meta section displays correctly so that I can access my blog in order to configure it, write posts etc. The instructions say that I should past the code anywhere on the site and it should work so I then tried pasting the code in varoius places throughout the sidebar.php but none of these worked at all, it did absolutely nothing. I am at a loss as to why this did not work and thought I had better call it a day as I did not want to completely mess up my entire site. If anyone knows why I am having these problems please can they let me know as I really like this plugin and want to get it working correctly.

I’ve finally managed to get my snap shot plugin working. I downloaded the snapshot plugin from Wordpress, uploaded it to my site using ftp. Then I configured my snapshot plugin using the dashboard and inserted the required 32 digit code which was generated when I signed up to my snapshot account at http://www.snap.com/.

 It is now working as it displays a snap of all external links on my site. Scroll over an external link to view..

Do you know what, I might just be getting the hang of the ftp blogging thing malarky. I’ve just downloaded another really useful widget pack from the web page http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/widgets/ once this is added to your site you can upload and activate numerous new widgets including Del.icio.us and google widgets. I am going to check out the google widget in a few minutes.

I love it that I finally know what I’m doing!!!