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 had a brainwave about how to make my flash slide show sidebar widget display the images at the right dimensions and therefore displays without cutting the photograph subjects heads off. I went into photoshop and resized a blank canvas to get the correct dimensions for the slideshow to correctly display the rotating images. I worked out that for the slideshow to fully display the images at the correct dimensions and proportions, it would need to be sized at 170 (width) x 240 (height) pixels.

I then went into the dashboard, then into presentation and widgets. Finally I configured the slidgshow sidebar widget in order for it to display at the above size. This produced the desired result and the slideshow in the flash sidebar widet is now displaying the images at the correct size and proportion.

P.S. I also removed the gallery widget from the sidebar as I found this rather annoying. I didn’t look as good as correctly sized slideshow widget and it did not add anything of use for the viewer, who can not only view the sidebar slideshow but also the full gallery which can be located in the navigation bar at the tom - A gallery widget is totally unnecessary.

As well as accessing my gallery at the top navigation bar on my website, I have also activated the flash gallery sidebar widget that came with the plugin. This means that you can now view my NewGEN flash gallery on my sidebar. Woop Woop!