How to have featured tags along with an icon and tag rss options in a wordpress sidebar

Lookie! My new featured tags in the sidebar!

I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time because navigation in this blog is really difficult (sigh, I never got around to do the job properly) and I had fascination for tags that also show icons in their left in the sidebar of several blogs. Like, I am a visual person. Icons make me happy.

Netty Gritty

Sadly, wordpress.com blogs don’t generate tag lists that have icons also. But that didn’t deter me from being cool!

I am going to share the how-to with you because it’s kind of lonely being cool alone…..

Okay, first thing first. You have to pick just a small number of tags – three is minimum, five is ideal, ten is maximum – that all your posts can be divided into. Try not to enter more than two tags for a single post. You wouldn’t want to bore your reader with recurring posts again and again. Go to your posts page and check the tags of your posts. Make sure each of your posts fall into at least ONE basic tag from your list of chosen tags. If any post is missing a tag, press quickedit and enter the tag in the tag field.

When you are done adding proper tags to your posts, go to the widget area of your blog and add the Tag Cloud widget if you do not already have one showing. (You can always remove it again once the job is finished).

Pick the chosen tags from the tag cloud. Right-click on a chosen tag and copy the link location.

Create a new post.

write the tag name. Now link it to its tag page by pasting the copied link in the link tab. If you want a description to hover over the tag when the cursor is on it, then put the title tags. repeat this process for all the chosen tags. Make sure you put a break tag in between each tag, you will need it later.

Now search the web for free icons and select the icons you need to represent your tags. Save the images in your computer and upload them one by one in the post.

When you paste an icon always paste it on the left of the corresponding tag code. Doing it from the beginning is better than making a mistake later and get code-fright.

If you want rss options for the tags then hop over to Juan’s blog, he has explained very well why you might need rss for tags and how you can have them.

When all the code is done, copy the code and paste it in Text widget.

Here are the contents of my code, just in case an example helps you more.

<strong>Subscribe to a tag and don't miss a post again!</strong>
<br>
<img alt="Netty Gritty Tag to watch" src="http://shongjog.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/netty-gritty-top-tag.gif"><a title="wordpress.com tips" href="http://shongjog.wordpress.com/tag/wordpress-tips/">wordpress tips</a> l <a title="Subscribe to wordpress tips and don't miss any tip!" href="http://www.google.com/ig/add?feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fshongjog.wordpress.com%2Ftag%2Fwordpress-tips%2Ffeed%2F"><em>rss</em></a>
<br>
<img alt="Netty Gritty Tag to watch" src="http://shongjog.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/netty-gritty-top-tag.gif"><a title="free fun and useful web resources " href="http://shongjog.wordpress.com/tag/free-web/">free web</a> l <a title="subscribe to free web and don't a single post again!" href="http://shongjog.wordpress.com/tag/free-web/"><em>rss</em></a>

Do not paste the above code in your blog. If you do it will show links to my tags in your. sidebar! But um, you can help me promote this post so that others can find it!

Have fun!

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Just in case you are wondering…. My tag icons change colour because they are animated gifs. I feel it gives a pulse to my site What do you think? If you want animated gifs, why not Make animated gifs online!

And if you do make a cool Featured Tags area like this in your side bar, please come back and tell me. I’d love to check it out! After all, it’s lonely for me to be cool alone!

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