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WordPress hack: Display your tags in a dropdown menu

I never liked tag clouds, for the simple reason that most of the time, they’re aren’t readable properly. Here is the solution to this problem: Displaying tags in a dropdown menu.

The first thing to do is to create the function. Paste the following code to your functions.php file:

<?php
function dropdown_tag_cloud( $args = '' ) {
	$defaults = array(
		'smallest' => 8, 'largest' => 22, 'unit' => 'pt', 'number' => 45,
		'format' => 'flat', 'orderby' => 'name', 'order' => 'ASC',
		'exclude' => '', 'include' => ''
	);
	$args = wp_parse_args( $args, $defaults );

	$tags = get_tags( array_merge($args, array('orderby' => 'count', 'order' => 'DESC')) ); // Always query top tags

	if ( empty($tags) )
		return;

	$return = dropdown_generate_tag_cloud( $tags, $args ); // Here's where those top tags get sorted according to $args
	if ( is_wp_error( $return ) )
		return false;
	else
		echo apply_filters( 'dropdown_tag_cloud', $return, $args );
}

function dropdown_generate_tag_cloud( $tags, $args = '' ) {
	global $wp_rewrite;
	$defaults = array(
		'smallest' => 8, 'largest' => 22, 'unit' => 'pt', 'number' => 45,
		'format' => 'flat', 'orderby' => 'name', 'order' => 'ASC'
	);
	$args = wp_parse_args( $args, $defaults );
	extract($args);

	if ( !$tags )
		return;
	$counts = $tag_links = array();
	foreach ( (array) $tags as $tag ) {
		$counts[$tag->name] = $tag->count;
		$tag_links[$tag->name] = get_tag_link( $tag->term_id );
		if ( is_wp_error( $tag_links[$tag->name] ) )
			return $tag_links[$tag->name];
		$tag_ids[$tag->name] = $tag->term_id;
	}

	$min_count = min($counts);
	$spread = max($counts) - $min_count;
	if ( $spread <= 0 )
		$spread = 1;
	$font_spread = $largest - $smallest;
	if ( $font_spread <= 0 )
		$font_spread = 1;
	$font_step = $font_spread / $spread;

	// SQL cannot save you; this is a second (potentially different) sort on a subset of data.
	if ( 'name' == $orderby )
		uksort($counts, 'strnatcasecmp');
	else
		asort($counts);

	if ( 'DESC' == $order )
		$counts = array_reverse( $counts, true );

	$a = array();

	$rel = ( is_object($wp_rewrite) && $wp_rewrite->using_permalinks() ) ? ' rel="tag"' : '';

	foreach ( $counts as $tag => $count ) {
		$tag_id = $tag_ids[$tag];
		$tag_link = clean_url($tag_links[$tag]);
		$tag = str_replace(' ', '&nbsp;', wp_specialchars( $tag ));
		$a[] = "\t<option value='$tag_link'>$tag ($count)</option>";
	}

	switch ( $format ) :
	case 'array' :
		$return =& $a;
		break;
	case 'list' :
		$return = "<ul class='wp-tag-cloud'>\n\t<li>";
		$return .= join("</li>\n\t<li>", $a);
		$return .= "</li>\n</ul>\n";
		break;
	default :
		$return = join("\n", $a);
		break;
	endswitch;

	return apply_filters( 'dropdown_generate_tag_cloud', $return, $tags, $args );
}
?>

Once done, you can use the function to get your dropdown menu of tags. Just open the file where you want the list to be displayed (Most of the time it is sidebar.php) and paste the following code:

<select name="tag-dropdown" onchange="document.location.href=this.options[this.selectedIndex].value;">
	<option value="#">Liste d'auteurs</option>
	<?php dropdown_tag_cloud('number=0&order=asc'); ?>
</select>

This recipe was initially published on WpHacks.

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3 Responses

Feb 18 2012 20:49

WpRecipes Rock! Is there any way to display it as a list?

Mar 14 2012 10:36

Very Very Very Useful Post.

Jun 16 2012 23:38

I would also like to know if there is a way to display tags as a list instead of a dropdown menu. Thanks.

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