WordPress Global Site Tags Plugin

When God Donncha invented WPMU probably the first thing anyone yearned for was some way of connecting all the sites on one network, of displaying all posts in one place of having…. a global tag cloud.

Something like the WordPress.com tag cloud… perhaps.

But it was a tricky proposition as tags and categories aren’t indexed globally, and then you needed an expert coder to put it all in place for you.

Not any more!

This powerful and elegant plugin allows you to do two things – first up it provides you with a global tags widget so that you can simply show a beautiful tag cloud on your homepage without even looking at a drop of code.

And it should auto create a page called “Tags” which gives you a full size page view of them too.

And finally, click on a tag and you’ll get a chronological, paginated list – with avatars of all the posts for that particular tag:

And, on the off chance the page isn’t auto created all you need to do is create a page with the slug “Tags” without the quotes.

How cool is that indeed! Happy tagging :)

Before starting this install you must be sure that you have the Post Indexer plugin installed

For help with installing plugins please see our Plugin installation guide

*NOTE: This plugin is for Multisite installs only, it will not work on your Single Install

Once installed login into your Network Admin Dashboard and activate the plugin by going to visit Network Admin -> Plugins and Network Activate the Global Site Tags plugin.

To use:

It should auto create a page called \”tags\” on your main blog where anyone can search through all your blogs.

On the off chance the page isn’t auto created all you need to do is create a page with the slug \”tags\” without the quotes if the plugin fails to auto-create the page.

Changing how tags are displayed on your Tags page is as simple as:

1. Go to Network Admin > Settings > Settings

2. Scroll down the page to the Site Tags Section

3. Select the number of tags you want shown on the Tags page, then select the number of listings you want to display per page – this is the number of posts displayed on a page when you click on a tag on the Tags Page

4. Adjust the color scheme, if you like

5. Add tags you don’t want included on your Tags page and select your preferred Tag Cloud Order (either Tag count or Most Recent) and select the Post Type you want to display tags from.

6.Scroll to the Bottom and Click Save Changes

Adding a Global Tags widget to your homepage

Before you can use the Global Tags Widget you will need to Activate it in the Plugins menu of your Main Blog.

1. To add the widget to your homepage just go Appearance > Widgets

2. And add the Global Site Tags widget to your sidebar

3. Select your Options

And you’re good to go!

Your users can now easily use your new Global Site Tags! It’s as easy as:

- Go to the Tag page or Tag Cloud on the homepage

- Click on the tag they want to check out

3. This opens up a chronological, paginated list – with avatars of all the posts for that particular tag:

Please note:

Tags on private posts display on the Global Site tags page but if you click on the link and no posts are listed this means they are all posts on private blogs (only visible to logged in users).
To display avatars your users will need to upload their avatar via their Profile.