Using cumulus with Drupal

Posted Sep 21, 2009

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The cumulus project provides some very nice eye candy for your tag clouds. The cumulus project is what we are currently using on CollectiveColors.

The README.txt of the cumulus project does not, however, do a very good job of explaining what is required to install it and get it running.

12 steps to getting cumulus running in Drupal

1. Download the project from http://drupal.org/project/cumulus
2. Unpack and upload the project to your 'sites/all/modules directory'
3. Using the editor of your choice, create a new file named cumulus.js
4. Point your browser to either http://pratul.in/files/cumulus.js or http://pratulkalia.googlepages.com/cumulus.js
5. Copy the javascript code to your new cumulus.js file and save.
6. Upload the file into the cumulus module directory 'sites/all/modules/cumulus'
7. Enable the module at 'admin/build/modules'
8. Gather id's of taxonomy vocabulary that you want cumulus to operate on by navigating to 'admin/content/taxonomy'. Hover over the "edit vocabulary" operation link to see the vocab id in the browser status bar. In the case that your browser has no status bar, you can also click the "edit vocabulary" link and then read the vocabulary id out of the url.
9. Insert your cumulus enabled vocab id's into the block configuration at 'admin/build/block/configure/cumulus/0' as comma separated values. This field is the second one from the top.
10. Enable the block at the 'admin/build/block' page. Simply drag the block into a region other than disabled, and click save.
11. Modify user permissions at 'admin/user/permissions' to your needs
12. Do any other visual configurations to the block as you see fit...

Cumulus is a great project but installing and configuring it can be a bit more challenging than many other modules. Well worth the time spent though!