HotStuff 2.0 Widgets

1. Hot or Not
2. Word Cloud

Hot or Not

Displays the current "Hot or Not" rating for a blog, using a Google-o-meter chart type. Each blog tracked by HotStuff gains or loses points for each new blog post, depending on how often the words in the post have been used before. The overall score is really just for fun and probably isn't a useful indicator of what sort of content appears on the blog ;-)

Wordpress Widget

For Wordpress installations which allow plugins to be upload, upload and activate the widget as per a standard Wordpress plugin:

• wordpress_hotornot.zip

In the Widgets section, add the "Hot or Not" widget to your sidebar and click on "Edit" to change the following settings:

• Title -- the title of the widget
• Blog ID -- the ID number of your blog (see below)
• Width -- the width of the Google-o-meter image

Click on "Done" and then "Save Changes". The widget should now appear in your blog's sidebar.

To find your blog ID, go to www.daveyp.com/hotstuff/blogs/ and click on your blog in the list. The number at the end of the web page URL is your blog ID. The blog ID is actually the one generated by Bloglines, so it is specific to your blog and also to the feed being used.

If your blog is not listed, you will need to wait until HotStuff has started picking up your blog posts. You can double-check that HotStuff knows about your blog by checking the "liblogs" folder on this Bloglines account -- if your blog isn't listed there, then go to this page and fill in the "Add Your Blog" section.

The height of the Google-o-meter image is calculated automatically and is the width divided by 2.

JPEG Image

http://www.daveyp.com/hotstuff/widgets/hotornotimage/17587830,200.jpg

So, to create a HTML image link, use something like this:

<img src="http://www.daveyp.com/hotstuff/widgets/hotornotimage/17587830,200.jpg" alt="my Hot or Not rating" />

JavaScript Widget

Firstly, add a div or span element with an id value of hotornot_js, e.g.:

<span id="hotornot_js">loading...</span>

After that, add the following:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.daveyp.com/hotstuff/widgets/hotornot_js/17587830,400">
</script>

As with the Wordpress widget, you need to include your blog ID number (17587830 in the example above) and the width of the Google-o-meter image (400 pixels in the example above).

Optionally, you can add ,notext after the blog ID and width to disable the comment appearing underneath the Google-o-meter image (i.e. 17587830,400,notext).

The maximum width of the image is 760 pixels, as shown in the live example below...

Word Cloud

Generates a word cloud from the HotStuff database of library related blog posts. Currently, the following clouds can be generated (with various options):

• most popular words from all blogs
• most popular words from a specific blog
• most commonly used words for a specific word

Wordpress Widget

For Wordpress installations which allow plugins to be upload, upload and activate the widget as per a standard Wordpress plugin:

• wordpress_cloud.zip

In the Widgets section, add the "HotStuff Cloud" widget to your sidebar and click on "Edit" to change the following settings:

• Title -- the title of the widget
• Min -- the minimum % font size
• Max -- the maximum % font size
• Words -- maximum number of words in the cloud
• Cloud -- type of cloud (see below)
• Extras -- extra options (see below)

Click on "Done" and then "Save Changes". The widget should now appear in your blog's sidebar.

The size of the words are specified using a font-size CSS value and are relative to font size of the web page. Set the min and max values to the same value to make the words all the same size.

Cloud type

Three types of cloud are available:

• most popular words from all blogs -- enter the value _all in the "Cloud" option of the widget (don't forget the underscore character!)
• most popular words from a specific blog -- enter the blog ID of the blog in the "Cloud" option of the widget
• most commonly used words for a specific word -- enter the word in the "Cloud" option of the widget

Extra options

The following words can be used to alter the appearance and functionality of the word cloud. To specify more than one option, separate them with commas (e.g. logscale,popup).

• logscale -- performs a log function on the cloud values, which alters the scale of the word sizes
• sqrtscale -- performs a square root function on the cloud values, which alters the scale of the word sizes
• wordcount -- the word size reflects the total number of times the word appears rather than just the number of blogs posts (only available with the specific blog cloud type)
• groupstem -- groups words with the same word stem (e.g. train, trains, training and trained) together (only available with the _all cloud type)
• popup -- makes the links open in a new web page
• nolinks -- removes the web page links from the cloud words
• jslinks -- instead of linking the cloud words to the HotStuff web site, this changes the href value to a JavaScript function named hs2cloudlink with the word passed as the parameter (i.e. href="javascript:hs2cloudlink('facebook');") ...you will need to write the actual function yourself, but you can use this option to trigger a search of your own blog, etc

Alternative Widget

http://www.daveyp.com/hotstuff/widgets/wordcloud/

http://www.daveyp.com/hotstuff/widgets/wordcloud/cloud=_all&wrap=html&extras=nolink

• wrap -- changes the output format of the cloud (values xml, html or js)
• cloud -- same as for the Wordpress widget (see above)
• id -- when used with wrap=js, the output is wrapped with extra JavaScript to drop the cloud into a div or span with that id
• extras -- same as for the Wordpress widget (see above)
• min -- same as for the Wordpress widget (see above)
• max -- same as for the Wordpress widget (see above)
• count -- same as for the Wordpress widget (see above)

document last updated on 03/Jan/2009