Tag Clouds for Remixes and other parts of the site!

Making functional tag clouds proved to be a larger task than Mary and I anticipated. We've been continuing with it for the past few weeks, and now have accomplished what we set out to do.

For the remix tag cloud specifically, we get the set of tags marked on remixes and display a cloud of these tags beside the videos of all remixes. Clicking on a tag in the cloud will filter the displayed videos on the remix index to show only the ones that share that tag. The tag cloud then displays a set of related tags to the one that was clicked as well as breadcrumbs to aid navigation.

After we first got the tag cloud going for remixes, Mary reformatted the cloud partial for use in other areas of the site besides remixes. You will be able to find tag clouds in the Remix index page, in the tags index page, and Related Tags sidebar from tag search. It should also be easy to extend onto the new homepage.

We've also been thinking about what questions and user tasks we want to have in order to be prepared for getting remixes in front of users.

One thing I was thinking about was how to make users aware of prefab remixes and how to use them. Since we've been working with remixes for so long, we understand the concept fairly well, but a regular community member might not. I thought it could be worthwhile to take advantage of the release to notify users the remixes are now on the site. Maybe we could send a notification or feature update email, or notify individuals when they click the remix tab for the first time or aren't logged in. Just some thoughts about how we can provide direction.