If you think that your blog index is too bland, you can spice it up with this Top Categories And Tags plugin.

I noticed that my blog index was a bit bland with the minimal theme that I have, and other than clicking through the index pages, it’s hard to get a feel for my most frequent topics. Top Categories And Tags highlights my hot topics at a glance.

Installation

1. Download from the official Bitbucket repo.
2. Upload plugin zip through WordPress plugin uploader
3. Drop Top Cats Tags widget into any widget zone of your choice.
4. Style the display as desired with CSS through Appearance > Customize > Additional CSS

Styling

The plugin is unopinionated with styling and doesn’t have any CSS out of the box, but uses a classy template. This is the styling that I have used.

.top-cats-tags-container
{
	margin: 1em 0;
}

.top-cats-tags-container .category
{
	font-size: 1.25em;
}

.top-cats-tags-container .usage
{
	display: inline-block;
	position: relative;
	width: 50px;
	height: 1em;
	vertical-align: middle;
	margin-right: 16px;
	font-size: .8125em;
}

.top-cats-tags-container .usage::before
{
	position: absolute;
	right: 0;
	content: attr(data-usage) '%';
}

.top-cats-tags-container .usage > .block
{
	display: block;
	height: 100%;
	background-color: #ececec;
}

@media screen and (min-width: 960px)
{
	.top-cats-tags-container
	{
		display: flex;
		justify-content: space-between;
	}
}