Tagul is a web service that allows you to create amazing and attractive tag clouds. It is created by Alex, a tech geek from Moscow, Russia.

Tagul is absolutely free in beta. Alex monetized Tagul. He claims it to be a mix between embedded in the clouds ads and a paid subscription. He might leave it for free for non-profit usage.

In the first month of its release its been observed to make a record of 5,567 people who have visited from 83 countries and virtually a thousand users are done with their registration too. New fonts are available in the website and what more…many more features will be coming soon!

There are several simple steps that you should follow to get your cloud working. Initially Sign up to the service. Then create a cloud and choose its core options that includes the data source (rss feed, html web page etc.), tags url pattern (e.g. http://google.com/search?q=$tag), cloud shape, fonts to render tags and also the tags rotation angles. Next, click the “Build it” button and wait until the cloud is done. Then customize its appearance by choosing the tags and background colours and the rollover colors and effects. Finally save it, choose rebuild interval and embed the cloud into your web page using the html code that is provided. Now your cloud is ready. Since then, the Tagul will automatically rebuild your cloud based on the chosen rebuild interval.

You can create your cloud using “My clouds” pane that is placed on the right side of the website. Every user can have up to 10 active clouds. The remaining amount can be tracked on the “create” link. The first thing that you should be doing is to get your cloud working to fill the “Core Options”. Choose your cloud name which can range from 1 to 50 characters and proceed by providing the source URL. Specify an URL that will be the source of your tag cloud. This URL can be any html or a rss link starting with “http://” (e.g. http://news.google.com). You can also use the API mode by providing a specific XML file as the source. Choosing the API mode is optional. Incase you are not going to use the API mode then leave the corresponding checkbox empty.

There is a confusion these days that the Wordle is similar to the tagul. Well, it is very different says Alex. According to the sources, Wordle clouds cannot be used similar to the tag clouds that are being used like embedded on a web page and serving as navigation units. The Tagul clouds are not toys. They are designed to be used on the blogs, web pages or any kind of sites as a replacement of the usual tag clouds. Each tag in the Tagul cloud is linked with an URL and is “clickable” that allows the visitors to use it for navigation. The Tagul also utilizes the widely used flash platform instead of the less common java platform in Wordle that is light weight and it stores the clouds on a CDN to deliver the clouds to the users instantly. Tagul has some unique features such as custom shapes selection and multiplying the fonts usage in one cloud.