Strange coincidence yesterday. I remembered, for the first time in a number of years, the snow WordPress used to produce for our blogs for the holiday season. So I went looking for it.
I found a variety of Jetpack plugins that produce snow and assorted other things to float around on your blog. And after reading through a couple of them, decided maybe I’d try one tomorrow … they looked fairly complex and I wasn’t sure I wanted to tackle any of them.
Then last night, late, I checked Beth’s blog, “I didn’t have my glasses on,” and lo and behold, she had written about WP’s snow. Seems it was just brought back yesterday after an absence of some years.
Anyway, if you want to add snow (like what you see here now), head on over to the WordPress announcement and follow the simple instructions. Two features I’d forgotten are that the snow will follow your cursor if you move it across the screen and the snow will accumulate at the bottom of your screen as long as you stay on the page.
So yes, Jetpack offers more options if you have the access and want to play with them, but WordPress has brought back the much-simpler snow we knew and loved back when.
Cheers! Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!
P.S. I just noticed the snowflakes will drop to the bottom of the screen and then disappear after a few seconds. If I recall correctly, in the past, if you stayed on one page long enough, the flakes would accumulate to some depth, not melting. I think I let it run once and got a pile about an inch deep. It was fun to see it pile up, but maybe it got in the way of people trying to work or read or something.
simpatico and happy snow!
I’m still pondering the coincidence of my having thought to look for snow the same day that WP brought it back. I hadn’t thought about it for a least a couple of years. And if you hadn’t mentioned it, I might now be mired in one of those Jetpack plugins. Whee! Love me some snow!
I tried adding it right after I read the notice from WordPress, but the option wasn’t showing in my settings page.
I left them a comment about it which I knew would go into moderation because they specifically ask not to ask questions or report bugs in the posts (they want you to contact support).
Except, contacting support is a bit of a hassle these days, so I left them the following comment . . .
“Well, I can’t ask questions or report bugs, so . . .
Wow! What a great feature! I can’t wait to be able to use it. It’s sure to be a hit with my readers . . . you know, when it’s available for use. I hope it won’t be long now.”
Lo and behold, a few hours later, I got an email from support saying the snow feature should now be available on my settings . . . and it was.
However, one word of caution . . . the feature, something like an animation overlay, drives the graphic card to work harder. Not when leaving a comment because it pauses, but when reading a post or scrolling, I can hear my graphic card’s fan kick in (cooling the GPU), and I have a fairly high-end card.
I’m still debating if I should leave it active.
I’ve noticed this year that a first letter to WordPress support gets a response from their AI. Sometimes helpful, sometimes not. Help@WordPress.com goes to live people, if I’m deciphering my notes correctly.
My last laptop had a fan I could hear sometimes, working furiously. So far, on this one, I’ve not noticed a fan.
I love the snow!
It’s fun. Adds a bit of cheer.
Takes me back to the times when WordPress was a joy to use and I used to change my template whenever I felt like it.
No joy any more, not for me, Colorado …
You should be able to get the snow on any WordPress.com template. See the WordPress announcement.
D’oh! Just occurred to me that Australia is not exactly in snow mode right now. If you don’t have the option, that might be the reason.
I was musing over the snow just before Christmas
So much has changed with WordPress
It used to be more neighborhood and wild wetst instead of corporate, but change is the normal
Thanks for th info (I’ve been MIA a good deal – life is intruding, and time limited. But always enjoy your posts!
Yeah, life has a way of doing that. Hope all’s well down there. Behave yourself.