Unsnapped

The CogDogBlog has been un-snapped.

Back in December I experimented with adding the capability offered by Snap.com that with some additional calls to a remote JavaScript library in your blog templates, it adds a small web site preview when you mouse-over a link external from your site.

I found it interesting, sometimes in the way when I was trying to right/control click to copy a URL, but never quite convinced myself why it was important. And since it was yet one more thing loading something else from an external site, I’m opting to take it out for now.

Though is this interesting concept, a blog full of poems by [[mez]] (what language??) that uses links to some external preset sites to add some visual oomph to words, as jill noted:

As you can see, the code-snippet only shows previews to linked pages on other domains. So Mez created a quick-and-easy blog dis[ap]posable, put up a few technically very simple HTML pages on another server, and linked to them from her poem. Ta-da: instantly a new genre is born.

Similar effects have been used, so I suppose it’s not exactly a new genre. But there’s something about taking disposable, ready-made, super-easy bits and pieces and putting them together as Mez has done that’s just really fascinating.

It’s neat, but still, I am asking myself… why do I need this functionality in my (un-poetic) blog?

So, in poising to yank this out of my WordPress header template, using another computer where I do not have the master files for my site (please tell me most WP bloggers keep a full copy of their templates, code, etc, and regularly backup their database…..), I came up with my idea fo a scratch pad inside my template folder. You see, when you edit the template files for your theme via the browser (which does require they are writable on the server), in this case I would typically just delete the Snap code from my header.php template. but what if I change my mind? Do I need to trudge back tot he snap site and regenerate the code?

Instead, I made a stub of a new template file,an almost empty template, that is actually not even used in my theme, called something like myscratchpad.php. Actually, to give it a pretty title on the list fo templates, I put at the top:

This is uploaded to my theme directory. Now I have a place I can cut the snap… code from my header.php template, and paste here just in case I change my mind…

This is a woefully puny tiny idea, but is useful if you have some things you need associated with your blog that you may need when you cannot get to your original files, or maybe do not have access to FTP or ….

Well, it works for me.

 Share this barking on social media

If this kind of stuff has value, please support me by tossing a one time PayPal kibble or monthly on Patreon