The falling snow feature
-
When and where do we access the ‘falling snow’ feature??
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
-
I’m curious on this too! I’ve tagged WordPress.com staff to see if they’re able to clarify when/if it will be available. :)
-
Holiday Snow has been removed from Jetpack and WordPress.com. Its removal will help us make Jetpack a more focused and robust product for small businesses.
If you miss having snowfall across your site there are stand-alone plugins available here: https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/falling-snow/
Plugins can be added to WordPress.com sites with the Business Plan.
Here are more details about the Jetpack update:
https://jetpack.com/2018/04/03/jetpack-6-0/ -
Thanks for confirming! In all honesty, I’m a bit disappointed to hear that, Holiday Snow was an incredibly popular feature, and above all, it was an option. Small businesses, or any site, could disable it if it caused harm to them, and ultimately, those are the sites which the Business Plan is targeted at.
It seems very confusing to me to limit a simple but lovely feature to a specific plan, when it caused no harm and could be easily disabled. Why would it be limited to a plan which is more likely to be owned by sites that were the reason cited for the feature’s removal?
-
Just to clarify a bit….
Liz’s post above is accurate as far as the reasoning behind the removal from Jetpack. However, for WordPress.com sites the reason is simply that our developers have been extremely busy with a number of large projects the past few months and we were unable to get the falling snow options set up for WordPress.com sites this year.
I will make sure that the team knows that some folks really do miss the feature and perhaps it can return in the future.
As Liz also notes, if you have a WordPress.com Business plan (or a WordPress site hosted with another webhost), there are falling snow plugins that you can use to replicate the effect. But I can also understand that might not seem like the most reasonable solution for someone who just has a basic WordPress.com site and doesn’t have any interest in upgrading to a Business plan. But we thought it was important to at least mention the option.
-
It is far from ideal to limit it to the Business Plan, so thank you for confirming that & for forwarding on the requests for it to return! :)
-
thx for response. And sorry to hear…it was a fun “gift” from wordpress.com for some bloggers.
-
So, the only upgrade that includes “snow” is the Business plan? No other paid upgrade affords it?
That’s a shame–I looked forward to having the “snow” each year (I’ve had a million WP blogs since Aug 2011–some free, others paid)–but as a senior on Soc Security, I cannot afford the Business upgrade.
Thanks.
-
It’s not that the snow feature is included in the Business Plan – just that it’s the only plan which allows plugins, and the only way to get the snow is to use a third-party plugin.
-
Bring back the snow, please!
T’was such a joy to see my website transformed every December… My students LOVED it!
I hope WordPress can show a little more Christmas cheer and bring this back for all the “regular” folks who aren’t shelling out for the business plan.
Please pass this on to the team at WordPress. I’m sure there are many more folks like myself who are disappointed this December 1st…
-
-
@nikolnieto we have had the snow feature on free blogs every December, for many years, this has nothing to do with allowing plug-ins.
-
-
Thanks for the feedback, everyone. We’re relaying it to our developers, but we can’t make any promises.
-
I too am very disappointed not to have the falling snow this year. Particularly as I upgraded to a premium personal product earlier this year. It was a lovely “thank you gift” from WP. I hope it comes back. Very quickly.
-
-
I can bet there will be many more wondering and extremely disappointed. To be sure, WP developers go above and beyond, trying to make WP a very streamlined and easy to use platform – and their efforts, most of them, often do improve the ease and quality of performance and enhancement of a user’s experience, but there are times, like now, when I do wonder about quality and direction.
Over the past few years, as more upgrades to features have been implemented, there have been substantial cuts to services, like the number of free blog themes. Everything has become so “cold, impersonal” catering to “business” and it seems, WP is in competition with other platforms, which are more “instant” gratification and publication oriented. It’s disappointing, again, that WP chooses to cater to these demands while forgetting about the “thousands” of bloggers who actually have been loyal to WP and don’t want all of this “high tech, super mobile” “stuff” —
snow falling? a simple holiday cheer effect, annoying to some, but loved by many –
how sad – and well, time wise, how rather Grinch like in their “visionary” attitude —
I’ll be curious to see how many people start wondering about it and then when the “new editor” rolls out, how many of the “old school” really start squabbling. -
Yeah, I noticed with disappointment how few free blog themes are available too, again after I upgraded to a paid-for service. It does seem as though I got more when I didn’t pay for it.
I don’t like either of the new editors either and have stuck resiliently to the old original and, in my opinion, far easer interface.
-
Thanks @wildchild47, we’ve passed along your feedback about the snow.
@dianewordsworth if you have specific feedback about the newest editor, will you please start a new thread and let us know which parts of it are giving you trouble? It will eventually replace the older editors, so specific feedback is especially helpful right now. -
Yes! I miss the snow, too. Limiting it to the business plan does feel a bit Grinch-like. Feeling sad.
- The topic ‘The falling snow feature’ is closed to new replies.
WordPress.com Forums 