Replies

@pat Oh, I’m so happy my mention lead to the discovery of @pimoore’s port. 😊 I very much look forward to the compilation of mods. Thanks again for creating Hitchens and sharing it with everyone as free software.

@toddgrotenhuis Thanks for your feedback, much appreciated, and you’re totally right. Many plug-ins just add extra metadata or new pages to a blog. My own Surprise me! plug-in is one example. These plug-ins “just work” because they don’t need to change the blog’s templates.

Conversation on Micro.blog and Reply by email are different because modifications to the theme are necessary. I could provide a modified template with the plug-in, but that would overwrite any other customizations already done to that theme. That’s probably not what people want.

I would love to have hints and reminders – like you’re suggesting. And maybe there’s more we can do to make the installation process more manageable. I will give it some more thought. 😊

@rom Yeah, I don’t want to put words in @manton’s mouth, but I think we should look at plug-in-based themes as “still in beta”. 😊 Customizing does not work the same as with “classic themes”. Yet.

But it is possible to modify templates in plug-in-based themes. In more than one way, actually. For example, you can go to Design → Edit Custom Themes and click on the theme in question. From there, you can edit any template you want (or create new ones).

Another approach is to create a new plug-in and, from there, create a new template that overrides the template in the original theme plug-in. Finally, a third way is to duplicate the original theme and make your changes there.

They all feel a bit “hacky”, and I hope there will be a more straightforward, official way to customize plug-in-based themes in the future.

@news Regarding plug-in themes. If I create a custom theme, I won’t see the plug-in’s template files from my custom theme. Only Templates for Blank is present. Is this intended, @manton, or will the theme-specific templates show up there with a future update?

@bjhess Hmm, you’re right; there’s a risk for confusion the way it’s written. Thanks, I’ll try to make the instructions more straightforward.

@JohnPhilpin A cool thing, if you decide with Hitchens, is that it comes with built-in support for Conversation on Micro.blog. So you just have to install my plug-in, and the link will magically appear for every post. No custom theming is needed.

PS. @rom, see the other thread for help with plug-in installation.

@rom Wow, thanks for trying out my plug-ins. 🥰 There’s no easy way for plug-in developers to automatically inject links or make other changes, as every theme is unique. I would have to develop and maintain patched templates for every single Micro.blog theme out there.

In theory, theme developers could deliver their themes with built-in support for my plug-ins. And that’s actually a thing now, @pimoore’s Hitchens theme is the first that comes with built-in support for Conversation on Micro.blog.

For other themes, though, an installation step is needed for the links to show up. In the directory, below the plug-in’s description, there’s a link to the documentation on GitHub. Or just follow these links to the documentation for Conversation on Micro.blog and Reply by email.

@bjhess First of all, thanks for checking out my plug-in. 😊 The link won’t appear automatically, unfortunately. Below the plug-in’s description in the directory, there’s a link to the installation instructions. In short, a little code snippet needs to be injected in your template where you want the link to show up. Let me know if the documentation can be approved upon.

@Moondeer You could have the RSS file on your blog just output the link instead of the extra markup. That way, it would look better on the Micro.blog timeline and services you choose to cross-post to. But, still, have that cardy look on your blog.

@pimoore That will definitely lower the bar to get started with some of the most popular plug-ins. And the option for a custom theme is still there for the crowd who wants that. Lovely!

@timapple Nice! You could have both. 😊 In that case, you might want to change the wording inside the link to “Reply on Micro.blog” or similar.

@Miraz That’s such a clever one-liner. To everyone following along at home: keep copies of your originals as this is a destructive action.

@toddgrotenhuis Yeah, I wish there was an easy way for me to do that automatically, but unfortunately, it’s very impractical. Every theme is unique, so I would have to develop and maintain patched templates for all the Micro.blog themes out there.

But, in theory, theme developers could deliver their themes with built-in support for my plug-in. I’ve actually pitched that idea to @pimoore. So we’ll see what happens. 😊

@pat Thanks, and no, I wouldn’t mind at all; it would be an honor. Thanks for sharing your theme with us.

@toddgrotenhuis Hey, thanks for letting me know. If you just changed from another theme to Hitchen, you have to redo the include the Conversation on Micro.blog link in your custom theme step from my installation instructions once again.

Every theme is different, and it’s up to you where you want to include the Conversation on Micro.blog link. That said, for Hitchen, layouts/partials/article.html is probably where you want to have the {{ partial "conversation-link.html" . }} snippet.

@Moondeer I probably lack too much context here, but judging by the comment at the bottom, you’re including stylesheets based on if a shortcode is used or not. Is that right? Could an alternative be to just always have the stylesheet? That way, you could just get rid of the entire if/else block.

@Moondeer It’s doable, and fetching is the easy part. “Parsing” is a bit ugly if it’s not XHTML. Here’s something to get you started:

> {{ with resources.GetRemote “https://example.com” }}
> {{ $meta := findRE “<meta.*?>” .Content }}
> {{ range $meta }}
> {{ . }}<br />
> {{ end }}
> {{ end }}

That will output every meta tag found at the provided URL. Sorry about the messed-up template. 😔

@canion I don’t know about blog-specific search engines, but there’s a handful of alternatives out there.

Have you checked out millionshort.com? Like the name hints at, it lets you filter away the top million websites from your search results. There’s also an option to hide e-commerce websites.

wiby.me is another one with a focus on independent and hobbyist websites.

@otaviocc Looks like lean and usable packages. And very readable code, even for a non-Swift developer like me. 😊

@renevanbelzen Oh, that’s living the dream right there. 😍 My favorite BASIC (not assembly) one-liner for the C64 is 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10. It’s one of few (the only?) one-liner that has an entire book dedicated to it.

@manton Yay! 🙌 I’ve exposed my plug-ins to the new Hugo version, and everything seems to chug along just fine. Thanks for enabling this.

@canion Thanks for installing; looking good! 🤩 Oh, I would love doing this stuff all the time. It’s just that there’s this thing called food and some obligation for me to put that on a table? 😅 I’ve had some time off around the turn of the year, but now it’s back to doing work for clients again.

@Gaby Thank you for installing. 🥰 Heads up: there’s no support for having the conversation link on list pages (like the archive or home page). At least not yet. So, for now, you have to move the {{ partial "conversation-link.html" . }} snippet from layouts/_default/list.html to layouts/_default/single.html.

@vincent I’m glad you like them. 🙏 The temporary burst of productivity might have coincided with some time off around the holidays. 😉

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