What is the custom footer for?

hollie · November 16, 2023, 7:25am

On the design page is a button for Customer Footer. The description:

The footer is inserted in each page right before the closing </body></html>, so it’s useful for adding JavaScript or other HTML without needing a custom theme.

Mine doesn’t seem to do anything? I put Statcounter javascript code in there, as well as rel-me links for Mastodon, and then a webring. None of the visual elements showed up on the page, and Statcounter said the script couldn’t be verified.

Instead, I made a custom theme and put everything in layouts/partials/footer.html and then they were all included. Why doesn’t Custom Footer work for that stuff? What’s meant to go in there if not things like stats javascript or webrings?

Edit: Possible explanation? When I edit the design, even when I make sure the editing is set to “hollie”, when the editing window opens, it shows the layouts/partials/footer.html on the left and hollie-test blog on the right (not my main blog that I’m trying to edit). I’ve tried reloading the page several times, I’ve backed out and made sure AGAIN that it’s set correctly to my main blog - it still opens the test blog in the editing window.

I’m wiped and have to give up for tonight. If anyone knows why this is happening, I’d love to understand. Thanks!

jsonbecker · November 16, 2023, 2:51pm

When you build your own custom theme, you may not be following the includes expectations of micro.blog to actually load the convenience footer there. Long story short-- If you’re not using an official theme, sometimes the things that are offered to make it easier to edit just a tiny bit of a theme without building a custom theme won’t work because you didn’t include the magic code in your theme.

In this case, if you don’t include this in your own code (typically in baseof.html, your theme won’t know to include the custom footer:

{{ partial "custom_footer.html" . }}

github.com

microdotblog/theme-blank/blob/master/layouts/_default/baseof.html#L8


      
          <!DOCTYPE html>
          <html>
              {{ partial "head.html" . }}
              <body>
                  {{ partial "header.html" . }}
                  {{ block "main" . }}{{ end }}
                  {{ partial "footer.html" . }}
          		{{ partial "custom_footer.html" . }}
              </body>
          </html>

hollie · November 18, 2023, 7:10pm

Thanks @jsonbecker! I’m using Arabica, which I thought was an official theme? I don’t know how you tell which ones are official and which aren’t.

sod · November 19, 2023, 7:56am

Yeah, it’s not obvious how to tell first-party and third-party themes apart. In the theme gallery, the ones listed as “by manton” are the official ones.

When using view source in the browser, I see the StatCounter code snippet close to the bottom of your blog’s HTML. So, it looks like your custom footer works okay.

On a side note: tinylytics is included twice, both in the header and footer. I don’t know the details of setting up Tinylytics, but you should probably choose one or the other.