Let it snow! Try my jSnow Plugin for WordPress

Update 2016-12-17: I release a new version of this plugin on the official WordPress plugin repository. Head over there or search for “flurry” in your WordPress site’s “Plugins > Add New” admin page.

Update 2013-12-09: jSnow is not compatible with recent versions of jQuery. Download my latest falling snow WordPress plugin at https://github.com/joshmcrty/jam-flurry. All other information below remains accurate.

Update (12/12/2011): I made a couple of small tweaks to optimize the file size after noticing an issue with the WordPress 3.3 update today. If you downloaded version 0.1 of this plugin, I recommend grabbing version 0.2. The link to the plugin above has been updated to point to the new version.

I love using JavaScript to add simple holiday effects to a website. I’ve tried several different “falling snow” WordPress plugins for my blog, but none of them quite fit my personal tastes. Instead I started looking for a good JavaScript or jQuery plugin that I could wrap up myself as a WordPress Plugin. Eventually I came across an updated/modified version of the jSnow plugin for jQuery.

I liked the simplicity of the plugin and the fact that it performs rather well on all of the browsers I tested (as with most of these animated JavaScripts, performance is highly dependent on the browser and computer itself). I also liked the fade out effect and the fact that I could set it to have a short height, essentially keeping the “falling snow” effect within my website header.

If you want to add this to your WordPress site, download my jSnow Falling Snow WordPress Plugin, unzip the contents, and upload the jsnow folder via FTP to your WordPress plugins directory (wp-content/plugins/). Or, you can use WordPress’ built-in plugin uploader by following these steps:

First, go to your Plugins page and click the Add New button:

Next, click the Upload link and browse to the jsnow.zip file that you downloaded. Then click the Install Now button:

Once the plugin has been uploaded and installed, click the Activate Plugin link.

You should now have falling snow at the top of your site!

Note: This plugin has no configuration options (yet) and it is not date-sensitive (yet). You’ll need to deactivate it from the Plugins page when you no longer want to display the “falling snow” effect on your site. If you want to change the options, you can open the jsnow.jQuery.js file in a text editor and modify the default values at the bottom of the script.

If you have any suggestions or questions, leave them in the comments!