The Blog

In days past, links to YouTube videos on Twitter used to show a nice full-sized thumbnail image. You could specify the poster image you wanted over in YouTube and it would appear along with an embedded video player.

These days, links to YouTube videos have been downgraded to only show a small image card which is frustrating for anyone wanting to share their videos on Twitter with a visible and inviting call to action to watch them. In an effort to make their videos stand out and attract clicks again, some have taken to attaching a thumbnail images directly to their tweets which, while making them visually appealing, get in the way of click-throughs as people find themselves just seeing a larger version of the image rather than viewing the video.

We can fix this with a crafty use of Netlify's Edge Functions.

I love music. All sorts of music. And particularly the sound of voices. Many voices harmonising and resonating together gives me goosebumps. It's magical. But ever since one moment in my early teens, I've felt that it wasn't something I could ever do. I've been silent.

However, after more than 30 years of bashfully hiding my singing voice, and feeling embarrassed of it even in the privacy of driving in the car on my own, or with shampoo in my eyes in the shower, I've finally found my voice. And I'm going to gush about that for a few paragraphs if you don't mind.

Recently I made the decision to reclaim my content from Twitter and host all of my tweets as part of my own website. Many other people made a similar call once Twitter’s future began to look so uncertain and unhealthy. Truth be told, I’d intended to do this for some time because it’s nice to keep control of your own content.

I also wanted to ensure that my future posts on Mastodon, the platform du jour, would accumulate as part of the same searchable and addressable archive over time. Giving everything a URL on my own domain that I could be ensure would live on for as long as I wanted.