Bloggeratto

There is a serious misuse of words in the bloggerosphere and the internet in general.

Sometimes a word becomes popular, and has such a inmediate Buzz into it that we end using it more that we should or for naming things the wrong way.

In this case, it is both things.

There are a lot of Hacks for the Bloggerosphere to use and to implement, but are they all of them really HACKS?.

Nope, sorry. that is just not the case.

Take just my own mistake, many people didn´t even notice it becuase i am known for editing almost every post i publish shortly afterwards i wrote them, unless Aditya is wearing his EDITOR hat that day and edits me before i get to it.

(makes me remember why a writer needs a editor)

My mistake was stating that the Comment Count In Previous Post List entry was refering to Hack and not a Mod as it should be. i corrected it a day later but that don´t makes me less wrong at the time i posted it like that.

So, lets dive into what is what:

HACK :

A Hack is when you breach through a system/software/code security or integrity changing it´s functioning in any way impossing your code into that matrix of data to make it work/do how/what you want it to work/do for things it was not intended at first.

Example

You have learned to code and get curious what code can work into a Blogger blog and start writing function for the blog to perform, in that case lets take a zone of a Blogger blog that needs to be hacked to be extended: the comments, every single new feature you make in them is a hack. a perfect example would be how you can post video and images in the comments of this blog. that is done forcing the comments to display video and images through custom written code.

MOD :

The term Mod was born in the PC gaming scene and it meant you had changed/extended a normal feature to display differently using the own system tools to do it. but you are bound by the rules of what you are playing with. so you bend the rules to yor favor without breaking them.

Then in the car tunning scene, a mod is just about changing a original piece to a custom piece that looks different or do different things than the original piece. in either way you are still bounded by rules, if you just make whatever you want up, it stops being the game/car you are modding and that cannot happen becuase it will then be something else entirely.

So finally, in blogger terms it meant playing with what the system offers you to change features looks and displays.

Example

Take once againg the "Comment Count In Previous Post List" as a perfect example. it was done by the input of a blogger function $TAG$ into a default feature making it display in a different way without forcing anything with custom code or by using a external service

METHOD :

A Method is like a tutorial with the main difference it will show you not only how to do something but with what to do it and it will involve second party and third party external services to do it.

It is about someone taking a service and making out a not intended add-on of it into a specif platform and documenting how he did it for general future use.

There is never code written for the method to work, the effect must be codeless.

Example

lets say you go to another platform / service and you see a widget or feature there. check out the code and transplant it to Blogger and then it works out!, you decide to share it with people writing how you made it work, then it is a method, becuase you didn´t wrote code or used system code and you need a external service to provide the feature into the blog

"They seem almost the same"

That almost is what made me write it.