This week I’m going to be hanging around inside WordPress 3.2 ahead of its release, taking a look at some of the things you can expect and what you can down with them.
With the arrival of WordPress 3.2 and its new default theme – Twenty Eleven, millions of people are going to all of a sudden become aware of post formats. Of course, post formats have been around since WordPress 3.1 so it’s not like they’re new. But what is new is that there are so many of them active in the default theme. This means that there will be plenty of end users who upgrade, activate their shiny new theme and think “wtf are all these new radio buttons?”
In preparation for WordPress 3.2 and TwentyEleven, post formats are certainly worth revisiting.
Custom Post Types vs Post Formats
Unfortunately the terminology used by WordPress is not exactly clear and it’s not always easy to separate out what is going on. Briefly:
- Custom Post Types – These are the types of content – post or page; or maybe you have custom ones like “books”, “movies”, “products.”
- Post Format – the format applied to a content type
TwentyTen used the aside and gallery formats. Here they are:
But TwentyEleven has a whole lot more:
Let’s take a look at each of these post formats, how you can use them, and how you can add more.
Aside
An aside is a short piece of text – usually no more than a paragraph. It appears on the index page without a title.
Link
A link is, well, a link, obviously. Like the aside it appears on the index page without a title.
Gallery
A gallery page consists of a gallery attached to that post. You can use the [ gallery] shortcode to insert the gallery or upload your images, click the gallery tab on the uploader and click “insert gallery.”
Status
The status post format is a bit like Twitter. You can post a status message and it will appear with your gravatar on the index page.
Quote
A quote is for a post using a lot of quotes. This will make the quotes stand out on your index page.
Image
The image format is great for photoblogging. You can use it to post a single image which will contain post meta like a caption around it. It makes Twenty Eleven into a viable option for a photoblogging theme.
Adding Additional Post Formats to Twenty Eleven
There are three additional post formats that you can add to Twenty Eleven:
- Video
- Audio
- Chat
These are pretty self explanatory. It would have been nice to see video and audio included on Twenty Eleven – personally I think they’re more useful than quote or aside. Not sure what I would ever use chat for – I can see how it would be useful for development and support blogs though.
It is very easy to add these other post formats to Twenty Eleven. Open up functions .php and go to line 104. You’ll find this:
// Add support for a variety of post formats
add_theme_support( 'post-formats', array( 'aside', 'link', 'gallery', 'status', 'quote', 'image') );
You can add the extra formats by adding them to your array:
// Add support for a variety of post formats
add_theme_support( 'post-formats', array( 'aside', 'link', 'gallery', 'status', 'quote', 'image', 'chat', 'video', 'audio' ) );
This will just add the format, it will not style it. Check out these posts for some help on doing so:
The Twenty Eleven Ephemera widget
The ephemera widget is included with Twenty Eleven to let you easily show your ephemera in your sidebar. Your ephemera are the small stuff –asides, quotes and links. The links act in a much more interesting way when they appear in the ephemera widget than on the index page. In the widget the title picks up the top link in the post and links directly to it. This is pretty much how I would have expected links to act on the index page so it’s nice that they do here.
Are They So Great?
Yes, and no. I think post formats are awesome because they extend WordPress’ flexibility so much. You can easily transform the default twenty-eleven theme into a photoblogging theme, a micro blogging theme and a tumblog with absolutely no changes to the code and this represents a fantastic step forward.
But I think that where they fall down is in user experience. Let’s take a look at the input fields for a few of Tumblr posts:
Check out the input field for all of the WordPress post formats:
See the difference? Adding content to WordPress Post formats is not intuitive. It took me a while to figure out how the link format works. Do you insert the link in the title field? Do you insert it straight into the post field or do you attach it to some text? It’s just not self evident. Quotes are another problem – I want to be able to add the quote author and the source, maybe even the date. For these to work effectively I need to start adding custom fields and for lots of standard end users this just isn’t an option.
Tumblr now has more blogs than WordPress.com. Tumblr has been around for 4 years, WordPress.com for 6 years. This is an impressive feat for the microblogging site. And with the introduction of post formats it’s obvious that WordPress is taking note. And while it’s a huge step in the right direction I don’t feel that it’s quite there. Each post format needs a different input field to improve user experience. It’d be nice to see by the time we get to WordPress 4.0! An effective WordPress Tumblog Multisite would be awesome :)
Further Reading
- Post Types and Formats and Taxonomies, oh my!
- Whats Whys and How-tos of Post Formats in WordPress 3.1
- Tumblr links with Post Formats
- Playing with Post-Formats of WordPress 3.1
- How to: Style Your WordPress Gallery
Nice article and thanks for the mention of our site under further reading, Siobhan!
I see your point with tumblr – I think it will trigger further improvements in wordpress.
About WordPress UI: Lots of new users have problem with those tiny icons: a classic question is:”how can I add a link”….
I agree with the statement that the UI sucks. I had to actually look at the documentation to start to think about figuring it out and I still have problems figuring it out. Make it easy!
Interesting that you guys hate the UI so much. I’m going to write something about it later in the week. How do you think it could be improved?
Agree with the above comments on the UI. I have no problem digging in and figuring things out, but I’d like future clients to have an easier time of managing their own content.
My thoughts exactly. “One fits all” just does not work. And what is more concerning is that every theme could implement formats differently, so it is not portable. Some will implement it as custom fields (my way) and some will grab first link from post body and make it a link. If formats are already here, there should really be some strict standardization also.
And thanks for article :)
I am using a technique I picked up over at farinspace.com where Dimas was using some jQuery to hide UI elements based on the category selected.
It can be easily adapted for use with format types.
Thanks for the article. I’ve been hesitant to use the custom post feature, for the very reason that its not too intuitive. Some of the plugins I’ve installed, thankfully make the use of custom posts a little easier.
Really nice post. I especially like the part comparing the UI to Tumblr.
I teach a seminar on how to use WP effectively, and I think the UI has been broken for uploading attachments since 2.5. Every single screen is identical for the four options: image, video, audio and media. Aren’t all of them “Media”
And, I constantly have students confused on how to insert a video- they think they should just plugin the YouTube URL- and get a video embed- like you get with VipersVideo QuickTag plugin- instead, you get a link.
These new options will confuse novices even more. I’m not sure, without a more informative UI that this is a step in the right direction
Nicely said and done…. been looking for this piece of info for a while now… thanks.
非常好的文章。Nice！
@David – I disagree. I appreciate that the core developers didn’t make a rash decision about how we should be using ‘post formats’ but rather they gave us some standards (audio, video, link, etc.) and some examples of how to use them: Matt’s blog and twenty eleven theme. It’s up to us how we use them.
I’m grateful that WordPress isn’t bloated with features I don’t need. I agree that the UI has a ways to go – as far as letting end users work with custom post types, taxonomies, and meta boxes – however I think they are taking the right steps to ensure they don’t force too much unneccessary clutter.
If you anyone wants a primer on ‘post formats’, Ian Steward did a nice job at wordcamp: http://wordpress.tv/2011/08/29/ian-stewart-awesome-up-your-boring-theme-wordpress-post-formats/
Thanks for this information. It helped me a lot. However, I started reading the post because I, like many people, can’t figure out how to use the Post Formats in WordPress. You say in your article that it isn’t intuitive and it took you a long time to figure it out. But then you don’t actually say how one DOES use Post Formats. Perhaps I missed that information. I’ve been staring at the Post Formats on WordPress for a few days now and experimenting, but I still can’t figure out how to use them. All I get are standard posts no matter what I do. Is there another article on your site that goes through how to use the Post Formats? That would be great! Thanks. Doug
YES… you harangue on WP that it isn’t intuitive and give an example why not then leave us hanging —- HOW DO YOU USE IT? Admittedly I haven’t given it more than an hour trying to figure it out; but, if you are going to bother coding it – why on earth wouldn’t you do it so people could actually use it?
I also see that many people agree – BUT I’m still waiting for someone to point to an answer.
Thanks, great post. Exactly the “user experience” confusion that brings me here. Different format on input field might help reducing the confusion in using the format function.
I was experimenting these post formats until I found your blog. I like the way you explained each format with screen shots and examples. Well done! Thanks for sharing!
Great article, thanks.
I have a question. Does this format issue work with the other themes, besides twenty eleven?
What are the chances that this format issue will not be abandandoned with the nex twenty twelve theme?
Great post, this is actually news to me. Not sure how I missed this new feature for so long. I think the UI also in need of a redesign, which shouldn’t be a far off.
Hi! This post was so useful. I’m new to WordPress and to Twenty Eleven so I’m still trying to figure out all of the features but I’ve come across a few blogs (including http://accidentalbeauty.com) whose layout is what I had in mind for mine. I mean how the single posts are listes, along with the title, the picture and a few text lines, so basically as you open the page you have the posts summed up in an intuitive way. What is this “format” called? Does Twenty-eleven have it? I hope so!!! Thank You for your attention… any help would be highly appreciated!
Scarlet
I Googled ‘why blog post formats’ and found your post. The reason I because curious about this is that I was making my posts with videos the “image” post format in the Mystique theme, and I noticed two things: 1) My videos actually looked a bit smaller in the “image” format because they were inside a rounded-corner rectangular post format, and 2) My posts with videos didn’t show the date and author at the top. Most of my video posts also have text accompanying the videos, and I like to have the date and author show at the top of the post; I also like to have the video be as big as possible. Granted, Mystique does not have a “video” post format, and one could argue that using a “photo” post format on a post including a video was a misuse of that post format, but it really made me wonder, “why use post formats at all?” What I think is missing from WordPress support and tutorials is what the different post formats are meant to do to a post. Thank you for your article. It gives me a better idea of why an aside, link, or status post format are the way they are. I also agree that WordPress should make the writing of posts with various formats more clear. I will actually send an email to support@wordpress.com linking to this article!
P.S. I searched, and there is this WordPress support page about post formats: http://en.support.wordpress.com/posts/post-formats/
As an afterthought, Tumblr makes it easy to create a post in a certain post format, but WordPress makes it easy to change a post format on a previous post you edit. I just tried to change a post I originally uploaded in the “image” post format on Tumblr to another format, and I couldn’t.
This is really useful. I had no idea what all the options were for, but more importantly, I’ve never created a Tumblr account so I had no idea the interface for the back end was so intuitive.
Cheers