I looked forward to WordPress 3.1 in order to use the new post formats. WordPress is trying to be a bit more like Tumbler and make it easier to post oneliners, links, and images. Except they really don’t.
The 9 new formats are Aside, Chat, Gallery, Image, Link, Quote, Status, Video and Audio. It is my understanding that in tumbler, if you chose one of these formats, the post composition window is customized to that format. For example adding a post in a link format would just have two blanks. One for the URL and one for the description.
WordPress doesn’t change the post composition Window. That wouldn’t be so bad, but it seems that Theme writers have been very slow to add support for post formats. I counted 6 themes the last time I looked for a theme that had support for the aside format.
Adding post format support to your existing theme, isn’t as well documented as I’d like. Digging into WordPress had the most helpful post. Step one and two of the article is easy. But then I kind of got lost in step 3. I did not understand how to add post_class(). Eventually I figured it out and replaced class=”post” with php post_class(); ?> in the appropriate index and archive files.
Even then, I still needed to update the CSS. Digging into WordPress’s instructions weren’t enough for someone who has never touched CSS. I scraped together passable code for aside and link, but still need to do some work.
I’m thinking of taking the shared article links from the right hand side and posting them using the link post format. The main issue with this is ease of use. The shared article links currently come from a Google Reader RSS feed. I can hit “share” in google reader and with one click have this updated. While I know posts can be created from RSS feeds, I dont know if I can create a post in the “link” post format. I’m afraid I may share even less links.
The aside is the main reason I wanted to get post formats. The SANS Internet Storm Center calls them one liners. I would use this when I want to say something without having to say everything.
Post types are nice, but it needs to be more convenient. It needs to be built into the iPhone app so I can post in these formats when mobile. In the browser the post composition window needs to change based on the format selected. And lastly, Themes need to be front and center with support. On my other blog, I’m even using Twenty -Ten and finding the display of the post formats lacking.
I dont know much about post formats other than what I can find with a search engine. So you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear them.
