List of post formats for WordPress 3.1

Posted on by Elio Rivero

Nacin posted a tentative list of post formats to be included in WP 3.1. Post formats will be meta information used by theme to customize presentation.

Quoting from Codex, the list (so far), includes

  • aside – Typically styled without a title. Similar to a Facebook status update.
  • chat – A chat transcript.
  • gallery – A gallery of images.
  • link – A link to another site.
  • image – A single image.
  • quote – A quotation.
  • status – A short status update, usually limited to 140 characters. Similar to a Twitter status update.
  • video – A single video.

Strangely enough, themes WILL NOT be able to extend this closed list.

Published by Elio Rivero

Software engineer, designer and photographer.

3 thoughts on “List of post formats for WordPress 3.1”

  1. Hmmm I assume they’re going this route so that, say, an “aside” in one theme is treated the same way in every other theme created for 3.1? And then everything not included in this closed list you would just create a custom post type for (since the idea is that the list they included are all still considered just regular posts).

    1. Yes Heather and strangely, the post_format appears to be a taxonomy, rather than a custom post type. In wp-includes/taxonomy.php, line 80, there’s a new register_taxonomy
      [php]
      register_taxonomy( ‘post_format’, array(‘post’, ‘page’, ‘attachment’),
      [/php]
      Post formats are a core feature but they must be supported in the theme, and that somehow brings down the idea of portability from one theme to another, which would be truly awesome. So far, the vanilla TwentyTen bundled gives access to Aside and Gallery post formats, but the other formats can be enabled with
      [php]
      add_theme_support( ‘post-formats’, array( ‘aside’, ‘gallery’, ‘video’) );
      [/php]
      So on one side yeah, they are portable, as Mark Jaquith says, but on the other, it requires that the theme supports it but it’s only one line of code and there will be many plugins with UIs to enabled them, so maybe we can safely say that they will be portable. What do you think?

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