The Post Formats feature that landed in WordPress 3.1 is a great framework feature. I’m leveraging it extensively on this site to drive my link, status, photo and gallery posts.
While it is a great framework feature, it only really exists as something developers leverage to extend WordPress. There is no UI that ships with the feature, which limits its accessibility to users.
My team and I have been working on FavePersonal (the theme you see here) for a while, and one of the features we’ve built is an admin interface for post formats.
We have released this code on GitHub (pull requests welcome) and encourage any and all theme developers to use it, add to it and improve it.
Here are some details on how it works.
The plugin is a completely additive solution that leverages the default WordPress functionality, while improving the UI and standardizing the names and presentation of custom fields that support the various post formats.
A set of tabs are added to the post authoring screen that allow users to select the post format they would like to use. The built-in radio button interface is hidden, and the tabs simply control the selected radio button.
Status posts are treated as “content only” – similar to the short form seen in Facebook status updates and Twitter’s tweets. Behind the scenes, a title for the post is set using the first 50 characters of the content.
Link posts have an additional custom field (_format_link_url
) for the URL of the website/page being linked to. This URL is then utilized in the theme to implement linking directly to the external site from the title link (if desired).
Image posts utilize the WordPress built-in Featured Image functionality. The Featured Image is treated as the image for the post, and the theme displays it accordingly for this post format.
Gallery posts display the WordPress gallery in the tab so that it’s clear that these items will appear with the post. The theme then implements the gallery view based on the post format.
Video posts have an additional field added for embed code or an oEmbed URL to be added. This information is stored in a custom field (_format_video_embed
). Then the theme can use this to display the video in an elegant way.
Quote posts have two additional fields. One for the name of the person being quoted (_format_quote_source_name
), and one for an attribution link (_format_quote_source_url
). These can be used in the theme to present the quote and attribution in a consistent manner. Similar to status posts, a title for the quote is created behind the scenes from the first 50 characters of the quote.
You’ll notice that we have adopted a consistent naming convention for custom fields used to support post formats. That convention is:
_format_{format type}_{descriptive data name}
The underscore at the beginning of the key prevents the field from showing up in the default Custom Fields interface (since we are managing it behind the scenes) and the rest is set up to logically describe the type of data being stored.
We look forward to releasing our theme in the near future, and hope that this code will be widely used to help bring adoption of post formats in a way that is truely portable between WordPress themes.
Several people I’ve shown this to have asked if I’d like to see this adopted in WordPress core. Yes, of course! I had an interesting conversation with Ian Stewart about this at WordCamp SF this year. He had some reasonable concerns about the data being stored in custom fields not being portable to themes that don’t implement post formats; while acknowledging that having the data in a structured format (separate fields) was very valuable for presentation purposes.
One possible solution we discussed would be the addition of core functionality that would look for these custom fields and post format support, and would auto-prepend/append the custom fields to the content accordingly (add the featured image, gallery, quote attribution, etc.). A solution like this is definitely preferable to requiring all of the data to be present in a single content field.
UPDATE: see my follow-up on this.
This post is part of the following projects: Post Formats Admin UI, Personal Theme. View the project timelines for more context on this post.
This post is part of the following projects: Post Formats Admin UI, Personal Theme. View the project timelines for more context on this post.
RT @alexkingorg: WordPress Post Formats Admin UI: We have released this code on GitHub and encourage you to use & improve it. http://t.co/XO75VDpi
@alexkingorg Elegant. Well done gents.
RT @alexkingorg: WordPress Post Formats Admin UI: We released code on GitHub & encourage use & improvement http://t.co/xfteYAey
RT @alexkingorg: WP Post Formats Admin UI: We have released this code on GitHub and encourage you to use & improve it. http://t.co/BbbpFz7y
3.4 Core, PLS. MT @alexkingorg: WordPress Post Formats Adm UI: We released code on GitHub & encourage use & improvement http://t.co/iKpnYFcs
Structured meta for WordPress. Looks promising. MT @alexkingorg: WordPress Formats Admin UI http://t.co/Z9NiLB0S thx for h/t @andrea_r
RT @wpblogmaster: Alex King: WordPress Post Formats Admin UI http://t.co/TfBm3ga0
This is some awesome code. Thanks for sharing it.
@zamoose Looks cool enough … will need to play with it a bit. +1 /cc @alexkingorg
awsome that realy jenious
Alex King: WordPress Post Formats Admin UI: The Post Formats feature that landed in WordPress 3.1 is a great fra… http://t.co/kKlQRGsG
First: awesome! This is exactly what post formats need to be useful.
Second: it appears that there’s some CSS missing in the repo. Instead of tabs like your screenshots, I just get a list of links that looks like this: http://cl.ly/BGim
Hmm, we might have missed something when we broke it out as a separate plugin. Will fix ASAP.
Fixed.
Great! I’ve already found a bug too. I’ll open the first issue on GitHub and see if I can fix it. 🙂
RT @mattwiebe: Awesome work by @alexkingorg and team on WordPress Post Formats Admin UI. http://t.co/mM2BfRCX
If this catches on and gets turned into a #standard, #WordPress #PostFormats may actually become useful: http://t.co/Dj71rG2x #wp3.4 please!
RT @alexkingorg: WordPress Post Formats Admin UI: We released code on GitHub and encourage you to use & improve http://t.co/WwdNSg2u
WordPress Post Formats Admin UI: http://t.co/rRRNwDyi /* Alex King????????????? #wordpressJP */
@alexkingorg fantastic! thank you for the awesome contribution, gonna use this one for sure
Thank you so much. I’ve been using the woo post-format panel for some time now, and this solution is SO much more elegant. A huge +1 for this making it to the core someday.
RT @alexkingorg WordPress Post Formats Admin UI: We have released this code on GitHub & encourage you to use & improve. http://t.co/YTBM2FmX
RT @amorfrancis: New on @alexkingorg: WordPress Post Formats Admin UI http://t.co/aZBn7mw4
WordPress Post Formats Admin UI http://t.co/o1IXhP6I
RT @mikeschinkel: RT @alexkingorg #WordPress Post Formats Admin UI: Code is on GitHub, we encourage use & improvement: http://t.co/CMZaM6qh
yeah release this code immediatly
It would be great to have this added to WordPress!
Will it be available in the WordPress.org plugin repository?
It’s not useful as a stand-alone plugin, it needs to be integrated into a theme.
WordPress Post Formats Admin UI – http://t.co/MbKrOlnx (via @alexkingorg)
#WordPress Post Formats Admin UI http://t.co/dppT5et3
Here’s hoping it makes it into core so post formats get more widely used.
Great solution providing better UX for WordPress post formats by @alexkingorg: http://t.co/8lEJkZjO
Great idea, Alex – something I’d love to see implemented in core.
One question though – why GitHub, rather than the wordpress.org SVN repo?
GitHub is a better environment for developer collaboration.
More magic from @crowdfavorite with WordPress post format admin UI enhancements http://t.co/2UgM8opu
WordPress Post Formats Admin UI: http://t.co/btLVfq0j . Really clever way to leverage the power of the post format feature. ? @nacin
Up and running on VoodooPress. I’ll be playing around with this one for sure!
This is great! I’m just starting to play around with post formats and finding it difficult to do what I want without custom fields.
Having a consistent set of custom fields will minimize getting locked into a single theme’s unique implementation. Ideally, this would be part of core, so more themes will adopt the custom fields.
Maybe WordPress version 3.4? 😉
Admin UI for WordPress post formats: http://t.co/yIGBAs5W
[…] WordPress Post Formats Admin UI : alexking.org. […]
I’d love to see this make it into core!
[…] King has made available code that creates an admin UI for using Post Formats. While working on their upcoming new theme, […]
WordPress Post Formats Admin UI plugin released on Github by @alexkingorg Brings a more tumblr-like UI to posts http://t.co/Txfi3z72
WordPress Post Formats Admin UI : http://t.co/nZEjGlv7 http://t.co/PCwT634d
Looks sweet! RT @jeremyjaymes: WordPress Post Formats Admin UI : http://t.co/QFgZXTDx http://t.co/IdSWl8ER
Wow! “@jeremyjaymes: WordPress Post Formats Admin UI : http://t.co/nD3QNJql”
Very cool: WordPress Post Formats Admin UI http://t.co/ahiZEynk
Indeed RT @kremalicious: Very cool: WordPress Post Formats Admin UI http://t.co/gYC5XsWS”
Loving what this brings to Post Formats http://t.co/cRDVcJrY ( via @kremalicious ) #WordPress
LOVING this WordPress Post Formats Admin UI from @alexkingorg: http://t.co/bljJdjmj
Delicious: WordPress Post Formats Admin UI : http://t.co/Ja7xWBLE http://t.co/XMSwipJZ
Playing with wp-post-formats. This is cool stuff. http://t.co/8MmFlTrF #wordpress
Shared: Alex King: WordPress Post Formats Admin UI http://t.co/HTjDURTl
WordPress Post Formats Admin UI – http://t.co/fAApyYfD
[…] his team at Crowd Favorite have created and released a beautiful new interface for post formats. WP Post Formats brings this powerful feature to the common man with an intuitive, tabbed […]
WordPress Post Formats Admin UI – better UI to compose in diffrnt post formats by http://t.co/hGzCaTig http://t.co/5KDD9V5f
Already using this in a project and it ROCKS! Hope it becomes core code! WordPress Post Formats UI http://t.co/6Nxo3HPR
So user friendly! by @alexkingorg: WordPress Post Formats Admin UI http://t.co/cdWkIRuf
Nice plugin! I love the UI! Just watched it on Github. Thanks for sharing.
This is SUPER awesome – #WordPress Post Format Tabs UI (I would like to do this for custom post types too) – http://t.co/j2sz3rip
[…] his team at Crowd Favorite have created and released a beautiful new interface for post formats. WP Post Formats brings this powerful feature to the common man with an intuitive, tabbed […]
[…] an article on something they’ve been working on together with the team — a better Admin UI for Post Formats. Alex talks about a plugin that adds a more intuitive and meaningful user interface to post formats […]
WordPress Post Formats Admin UI – great neu plugin for post formats by Alex King: http://t.co/0GYi3L3H #WordPress #post-formats
#WordPress Post Formats Admin UI http://t.co/69APwdwq (via @alexkingorg)
Finally! This is Great… #WordPress Post Formats Admin UI (done right) by @alexkingorg & team. w/ github repo. Very nice guys *claps*
@jasonnewlin here’s that link… going to repost in a min too http://t.co/JrBg9E1i
Nice! #WordPress Post Formats Admin UI (done right) by @alexkingorg & team. w/ github repo. Very nice guys *claps* http://t.co/J6NyMg9W
Hey Alex, just noted an error in the post re: quote format fields. Both should have “source” instead of “src”. As in,
_format_quote_src_name
and_format_quote_src_url
.Crap, named the wrong ones there, not the corrected ones. Should be
_format_quote_source_name
and_format_quote_source_url
.Thanks, fixed.
Thank you for posting this on Github. I’m seeing more and more WordPress development on Github, pull requests are so easy.
[…] and each format has its own unique layout and custom fields to be filled out. You can view the blog post or grab the code directly on GitHub.Post types are a relatively new feature. Up until now they […]
RT @rbhavesh: This is neat. Perfect UI. http://t.co/pW5DJ5Qm WordPress Post Formats. #wordpress
WordPress Post Formats. Interesante plugin: http://t.co/M8RRP5rq
WordPress post formats admin UI looks handy http://t.co/gbrhIyWW
@SL0wZEr Check this out mate http://t.co/kfdvYvZQ #WordPress #UI
I really hope this makes the WordPress core, it takes post formats to the next level: http://t.co/4W6UrMeO #wordpress
http://t.co/nmsZdt9R Great add-on for wordpress admin ui.
Awesome sauce: WordPress Post Formats Admin UI – http://t.co/tONVnSuR
Plugin that changes custom post formats from a radio button to tabs. http://t.co/MphK7C8O
I’m vaguely worried about this because of what’s detailed at the end of this excellent presentation: http://themeshaper.c[...]ost-formats/
While this implementation looks really, really pretty (and it does, don’t get me wrong), it breaks if you move to a theme that doesn’t use it, or, even worse, a theme without post formats at all. Say I have a blog with 50 video posts using a theme that implements this setup. It’s great. It’s clean. It’s easy. But I find a new theme that I fall in love with visually, and I switch. All of a sudden, my videos won’t display – anywhere.
I’m a theme developer, so I know where to go looking for the content. But most users won’t. You just broke their blog. I’d love to see some core implementation of this that would also modify the “the_content” call, so that themes that don’t support post formats or a nice visual layout like this woull append necessary links, quotes, etc to the end of just the standard the_content.
Until then, I’m experimenting with regexes to format and display content how I want to, leaving all the links in the_content so switching themes won’t break my users websites.
The way to move Open Source projects forward is through code. This is an effort in that direction. New functionality requires new features.
Don’t get me wrong – I wasn’t trying to say this work was a bad thing. Merely that there needs to be some work to the surrounding components of WordPress before this will be as successful as I hope it becomes.
Think about it the other way. Critical mass/standardization behind this feature drives the adoption of a nice fallback (as noted was discussed with Ian at WCSF) into core.
Really neatoooooo. http://t.co/lSuxtcg8
@dan_vaida The UI on this one by @alexkingorg is simple, straight forward and makes sense.
Fantastic idea! #WordPress Post Formats Admin UI http://t.co/fwCqKliN
WordPress Post Formats Admin UI by @alexkingorg | Will have to try this out… http://t.co/L3Kgodwr…
@pensato @cole_peters @ericaglasier On that front, a Post Formats UI plugin just came out for WP last week: http://t.co/mM2BfRCX
WordPress Post Formats Admin UI http://t.co/t3sIHFEd < sweet plugin by @crowdfavorite
I have complained about the implementation of Post Formats a lot on WP Ideas and wp-hackers, even before 3.1 was released. Most of the users supported me, but the devs not much for some reason. My main concern is that I think it didn’t make much sense to left the list of post formats ‘fixed’ as for having better interoperability between themes, yet at the same time leaving no standard on how to use the default fields, so each one is doing a different approach on how to utilize them and when people change themes, their post became broken even if the post format support is the same.
I haven’t tested the plugin yet, but I definitively support it. Even if it don’t make into core, is a must for WordPress.com.
RT Nice! #WordPress Post Formats Admin UI (done right) by @alexkingorg w/ github repo. Very nic… via @klout.com http://t.co/pdFXUInE
[…] WordPress Post Formats Admin UI : alexking.orgWordPress Post Formats Admin UI : alexking.org. […]
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Using the awesome post format admin UI by Alex king http://t.co/SOwQqNn0 and @dougal suggestion on switching the loop http://t.co/ugdXSXR9
[…] 3.3.Theme requires certain plugins (plugin installer included).Added support for Crowd Favorites Post Formats UI plugin.And much more..So, don’t hesitate to visit the theme page, the demo page, or purchase the […]
<3 post formats. The more I use them the more I fall in love. Especially now with @alexkingorg’s Post Formats UI. #WordPress
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Riktigt fin lösning för inläggsformat! “WordPress Post Formats Admin UI” #wpse http://t.co/NTix3Sqp
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WordPress Post Formats Admin UI by @alexkingorg http://t.co/0K3ip4E2
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Great plugin by @alexkingorg and crowd favorite to make the Post Formats better: http://t.co/6P1UadZg
Is there anyway to integrate a url-shortening function for _format_link_url?
Sure, standard WP filters.
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