[wp-hackers] post format types

[Dougal Campbell]

On Jan 6 2011 1:45 PM, Philip M. Hofer (Frumph) wrote:
>> No, you can not create custom Post Formats. Giving theme the ability
>> to make their own post formats would defeat the whole purpose of post
>> formats.
>
> I disagree, if the fallback of post_format_exists brought it to 
> standard or empty on non-designed themes with it.  The first thought I 
> had when I heard about this was "cool, I can have each author have 
> their own "post look"" that they can set.  I'm just a theme designer 
> that has to work within the 'confines' of code.  This implementation 
> is very confining.  Not that i'm saying it's bad, it's not bad it's 
> just not implemented in a way that I thought it would be.

As stated earlier (and discussed in-depth a while back), the limitation 
is a *feature* designed to encourage compatible implementation between 
themes. This also ensures that blog clients like Windows Live Writer, 
MarsEdit, the WordPress for iPhone/iPad app, et al, will be able to 
access them consistently.

If you want custom per-author post looks, WordPress still gives you the 
tools to do that. For example, you can have different per-author CSS 
rules, or in your templates, you can use get_template_part() to pull in 
a different chunk of HTML for different authors. Heck, you could store 
templates in the database and make them editable in the back-end if you 
have the time to spend on it. The post formats implementation is pretty 
simple, really -- just a custom taxonomy and a few supporting functions, 
so as mentioned before, it wouldn't be hard to roll your own.

The post formats feature gives you 9 additional formats to choose from 
(in addition to the default no-status posts). If you just don't like the 
set of 'aside', 'chat', 'status', 'quote', etc. you could probably give 
the appearance of renaming them in the editor by hooking into the 
translations?


-- 
Dougal Campbell <dougal at gunters.org>
http://dougal.gunters.org/
http://twitter.com/dougal
http://twitual.com/