Post Types, Post Formats, Post Kinds

In my recent development of the Post Kinds plugin, I’ve felt the need to try to explain what exactly a Post Kind does. I needed a way to distinguish the custom taxonomy I’d created. So let’s define the competition for the terms…

• A Post Format is a piece of meta information that can be used by a theme to customize its presentation of a post. Confusingly, the slug for post formats is ‘type’.
• A Custom Post Type is a single item of what is generally called a post, although post is also a specific post type. It is more a custom content type.
• A Taxonomy is a grouping mechanism for some posts.
• A Post Kind is a taxonomy that allows posts to be classified according to the kind of post it is.

So, not so much of an invention as a necessity to distinguish from similar concepts

They have gone through some changes. But, at the moment, they are designed as a drop-in replacement for post formats. There are actually many good reasons why the WordPress developers decided a set of standardized formats would make sense…most notably the ability to change themes without losing your customization. Fewer and fewer people are using post formats, however.

Indieweb Post Kinds are designed the same way. The two can exist simultaneously, but you are better off disabling formats in favor of a single solution.

As more and more sites incorporate concepts like “Like’, ‘Favorite’, and so on, one’s own site should support these.  This allows for that.

The plugin supports sending webmentions via the WordPress Webmentions plugin, to send notices to other sites you might be ‘liking’, replying to a post on, etc…assuming the other site supports it. But more and more indieweb sites are doing so.

Download