Reply to Chris Aldrich re Microformats

Replied to http://stream.boffosocko.com/2016/david-this-is-some-excellent-code-for-adding-some-microformats (Chris Aldrich)

David, This is some excellent code for adding some microformats to @WordPress. Thanks @dshanske!

For those with less technical expertise, could I pose a few questions which you may or may not cover in part 2?

If I recall, there’s microformats version 1 and a more recent, updated microformats2. Most of what you’re adding here is the mf2 spec and not backwards compatible mf1 mark up, right?

When you say that a theme shouldn’t “style” hfeed or hentry, you mean that the CSS shouldn’t include these classes as they’re used only for semantic mark up and not meant to be used for CSS at all?

If hfeed is already added into a theme, do you recommend removing it from the theme code directly with search and replace (particularly if it wasn’t added in the correct place) and then adding it with the snippet you provided, or is it best to leave it in the theme and remove it from the code? If we remove it from the code you provided, which line(s) should we omit? What happens if it is duplicated (ie, what will the output look like, or what happens to parsers that read the code)?

What exactly are the post, body and comment class functions? What do they look like and where would one find them in a particular theme?

How is the code you’ve provided different from what the WordPress plugin uf2 does? Is it more or less extensive?

In the end, this is also just a stop-gap measure to quickly add a small, but high level subset of microformats to current themes that don’t support it? Ideally we would hope more modern themes will add a more full version of microformats natively?

Hfeed and hentry are classic microformats, and remain in this implementation. In most themes, hfeed is attached to a main div and should be removed in favor of the implementation provided. The advantage is that it can be modified.
CSS shouldn’t include microformats classes.
If you duplicate the same classes attached to different elements, it can mess up parsing.
Some of this is similar to the code in wordpress-uf2. wordpress-uf2 hasn’t been updated in a while and also uses ActivityStream as Microformats Vocabulary…h-as-page, h-as-article, which are not commonly used. This doesn’t include that. So, simpler, but taking advantage of changes in WordPress and Microformats.
This isn’t really a stopgap measure. This is how any theme would update its structure.
The post_class, comment_class, and body_class are functions that output standard classes for the body, post, and comment enclosures. They are not required, but have been around since WordPress 2.8, and are usually present in themes. It is a more dynamic way to add structure.

For most people, this is a simple way to add basic microformats structure that allows your site to be parsed by a microformats 2 parser. The second part will be covering some more complicated issues.

David Shanske

My day job is in training for an airline. I also develop Indieweb WordPress plugins so that others can take control of their online identity.

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