The Truth about the Post Kinds Plugin

WordPress has the concept of post types, which are custom content types. The post type, which is the default type in WordPress, is a post of type post. Custom post types are also used to store attachments, menus, revisions, etc…all sorts of things that aren’t traditional posts.

Post Kinds as implemented in the Post Kinds Plugin are not a post type. They are actually a taxonomy…or a tag. This tag tells the system to use a particular template to render the post, and allows for auto-generation of things like feeds and archives. This is based on the Post Formats system built into WordPress.

This means that if you turn off the plugin, all the custom rendering is gone and you get a standard post with all the extra information missing.

However, in the Gutenberg age, attributes are stored in the content field, and parsed out into blocks. In theory, a microformats parser actually could be inserted to parse out the microformats as well into blocks instead of or in addition to their own html comment based markup.

But, this means that some of the data structures of Post Kinds are being rethought.

I mentioned previously I am adding a citation post type…as in, a WordPress custom post type. This means there will be a tab in the sidebar in the WordPress admin for creating just these links. If you want to share them in list form, post them as a reply, etc.

If the post post type reflects an h-entry, I am simply storing the nested type, h-cite(citation), separately. But from the user perspective, it should allow for improvements in the classic UI, a new implementation in the block editor, or a completely new UI that just handles some of the Indieweb types.

So, create a citation, tag it with the Indieweb post kind, and it will render appropriately….similar to how it is done now.