WordPress Post Formats Guide

WordPress Post Formats is one of the most useful feature of the platform, which is available to all. Post formats expand opportunities for rapid deployment of posts in various styles. If your WordPress theme supports post formats, you can use prepared templates for various types of posts – from the gallery to chat. You can also customize the display of different post formats for the individual design of your site and the needs of its target audience.

The use of post formats provides the possibility to optimize the work with WordPress admin panel and allows you to make your website more enjoyable and easier to read by visitors. Post formats are relevant for those who wish to create a variety of content, not just the standard text posts with images. If you are still using only one post format, you should think about the variety of content on your website or blog. Users of your site will also appreciate more frequent updates of content, even if they are not as bulky as a standard text posts.

In this article, we will analyze in detail all kinds of WordPress post formats, as well as how to use them for different purposes. Here you will also find a top of the most interesting WordPress themes, which supports post formats and customization.

Post Formats vs Post Types

Let us first clarify the important distinction between the two terms: Post Formats and Post Types. Post Formats are different styles of displaying entries in your WordPress blog. Post Types indicate a certain type of page on your WordPress site, for example: portfolio page, gallery with images or video, testimonials, etc.

In addition, Post Formats and Post Types differ in the way of editing in the WordPress admin panel. The choice of post formats is only available when creating or editing a blog post. Creating and editing of post types are available in the left sidebar of your WordPress admin dashboard.

Thus, Post Formats and Post Types are fundamentally different elements of your project, although the similarity of their names may mislead beginners in the field of WordPress administration.

Manual Setup of the WordPress Post Formats

If you create your own WordPress theme or decide to significantly upgrade any ready-made theme, we provide you with the basic tip for manually adding features of post formats on your site. To start, you need to check for function.php in theme directory file. If this file does not exist, you should create it. The following code must be added to a new or an existing file:

function add_post_formats() {
add_theme_support( 'post-formats', array(
'gallery',
'quote',
'video',
'aside',
'image',
'link',
'status',
'audio',
'chat'
) );
}
add_action( 'after_setup_theme', 'wpexplorer_add_post_formats' );


Do not forget to download an updated function.php file on your site through the FTP-client.

The use of ready-made WordPress themes with the support of post formats is much more simple solution. For more information on these themes see the following information in this post.

Standard Post Format

Standard post format is used by default, when you create any content in the WordPress admin panel. If you have ever created a WordPress post, you probably already used a standard format. The universality of this format brings its advantages and disadvantages at the same time. On the one hand, there is everything that you need, and no need to attend other admin panel pages to start and finish a self-contained post. On the other hand, your created content will not be stylistically different from any other that you had made earlier.

We recommend that you also pay attention to the additional tips to optimize your WordPress posts, which we have collected for you in a separate article.

Image Post Format

Visual content is twice as effective than text. And the easiest way to create visual content is to share the image with your website visitors. For maximum effect, the image should be thematic and evoke certain emotions in users. Read our article about attracting the attention of users through visual content to find out more about this form of content.

Image post format can be used in any cases where you want to apply a strategy to attract attention through the visual content. There is no large text and other elements that distract users and bores them. But do not forget about the brief and capacious caption to report the most important messages through images.

Video Post Format

Video is the best marketing tool in today’s conditions. Researches show almost universally improved behavioral indicators of the users on the sites that have video content. The use of video is required, if you want a 100% increase in the involvement of visitors and to convey to them a certain idea or sell a specific product.

Video post format makes it easy to add entries from YouTube, Vimeo and other popular services to your WordPress website or blog. Using this post format, you can add video in a few seconds. And it will be automatically optimized for other design elements of your website and begin to immediately gain dividends in the form of interested visitors.

Audio Post Format

Podcasts and audio books have no less popularity than video content. There are many situations where we can not afford to watch the video, but we are ready to enjoy your favorite audio book or a fresh interesting podcast on the topic of interest to us. Why deny this pleasures for visitors to your site? Give them a great collection of the best audio books and podcasts, create a category to accommodate the latest audio broadcasts on topics concerned by your internet project.

Audio post format loads the pages of your site much smaller than video content. For this reason, it may become more popular among mobile users who visit your website or blog. Optimizing the audio recordings on the pages of your site is extremely simple with a special audio post format by WordPress.

Gallery

Gallery is an advanced format for image and video content. Do not to be confused anf divide the terms of gallery post format and WordPress media library of your project. Media library contains all images and videos you have ever downloaded to your project. But visitors do not have direct access to this library. With the gallery post format you can create collections of pictures, photos or videos in just a few clicks.

Gallery will be interesting to your readers as much as a single image or video. On the contrary, with the help of interesting selections, you only increase the chance of attracting the attention and hold it for a long period of time.

Quote Post Format

Quote post format is the most simple and effective way to share interesting thoughts with your readers. This can be not only a statement of a famous person on an interesting subject or a good aphorism. Your own thoughts can also be an excellent content for the quote post format. Feel free to share your thoughts with others, and they will appreciate your openness!

Quote post format has eye-catching style that allows you to immediately visually distinguish a quote from the plain text content. Actually quotes are much more popular and interesting content for the target than standard text posts with a lot of words. Brevity allows this type of content to be beneficial and to stand out against the background of other kinds of post formats.

Aside

Aside is a special post format and a compromise between standard and quote post formats. Compromise is manifested not only in the amount of words in the aside post, but also in its content. Aside is considerably smaller than the standard post, but more solid. The content of aside is capacious. It is a complete thought or comment to the existing content. Unlike quotes, aside does not hint at a hidden meaning, but reveals it completely.

Aside can be an excellent tool to encourage your readers to become active commentators for the content that you create. If you occasionally bring the best comments in the form of aside posts, their authors will be pleased to be aware of their contribution to the development of a web project. In addition, this blog format will be a great addition to the standard ones and diversifies the supply of content on your WordPress website or blog.

Chat Post Format

Chat post format involves quoting a specific talk for disclosure of certain ideas or just for fun. At first glance this may seem of a little value, but in fact there are some cases where its use is fully justified in style.

One of such cases is to communicate with your readers or customers. In this case, the chat is used in the form of testimonials about your product, service, or about the project in general. The use of the chat post format in this case confirms the open policy towards users.

Link Post Format

There is nothing easier and more useful than to share links to interesting resources with your readers. Never be afraid to lose members because of the external links on your site. In fact, you will only get more respect from visitors of your site, if you regularly share the useful links with them.

WordPress link post format allows you to create micro post with useful links and a convenient design in a matter of seconds. Take advantage of ready-made templates from link post format for optimal organization of micro blogging.

Status Post Format

Status sharing has come to us from social networks. This is a simple tool for the expression of thoughts or intensive emotional states. Status posts conquered the majority of internet users because of its brevity. And now the status posts play an important role in the content of any personal blog on WordPress platform.

Use status post format to share your impressions on the new movie, a book or a concert, as well as for any other short news. Today it is difficult to find someone who is not registered in the social networks and do not know how to work with statuses. Use the habits of your customers and create the atmosphere of a small social network for them within your WordPress website or blog.

WordPress Themes with Post Formats

And now it is time to get acquainted with the most interesting and useful WordPress themes, which support the post formats. We have got 5 themes in our top, but surely there are much more for your choice.

Hueman WordPress Theme

Hueman WordPress Theme is designed for personal blogs and online magazines. It is also useful for business websites as a corporate blog or portfolio project. The most important advantage of this theme that it is free for use. That means you can see all the features of the WordPress post formats also for free. It would be very helpful, if you want to estimate the need of post formats for your site in common.

Hueman is mobile responsive and SEO optimized theme, that meets all the important requirements of a modern internet project. It focuses on the optimal design for visual and text content, which is are the vital features of any personal blog, online magazine or corporate site.

We recommend this theme as the starting platform for any novice WordPress administrators. Here you can see and feel all the advantages of the post formats and maybe use them in some further projects. Test and gain experience in WordPress administration for free with Hueman!

Total WordPress Theme

Total is a truly multipurpose WordPress Theme, that can be an ideal match for nearly any project in the web. The main goal of the Total`s creators is to provide WordPress administrators with an all-in-one solution in the theme directory. Highly customizable design of this theme makes this goal achievable.

Total comes with a set of useful plugins, such as Visual Composer, Slider Revolution, Templatera and others. This approach can save you a great amount of money, even though the theme is not free, as the previous one. With this theme you can get experience not only with post formatting, but also with some more advanced WordPress features.

Total also has an easy integration with WooCommerce and the intuitive page builder with visual editor. So you do not need any knowledge in web development or design to build your perfect site or blog with Total theme.

Matala WordPress Theme

Matala is another free for use WordPress Theme in our rating. This theme is all about amazing colorful design. It would be very in-style for personal blogs and online magazines on any entertaining theme, for example travel, cinema, fashion, gardening or other hobbies.

Matala comes with 6 pre-installed post formats. If you want to expand the amount of post formats to their maximum, you can use the advice we gave at the beginning of this article (the one with function.php editing). Because of free use this theme is also very friendly to novice WordPress administrators that want to estimate the features of post formatting and other WordPress features.

Socialize WordPress Theme

Socialize WordPress Theme is a good background to create a strong social community by means of a WordPress site or blog. This theme uses the essential BuddyPress plugin, that allows you to create custom user profiles, activity streams, user groups, private messaging functional and other important features of any active community.

And, of course, Socialize has the opportunity to use various post formats. This is especially relevant while you are trying to create an interesting and comfortable platform for your users` communication. Images, links, quotes and asides post formats will come in handy for this type of web project.

Gridlocked WordPress Theme

Gridlocked WordPress Theme is designed for creative people and their amazing web projects. This theme is focused on a grid-building sites and blogs, which often are personal blogs or online magazines. Gridlocked is also very good for creating your outstanding portfolio. The variety of customizable elements and prepared templates will give you a fine choice for a wide range of projects.

Gridlocked uses all WordPress post formats, because you just can not build a perfect personal blog without most of them. And there are a lot of options to customize each of the existing formats for the individual needs of your projects and the preferences of its readers.

Final Words

Do not hesitate to use various WordPress post formats. We hope, that this article will prove the importance and relevance of this WordPress feature to all novice and advanced administrators. Experiment and gain more experience to make your projects better every day!

We wish you to never stop opening the new opportunities of the WordPress platform and we will try to help you with the achievement of this interesting goal!