This idea wouldn’t alter anything other than the way you view, access, and edit posts with a specific Post Format. The posts could still show up in the blog like they otherwise would. Via theme options, you could provide options to make this not so.

For example, If a theme is classified as a Portfolio theme, chances are the user is using that theme to display their work. Generally speaking, this often consists of a some content and a gallery of images showing off their work. The user would add a portfolio item under the Gallery Menu (or possible a filtered name, like Portfolio). Ideally, from there a link to “Add New” would be provided. When clicked, things would function as if they were creating a normal post. The difference being it seems to make more sense to the user as to what they are doing. Little will they know in the background, what is really happening, is they are creating a post that has a Gallery Post Format.

If the user were to want a blog, they would just use a Standard Post format and create a blog post by going to Post. Afterall, this is what WordPress intended this for in the first place. Like Alex mentioned, it might be a good idea to remove the “Gallery” item form the “Post Formats” list on a regular post page. At the same time, it may be good to just leave it, so the user can easily switch the post to a different format. This would allow the users to create a post, no matter the post format, and easily assign it to a different post format if need be. In this case, that post would show up under the corresponding Format Menu item if it were changed.

The post formats would have a permalink. Like I mentioned previously, this wouldn’t alter anything other than how you view and edit a specific post format. It should be noted, as mentioned in the post, not all post formats need to be a Top Level menu item. They should have a simple option in the themes support for theme as to weather they should show as a menu item on not.

As for the plugin idea. That is a viable option, but ultimately I still don’t see why I should create a CPT for Videos, when a post format for this already exists and is all I need. It seems like I’m recreating a wheel for functionality that is theme specific. After all, each theme handles post formats differently in terms of how they are used and displayed. What’s the difference of making them have the ability of a Top Level Menu Item?

Another pitfall of the plugin idea is, Yes, their content still exists but is it viewable? No. Not unless they make modifications to the theme to display them. Otherwise, they need to recreate these Custom Posts as regular posts. In a video situation, they probably want to set the post type to Video, because after all, that is what the post is about. Wouldn’t it make more sense to eliminate the CPT all together and just set a post format from the start and always have access to their content?

In any case, I’ll send you an email and we can continue the discussion. I would love to make a plugin to test this theory. I think I could make it useful and believe users would find it useful as well. I’ve used many themes over the years, and I think I would find this functionality useful as a user… not to mention know that if I switch themes my content will still be there. On top of that, if the theme supports Post Formats, my content is already set to a format it should be and not as a custom post type.

Personally, I haven’t found the need to use PFs in any client work. If I can ever find the time and quit over-thinking things, though, I have been working on a theme for more widespread use that would utilize them in a microblogging context.

A few questions I have regarding content specific themes, though:

Do they not have a blog? If so, would you exclude particular post formats that were being used elsewhere from the blog? And if the user wanted to add that particular type of post to the blog, would they have to use the Standard format instead?

Do these post formats have a permalink? If so, would it be strange if it used one of the date-based permalinks?

How are you including the posts under a separate menu item (Videos)?

For me, I’d say CPTs make much more sense for any content that isn’t being included in the blog and locking a user to a particular theme is the only (hugely) glaring draw-back. If I were really wanting to make a content-specific theme, I’d probably develop and release a plugin for free that provided some standardized functionality that could be re-used in similar themes and had sensible fallbacks in the event a user switched to a theme that didn’t support the functionality.

You’ve got me intrigued, though. If you’d like to keep discussing any specifics, feel free to shoot me an email and maybe we can hash out some code or a plugin.

I would also agree that the post formats are there with a Tumblr like experience in mind. On that note, Tumblr is far limited to what it does and it does not consider itself to be a CMS, as WordPress does. However you look at it, it seems like limiting post formats to that alone really leaves more to be desired. After all, what use are post formats anyway? How do you use them? I use them generally the same way I may use a CPT on it’s most basic level.

More or less, I am trying to figure out the best way to create a theme that provides more than a blog/tubmlr functinality. More often than not, I don’t want to create a theme that is a blog, has blog formatting, looks or functions like Tumblr. I want to create a theme that does a job and does it well. This includes making things easier for users to setup.

Many themes are not geared towards Tumblr like functionality or intended to be used in that manner. Their are themes that are designed for that, thus they are given a category of a Tumblr styled theme. For example, a portfolio theme is more than likely going to have posts which have images in a Gallery. In these cases a user needs to create a post, and give it a Gallery post format. These posts are then mixed in with the rest of the posts, assuming the others are for the blog functionality. Now, to me, if I create a Portfolio centric WordPress theme, from a users standpoint, it makes more sense to see a Gallery menu item (maybe be able to filter that title as mentioned towards the end of the post). From there I can create my portfolio posts, add images, content, etc. If I want to post to the blog, then I would create a standard post. Those Blog posts would be easily viewable under Posts, and the Gallery (portfolio) posts will be easily viewable under their respective menu. The same goes along the lines of a Photography based themes…

I like post formats and they do everything I need the way they are. I don’t need to setup Custom Post Types because post formats do what I need. However theme developers are and have been doing that for videos themes, photography themes, audio themes etc. The question is, “Why did they feel the need to create a custom post type for Video”? Probably along the same reasons I am pointing out here. What I would like is to allow for the post formats to be more obvious to the user in themes that are content specific. Example themes categories you have heard of and are classified are Video themes, Audio Themes, Portfolio Themes, Photography themes… Think about from a new user’s experience between the suggestions here compared to the default functionality.

What makes more sense to you?

I can certainly see how accessing all Post Formats of a particular type could be a usability improvement, though, and that would be something that a plugin could easily implement. Like Alex, I’d prefer to see them as submenu items under the Post menu, or as filters in the edit panel.

As far as Custom Post Types go, they’re really unrelated (and unfortunately named) and have more potential than Post Formats. Data portability issues do come into play when theming for the masses, but I if a client is paying me to design or develop a custom solution, I don’t worry too much about them wanting to switch themes.

If you are worried about data portability for client work, I would recommend creating a simple plugin to register their CPTs and include any other functionality that you’d normally put in functions.php. Alternatively, there are a couple of plugins that will let you create CPTs from the admin panel itself.

As an aside, Post Formats shouldn’t be called “Custom Post Formats” and you can think of CPTs as Custom “Content” Types instead, and that should help differentiate them. Personally, I’d say if the content isn’t being displayed within the stream of a blog along with other posts, then I’d usually make it a CPT.

The downside to this method would be that it is modifying the default WordPress functionality. Because of this, I would probably only do it in situations where I was creating a site for a single client. When developing a theme for release to the masses, I would probably use the sub-menu method.

I appreciate a good discussion, so thanks for thinking this through out loud (well… in writing). Also, I mentioned the plugin as an example of making Post Formats more user friendly as a whole, not really in response to the menu issue.

As far as the Post Formats Admin UI plugin, it does look interesting and on the right track.

Initially my a gripe I had with that plugin, is the same gripe that is behind CPT’s… if the plugin is disabled, than the important content goes away (http://alexking.org/blog/2011/11/02/wordpress-post-format-fallbacks). Another plugin has been created to auto-add custom fields from post formats to post content when post formats are not enabled. If I understand this right, this is great but requires one of two plugins to be activated. Hoops. Jumping. Now if this were to be adopted into core, this is a different story.

In the end, a marriage behind that plugin and the thoughts posted here might be great. That plugin does one thing well, but does not really address the same issue here. That plugin addresses the issue of how the post format content is added. My issue is on the ease of how a user goes about adding a new post format and eventually finding and editing that content. A filter may be the quickest fix to this, but I really doesn’t make things as user friendly as they could be. I’ll create an example scenario:

I’m creating a website for a band. That band has audio, video, and images. In my eyes, it makes more sense to add a Video under a “Video” menu rather than adding a “Post” and marking it as a “Video” post format. I would also prefer as a band member to simply click on the “Video” menu and see a list of video posts I’ve created. No hoops. No jumping. No filtering. No post format marking. It just does. The same goes for Audio. If I was a band member setting up my audio. It would make more sense to click on the “Audio” menu item. In my mind, I feel like I’m adding a new audio item, not creating a new post and marking it as audio. I don’t think as a band member I would get confused by the fact that the Audio menu item is a subset of a post only because I wouldn’t understand the details, differences, or the underlying relationship between the two. I just want to create add an Audio item and have it displayed the way the theme should.

If nothing else, it’s a good discussion and allows me to play devils advocate on both sides of the story.

http://alexking.org/blog/2011/10/25/wordpress-post-formats-admin-ui

What do you think?

With that said, I would dare to say that the majority of Custom Post Types created are created with a post capability type, compared to pages capability type per se. The difference is in the functionality of the posts capability. Knowing this, because they are essentially posts, should they be placed as Posts sub-menu items?

In the end, I guess I’m suggesting that there really isn’t a big difference in Post Types compared to Post Formats in most cases in terms of it’s capability. So why a privilege to CPT’s to be at top level?

In the end, I really like the idea of CPF’s as sub-menu items and may be easier to implement