Learn how to make gallery, video, audio, and other post types pop on your blog page with post formats.
Table of Contents
In this guide
Post formats allows you to add variety to the page that lists your blog entries.
For example, in the Baskerville 2 theme, your blog page would look like this with different post formats:
Not all themes support post formats; to see if yours does, check this list.
If you are using a theme that supports post formats, you can apply the format through the Post editor.
- Go to My Site(s) → Posts
- Edit a post, or click Add New to create a new post.
- Under Post Settings on the right, open the Status & Visibility menu.
- Select an option from the drop down in Post Format.
- Either Publish or Update your post to see the new Post Format applied.
Some themes will offer all nine formats, and others have fewer. Pick a format, add content to the post the way you normally so, and publish! Depending on your theme, you’ll see some stylistic differences between this post and your posts with the default Standard format.
If you start a new post containing a gallery, video, audio track, or quote, your theme may automatically apply the related post format. You can always choose “Standard” if you’d prefer the default layout.
The appearance of post formats varies based on your theme. Here’s how an Image post appears in a number of themes (click to enlarge):
There’s quite a bit of variety in the way themes employ post formats. If you want to preview how a certain theme will handle formats before switching to it, you can check out the theme’s Live Demo from the Theme Showcase.
You can put any kind of content you’d normally publish in a post in any of the post formats, but they were designed with particular kinds of content in mind:
- Standard is the default post format, your everyday blog post. You can also add video, images, galleries, and whatever else you would like to a regular Text post.
- Photo is intended for single image posts — a quick snap of lunch or your cat.
- Video is for, well, videos.
- Quote highlights your blockquote text in a bolder way than standard posts typically do.
- Link is for those days when you just want to share a link to a fantastic article you read.
- Aside for brief snippets of text that aren’t quite whole blog posts, such as quick thoughts and anecdotes.
- Gallery for (you guessed it) galleries.
- Status for a quick update about what you are doing right now.
- Audio for your favorite tunes or podcasts.
- Chat to highlight memorable conversations you have with friends, both on- and offline.
What if you love the look of your theme’s Video post format, but you want to use it to highlight a gallery? Go for it! There are no rules here, only guidelines.
If you don’t see the Post Format module, then you are likely using a theme that does not use post formats.
Several of the themes at WordPress.com allow blog authors to decide what format each of their posts should be displayed as. The use of this option is completely free, and you do not need to purchase the Custom CSS Upgrade in order to change post formats.
View all themes that support post formats or visit the showcase and click Feature → Post Formats.
Want more inspiration and advice for how to use post formats? Check out these articles:
- “Add Variety with Post Formats” at The Daily Post
- “Enhance Your Site with Post Formats” at The WordPress.com Blog
