Post formats

Post formats are a legacy feature that changed how posts appeared on your blog page. Post formats are no longer part of most WordPress themes, but still exist in some classic themes.

Post formats gave bloggers a way to display different types of content—such as images, videos, quotes, and links—with unique visual styling. For example, a “Quote” post might appear larger and styled differently than a “Standard” blog post.

For example, in the Baskerville 2 theme, your blog page would look like this with different post formats:

If you are using a theme that supports post formats, you can apply the format with these steps:

1. Visit your site’s dashboard.
2. Navigate to Posts.
3. Edit a post, or click “Add New” to create a new post.
4. Under Post Settings on the right, open the Status & Visibility menu.
5. Select an option from the list under Format.
6. Either Publish or Save your post to see the new Post Format applied.

If you don’t see a Post Format option, your theme does not support post formats.

Some themes will offer all nine formats, and others have fewer. Pick a format, add content to the post the way you normally do, 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.

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 is 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 your theme supports post formats, you can set a default format for new posts:

1. Go to your site’s dashboard.
2. Navigate to Settings → Writing.
3. Under Default post format, select your preferred format from the dropdown.
4. Click “Save settings“.

For most users, the WordPress editor provides better options for creating visually distinct content. Consider using these blocks instead of post formats:

• Image: Image block
• Gallery: Gallery block
• Video: Video block
• Audio: Audio block
• Quote: Quote block

These blocks give you more control over the appearance and placement of your content, and work with any theme.