As a time-tested content management system, WordPress enjoys a rich history and a robust community. On the other hand, Mastodon is a ‘star product,’ serving as an open-source, decentralized social media service.
It would certainly be more convenient if you could complete the writing to publishing process all in one place on WordPress. 💡
However, for most people, Mastodon is a product that parallels Twitter and Sina Weibo, mainly featuring titleless short-form content. Meanwhile, in traditional understanding, WordPress is a platform for hosting long-form text, such as blog posts. Long-form content even becomes a source of pride for many blog creators who have persisted until now.
So, for those users who mind, it would be a pain point to separate short-form content from long-form content on WordPress. By ‘separation’, from my perspective, this should at least include separating the two in the display of the post list (archive page).
If you want to separate them, one idea is to create a new post type specifically for short content (or long content, as you decide). There are already free plugins for creating new post types available in the WordPress plugin store:
Both are pretty good, and having either one will do the job. Of course, if you want to use a plugin specialized for short-form content, consider using:
This plugin adds a custom post type ‘Notes’ for publishing short-form content, similar to what you would see on Twitter, Instagram, and other social networks.
This post type doesn’t support traditional titles. Titles are auto-generated from the Notes content and used as the document titles of the Notes. Search engines can read and display these in browser tabs.
It uses basic content blocks, like paragraph, image, gallery, video, embeds. The developers believe using relatively simple blocks can help keep the Notes content ‘simple.’
In terms of web mentions, this post type includes support for the Webmention plugin. URLs within Notes content will be processed as potential web mentions.
The panel in the block editor allows you to add replies to URLs and names. Once entered, they’re used to provide markup for semantic web mentions of replies. In other words, you can reply to content in the manner recommended by IndieWeb, as you would on Mastodon or Twitter.
In the 1.5.0 version update, the plugin has added integration with the Share on Mastodon plugin:
As the name suggests, the Share on Mastodon plugin is used to synchronize content published on WordPress with Mastodon.
Shortnotes’ support for Share on Mastodon includes:
- Converting quote blocks into text representations of quotes and citations;
- Transforming embed blocks into original URLs;
- Improving the transformation of paragraph blocks;
- Improving the extraction of href attributes from markup anchors (Note: an anchor element can create links to other web pages, files, email addresses, locations in the same page, or any other URL through its href attribute);
- Correctly replying to the Mastodon post corresponding to the previous note.
I believe that the process of posting Mastodon content on WordPress can be more enjoyable with these two plugins.
On the Other Hand
Of course, there are exceptions. Some people do not differentiate post types on WordPress and directly post titleless short content.
Luckily, WordPress is flexible enough that everyone can use it in their preferred way.