Wordpress Bullet Posts - a helpful "how-to"

If you like blogging but also find it a bit of a pain in the butt - like say exercising or (for me) shaving - adopting a new blogging style might be just the ticket. When I say "style," I'm not talking about a theme or layout (not really anyway). I'm talking about a rhythm. My biggest blogging hurdle is that most of the things I want to share aren't worth a title or a posting date - at least not for display. I come across a cool photo or a cool video on vimeo, I find a great mother's day gift idea, or I just feel the need to briefly blog about what Neil is eating at the moment (tortilla chips & peanut butter). Thinking of a clever title is a waist of time and the post is so short, the content gets lost in the details. Turns out people really enjoy those quick little bullet posts. Short, one or two sentence posts don't require any time or effort from the reader (who, by the way, hates to read - just in case you didn't know). They don't really require any time or effort from you either - which in many ways is what technology is all about. So that's why bullet posts. Now onto the how. Note: This is a tutorial for WordPress users. The principal can be applied to any blog, but this particular code won't help you if you're not using WordPress. In your active theme, go to the index.php file. Find your 'loop.' It's the section of code that looks something like this: <?php if (have_posts()) : ?> <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?> <div class="date"> <?php the_date('F jS, Y') ?></div> <div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>"> <h2 class="postmetadata"><a href="https://getlevelten.com/%3C?php_the_permalink%28%29_%3F%3E" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2> <div class="smallpost">Posted by <?php the_author() ?> at <?php the_time() ?></div> <div class="entry"> <?php the_content('Read the rest of this entry »'); ?> </div> <p class="categorypost">Category: <?php the_category(', ') ?></p> <p class="postmetadata"><a href="https://getlevelten.com/%3C?php_the_permalink%28%29_%3F%3E" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>">Permalink</a> | <?php edit_post_link('Edit','','|'); ?> <?php comments_popup_link('No Comments', '1 Comment', '% Comments'); ?></p> </div> <img src="https://getlevelten.com/%3Ca%20href%3D"http://www.leveltendesign.com/">http://www.leveltendesign.com/..." alt="divider" /> <?php } ?> <?php $first = false; ?> <?php endwhile; ?> Styling for bullet posts is easy. First, go to Manage>Categories and create a new category. You're going to assign this to every bullet post, so you may want to call it something like "bullet" or "short-post." Copy your new category's ID number and head back over to your index.php file. All you need to do is add an if/then statement to the start of your loop like this: <?php if (have_posts()) : ?> <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?> <?php if ( in_category('ID#') ) { ?> <div class="link"> <ul> <li><?php the_excerpt(); ?> (<?php comments_popup_link('comments?', '1 comment', '% comments'); ?>)</li> </ul> </div> <?php } else { ?> ... Then carry on with the rest of your loop. I'm simply calling an excerpt instead of a full post and wrapping it in a <div> with the class name "link" (which happens to be the name of my bullet category). Use CSS to style it however you like. It's important to still give your post a title when you're creating it. This is really just for archiving purposes. It won't display on your blog's front page, but it will still show up in thesingle-post page (assuming you don't style it otherwise). Possible Issues: I ran into this, you may too. I really wanted the "read more" or "comments" link to display inline with the <li>. Problem was, WP automatically wrapped <p> tags around the_excerpt. I found a handy plugin over at Circle Six that. Once activated, it will remove the wrapping <p> tags from any excerpt when you add [ excerpt ] [/ exceprt ] around your desired excepted text in your editor. Make sure your in code-editing mode though. It doesn't work in the WYSIWYG editor. If you'd like to see an example of this kind of rhythm in action, check out my personal blog and/or blankenship's blog.