September 7th, 2006

Using Microformats in Your Blog Software

If your blogging life still has room for more structure, you might want to take a look at one of the more hidden trends going on today: Microformats. For those who wish to postpone reading the dedicated wiki on the subject, microformats are, “…a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards.” Basically, they are formats that provide structure to many of the existing types of content publishers (such as bloggers) produce.

For example, there’s a microformat for reviews called hReview and a microformat for events called hCalendar. However, the benefits of using microformats – while they do exist (e.g. free and automatic aggregation of your content) – have yet to be tangible enough for mainstream adoption.

Nevertheless, you might still want to future-proof your blog (assuming microformats do gain widespread acceptance) – especially if it’s a brand new one. Two main approaches are available for most blog software. One: Manual pasting of relevant microformat code created via microformat creators such as hReview Creator. Two: Use of specialised plugins that allow you to create microformat-ted content right from your blog software’s admin panel.

I’ll be going into more detail on these two approaches for individual blog software (e.g. WordPress, Movable Type, etc.) in future posts. So, keep a lookout below for a list of those posts (which will be updated as new posts are written).

Here’s what’s been written in this series so far:

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Posted by ZMAng

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Filed under Blog Software, Guides, Traffic

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