Getting h-entry Right

I am hoping to have will have my microformats course templates and syllabus ready to demo for the #IndieWeb Summit. The CCS Grid will need further massaging but I want my html and microformats proper. Accessories mean nothing if the underlying outfit doesn’t pop.

In my last microformats post I described how I finally developed the mental model of the h-card. I have correctly added that to both my syllabus and my course. I did not have the same luck with h-entry.

I made so many early mistakes. I am afraid to style anything that also has a microformats class so I usually add new sections and divs. I am not sure if this is best practice. I put h-entries all over my syllabus thinking of a schedule. I have to reduce it to one.

I really misunderstood when to use the u-photo and u-url links. I fact I made a fork of Alan Levine’s Flickr CC attbribution tool for this project I need to go back and change. Kevin Marks was telling me about the license properties…So many properties

That was my problem. I fundamentally misunderstood how h-entry works.

What is h-Entry?

First the h-entry is for episodic posts and pages like a website. Just like the h-card the h-entry is a root class name. This means the h-entry tells other websites and tools to expects a page with h-entry mark up called properties. These properties can include stuff in classes like when something was published (dt-published), the name of the entry (p-name) and the author (p-author). The h-entry can include an embedded h-card any many other properties. You can more on the wiki

At a minimum you should include: name, url, published, content and author. Best practice suggests you also include the content and author as an embedded h-card.

What did do I Wrong?

First my syllabus did not need an h-entry. The h-entry is for episodic events. If there was interest in an #IndieWeb root for learning resources beyond n=1 (me) I do hope one day to have a root and new properties. Until then a very basic h-entry for the entire page is all I need.

If anything I might include h-calendar in the scheduling of events but I have learned microformats parsers and readers do not handle single page websites with multiple root classes well.

I also need to focus on html first before worrying about any microformats mark up. I keep finding little places where I need to revise silly things like missing headings for different sections.

In my last post on the h-card I described how these are like boxes and parsers are able to hold them upside down and shake them until the properties fall out in the right order. All I need to do is put just few properties in this h-entry box.

h-Entry, WordPress, and Syndicaton

As part of my microformats crash course I have also come to learn how a WordPress theme renders the h-entry in a post and the syndication tool you choose to use greatly affects how a post will display on different third party sites. So I use 2016-Indieweb and Bridgy to syndicate to Twitter. How each post is marked up can change what you see on Twitter.

We are currently going through and testing how a variety of syndication tools render WordPress pages for each of the four commonly used #IndieWeb themes. This is a great way for someone to begin making contributions to the #IndieWeb community without diving deep into code. If you are looking to get involved in helping to rebuild a better web please reach out.