While attending IndieWebCamp in Brighton a few weeks ago, a bunch of us were talking about blogging. What is post? What should it contain? What's optional?
Someone (probably Jeremy Keith said:
A blog post doesn't need a title.
In a literal sense, he was wrong. The HTML specification makes it clear that the <title> element is mandatory. All documents have title.
But, in a practical sense, he was right. This blog post has an empty <h1> element - the document might be semantically invalid, it might reduce accessibility, but the post is still available.
A blog post can be a plain text document uploaded to a server. It can be an image hosted on a social network. It can be a voice note shared with your friends.
Title, dates, comments, links, and text are all optional.
No one is policing this.
Go create something which doesn't fit properly with the rest of the world.
11 thoughts on “”
Mike
I’m going to write short blog posts on the leaves of trees, to be published to passers by in Autumn.
@Edent i don't feel there's any conflict present here, there are two fully separate concepts present - it's merely that the HTML spec established that mandatory element without the intent of disambiguation from any other context in which the word title might be used.
| Reply to original comment on hachyderm.io
@Edent As webpages were always supposed to be “documents”, I’d say they don’t need a title either.
| Reply to original comment on mstdn.social
@neil @Edent I'm quite pleased to see Nextcloud News handled it OK.
Interestingly, though, it didn't pop a notification on my phone so I'm guessing it didn't handle it perfectly.
Just need to wait and see now whether something new still notifies
| Reply to original comment on mastodon.bentasker.co.uk
Dragon Cotterill
Technically true.
But... it's hard to click a link from a RSS reader when there is no actual title. I only managed to navigate to this by going to the main home page and then clicking here. Maybe I should detect a blank title and fill it with "This muppet didn't give me a title, so I created my own."
😉
@Edent "create something which doesn't fit properly with the rest of the world" - I already feel I AM something that doesn't fit properly with the rest of the world 😂
| Reply to original comment on mast.solarisfire.com
I’ve realized this too.
For the h1/title issue, I just use the post’s date like this https://im.farai.xyz/micro/usbc-fan/
I hope to make it visually hidden at some point, but titleless posts are a lot of fun.
Maybe a blog post doesn't need a non-title. Like... how much can I fit into a title element before browsers won't even show it all in a tooltip?
But ignoring my silly thoughts: Jeremy-or-whoever is still right. A blog post does not have to be a HTML page. A blog post can be an element in an RSS feed, like theunderground.blog. A blog post can be a text file referenced from an archive page. Who are you to say that a blog post has to be written in HTML? 🙂
@Edent my blogposts have no titles frequently. It seems my WordPress install fills a missing title with the first bunch of words from the post. I am not sure which part of my WP does that though. WP core? A plugin I happen to use?
| Reply to original comment on m.tzyl.eu
Does a blog post need a title? Does a blog have to be delivered in HTML? In launching textplain.blog, I'd like to argue that the answer is... no!
| Reply to original comment on danq.me
Ian Turton
I'm pleased to say that my homebrewed rss reader handled it fine, just dropped the link in.
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