I’m still experimenting with my whole system, and I just tried a new thing with the SNAP plugin. It adds a new function under the “New” menu called “New Post to Social Networks.” If you use it, it will create a tweet/status and send it directly to all the selected networks. It won’t create a blog post, so that defeats the POSSE goals and prevents it from having a place for the activity to gather.
Still, it is an interesting option to have available. It means you can use your blog as an all purpose interface for all of your connected networks. If there is an ephemeral thing you want to push out to multiple places simultaneously and not keep a blog record of it, you can do it that way.
This is a an impressive system you’ve cobbled together. I’ve been thinking much along the same lines recently. As for the issue of posting to Social Networks without a corresponding blog post, is it possible to have a social post category that does not display by default on the blog? For example, some ephemeral item, I.e. “We just arrived at XYZ” makes sense on some of the Social Networks but seems a bit out of place on your main Blog page. It can be linked back to and commented on but does not display by default because of the category assignment.
Years ago I used an Asides category for short bits of info that were displayed between posts. When all the custom coding and formatting that made that work fell by the wayside over the years I was left with just the posts. I just added some code to prevent it from displaying on the page, though it still gets found via Google etc. Here’s an example: early aside.
Of course it depends on what you are after. Excited to see where this goes.
Michael, great to have you interacting! I saw your blog and that just a week or so ago you were trying to resurrect and reclaim it.
There are WordPress plugins that will do exactly what you say. It can be done with very minor hacks to the code, but I don’t feel like reapplying them every time I do an upgrade. I might find a plugin I like and create a category like that. For now while I feel my way around, I’ll just put everything on the blog. With the messiness of silly test posts, it’s going to be a bit messy for a while.
My main thing is that I was expecting the SNAP post thing to leave something behind on my blog. It appears that it engages all the push mechanisms but skips the saving to the blog. I can imagine the use case for that, but it isn’t one that concerns me now. So eventually I probably will create a “Tweet” category or something like that for the ephemera I just don’t care to have on my front page.