Yesterday, Happy Prime owner and engineer Jeremy Felt released Shortnotes, a plugin for writing notes from the WordPress editor. The intention is for users to create short pieces of content, such as that found on Twitter, Instagram, and similar social networks. However, it does not come with a front-end posting interface, at least not in version 1.0.

The plugin works just like the post and page editor. It should be straightforward for most users.

While the Shortnotes plugin is relatively bare-bones for now, it serves as a foundation of something that could be more. Part of what makes social networks appealing is the ease of publishing quick content. Publishing notes through the plugin requires visiting the WordPress admin, clicking “Add New,” writing the content, publishing, and clicking a new link to view it on the front end. A quick-publishing interface either through a Dashboard widget or a front-end form would be a useful addition.

Note post type in the block editor.

Some new concepts that not all users may be familiar with are the “Reply to URL” and “Reply to name” fields. These are semantic fields for creating a note in reply to another post or person on the web. The plugin will automatically output this reply link on the front end.

The plugin integrates with the Webmention plugin. A Webmention is a standardized protocol for mentions and conversations across the web. The goal is a decentralized social “network” of sorts where everyone owns and controls their content. It is an alternative to what IndieWeb calls the “corporate” web in which large tech companies have control.

When entering a Reply to URL, Shortnotes will automatically send that URL through the Webmentions plugin system. It will also parse URLs in the post content as webmentions if they exist.

Users may also notice that the note title field is missing. This is intentional. The plugin automatically generates titles. They are needed for the