Some time ago I created a Zapier workflow to create posts from my Untappd drinking activity. The Zapier workflows create a post (article post kind) with a featured image, some facts about the ale and the brewery, with a small bit of commentary text. You can see an example at this entry for Claim Preclusion by Troon Brewing.
Ryan Barrett tracks his ale drinking via a single page which I think he manually updates. I don’t think he’s created individual post entries for the items on the list. My Zapier workflow updates a Google spreadsheet with data points for each of the ales I drink. Perhaps sometime in the future, I’ll find a way to use that information to create a beer post.
However, I have had one persistent issue with the Zapier workflow that I have not been able to resolve even while working with Zapier’s tech support. All the Zapier’s entries are created with an offset of -4 hours form EST. So lunchtime entries show up at 8 AM which makes it seems like I have a beer for breakfast.
After reading Chris Aldrich’s post about manually adding a new post kind to the Post Kinds plugin for WordPress, I wanted to create a post kind for beer check-ins.
I followed Chris’s suggestion and proceeded to edit the /includes/class-kind-taxonomy.php file. But I soon discovered that a post kind for a drink already existed. There was also one for eating. The show flag was set to false. Setting it to true enabled it in the Indieweb Post Kinds admin GUI. I edited some of my existing drinking posts, changed the post kind to drink, filled in the requisite fields and updated the posts.
I also manually changed the show flags for the eat, acquisition, recipe and exercise kinds from their default false to true. I plan on setting the post kinds some of my existing recipe entries from article to recipe.
The way things are displayed functional but there are several visual and data capture issues.
If I use the URL of the Untappd entry for the craft ale as the URL for the post, then when the Indieweb Post Kinds plugin retrieves the information for the Untappd entry, only summary is provided, e.g. Reusable Bags brewed by Troon Brewing as an IPA – Imperial / Double style beer, which has 4.4 out of 5, with 197 ratings and reviews on Untappd, for the ale and inserted into the summary text for the post. I would prefer that if the summary was of my rating. You can see examples for the entries for Hazy, Hot, & Humid by Flounder Brewing Co. and Reusable Bags by Troon Brewing.
My short commentary about the beer is not pulled from Untappd.
The brewery notes are not part of the information returned from Untappd. I would love to keep that information on my website.
If I use the URL of my Untappd checkin, the only information pulled back is the fact that I drank that ale, e.g. Khürt is drinking a Hunger Pangs by Troon Brewing at Brick Farm Tavern. The post entry for [Hunger Pangs by Troon Brewing](for https://islandinthenet.com/troon-brewings-hunger-pangs-2/) is as an example of that.
The icon for a drink is a coffee cup. To me that suggestion coffee. Not beer, wine, or even water. It seems odd to have that icon. I don’t know how to change it to something more generic. If I wanted to create a post kind specifically for drinking beer, I could do it but I wouldn’t know how to change or set the icons.
The syndication icon for Untappd is just a black circle. Apparently, there are no icons in whatever icon set is being used by the Post Kinds plugin. I don’t know how to change that either.
All of the other information for the post kind was entered manually. If I am out at a restaurant or bar, I will have to check-in via Untappd, wait for the Zapier workflow to create the post entry, copy the URL for the Untappd check-in, edit the WordPress post, change the post kind to drink, set the brewery name and URL manually, set the syndication link manually, and then update the post. Whew!
It would be awesome if I could figure out a way to populate all that information with a browser bookmarklet. Beer drinking for me is a social event. When I’m out in a restaurant or bar with friends taking a few minutes to use Untappd to check into a new craft ale is acceptable. It is not acceptable to spend 15 minutes fiddling with the screen on my iPhone to put all the pieces in place.
Despite all of that I created the post kind manually.
'beer' => array(
'singular_name' => __( ‘Beer’, 'indieweb-post-kinds' ), // Name for one instance of the kind
'name' => __( ‘Beers’, 'indieweb-post-kinds' ), // General name for the kind plural
'verb' => __( 'Drank', 'indieweb-post-kinds' ), // The string for the verb or action (liked this)
'property' => 'food', // microformats 2 property
'format' => 'standard', // Post Format that maps to this
'description' => __( 'Prost!', 'indieweb-post-kinds' ),
'description-url' => 'https://indieweb.org/food',
'title' => true, // Should this kind have an explicit title
'show' => true, // Show in Settings
),

See an example of it working with the post entry for Frightened Rabbit by Troon Brewing.
I found a beer mug icon on Font Awesome and placed it in the appropriate folders. However, I must be doing something wrong. No icon appeared in the response section of my entries or in Indie Post Kinds admin UI. What am I doing wrong?
Chris suggested creating a custom view but I honestly don’t understand if this is required or optional and why it’s needed. He lost me at:

Now you’ll want to add some code to the plugin to tell the plugin how it should display the data it’s saving for your posts.

I have seen no difference in how any of the package post types are display in WordPress. Perhaps there is something subtle that I am missing.
Time for a break. I am headed over to the Brick Farm Tavern to see if the newest ale from my favourite craft ale brewery is on tap.