Blog
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Contents |
Introduction
Blogs or Weblogs, are a powerful way to communicate with your customers in a more personal, one-on-one fashion. They give you a space to express your thoughts and ruminate on current events. You can announce a new product or teach the world your philosophy. Many businesses are beginning to realize the power of Blogs in creating authentic and engaging discussions with existing and potential customers. Adding a blog to your website is a great way to develop and grow your relationships with your customers online.
Here's some of the key features of blogs:
- Unlimited posts
- Ability to moderate comments
- Fully customizable Blog appearance
- Automatic RSS Feed creation
- Public or Private blogs
- Ability to set the release date of posts in the future
- Receive and send Trackback pings to other blogs
- And more!
Setting Up Blogs
Setting up a new Blog is quick and easy. First go to Website -> Blogs.
- Click Create a New Blog
- Now you can fill in all the details for your blog. Hold the mouse cursor over each field to see a description of the field and how to fill it in.
- Write a description for your blog that will appear on your blog's page (to see description field click on the Show Advanced Options link in the bottom-right corner). It should be descriptive of what you blog is about and what you might talk about.
- Click Save and you're done!
Now you can write a post, or make you blog secure, or classify it (see below topics). Now, to add your blog to a page - its simple.
- Click on Add Blog to a web page link in the Action Box
- Choose the web page you wish to add the blog to
- Choose the 1-Click Insert drop down option from the editor's toolbar as shown in the image below
- Choose Insert this Blog Only
- Save and Publish to complete your changes
- Preview your web page in your web browser to see your (currently empty) Blog
Posting to your Blog
A post is an entry on your blog. Posting to your blog is simple. After creating your blog in Website -> Blogs, click on the "Blog Posts" link. To create a new post:
- Click the New Post button
- Give your post an engaging title
- Pick a release date. The default is today, but you can set the date into the future if you want to schedule you post to go out later.
- If you got inspiration from another blogger, copy the "TrackBack" url for their post and put them in Trackback URLs, one per line (click on the "Show Advanced Options" link to see this field). Remember you should have a link inside your post to the blog you are trackbacking to, to show you are genuine and not spamming the other blogger!
- Write the body text of your post.
- Click Save and you're done! You'll see if the TrackBacks you've entered have succeeded or not.
At any time you can come back and click on the title of the post to load that post and edit/delete it.
Truncating your posts
Simply go to the blog layouts in Admin -> More Customization Options -> Blog Layouts and choose Blog Post Layout.
Replace {tag_blogpostbody} with {tag_blogpostbodypreview}. This tag will display the first element of your blog post.
So if you blog post is made up of:
<p>Opening paragraph</p>
<p>Second paragraph</p>
<p>...</p>
It will only display the first and its content.You can extend the tag to customize the link that appears that links the post preview to the full version.
e.g.
{tag_blogpostbodypreview,More}
Blog Tags
Tags are simply labels that people use to make it easier to find blog posts, photos and videos that are related. The tags below are sized according to their popularity. You'll see that the more popular tags will grow in size. (see the screenshot below)
So, if you write a post about life and art you'd place these words into tags and people interested in arts can click on it to display the relevant articles.
When writing your post you can select the tags that are relevant to your post from the list of checkboxes or you can enter the new tags (separated by semicolon ;) into the New Tags field.
To display the tag cloud on your blog layout you have to add the appropriate tag to it. To do this you need to go to Admin -> More Customization Options -> Blog Layouts -> Blog Layout and use Tag Insert dropdown to insert one of or both of the following tags {tag_blogtagcloud} and {tag_blogtaglist}
Interacting with your readers: Trackbacks and Comments
Trackbacks are a mechanism to automatically create a relationship between your post and another bloggers post via links. To complete a Trackback we need to "ping" the Trackback address or URL. The Trackback contains all the necessary information to the other Blog so that a link appears on the other blog, back to your blog. Its a great way to have a conversation with other bloggers.
You can allow Trackbacks by checking the checkbox in the "Details" tab.
Comments allow your Blog readers to leave a comment about a post. This feature uses the Comments module on your blog posts. All comments can be pre-approved or you can set up the site so that you have to approve the comments before they're displayed on your website. To read and moderate comments go to Modules -> Comments. Also to learn more about Comments please refer to the Comments topic.
The comments on your blog are displayed by {tag_commentlist} tag. This tag is placed inside the Individual Post Layout in Admin -> Blog Layouts. Comments are displayed oldest to latest by default.
To reverse the order of the blog comments from latest to oldest, you can use {tag_commentlist,date}.
Blogs and RSS
RSS is way to syndicate your content to other sources. People use RSS feeds to be notified of changes to your blog without visiting your blog directly. Several types of content are RSS-able, but Blogs and RSS in particular go hand in hand.
As such, you can set it up so that your Blog has its own RSS feed and that every post is automatically added to it. In the Details tab, simply check the check box Syndicate this blog (RSS). When you select this option an RSS Channel will automatically be created using the same name as your blog, and then every time you post, your posts will be added to it.
Classifying Blogs
Some companies have several blogs about different things. Using classification, you can classify a blog primarily about product support under "Support", or a blog about marketing under "Marketing". To classify your blog, simply click on the Classify this blog in Action Box and select the classifications that apply to your blog.
When you publish your blog on a web page you can choose to publish all blogs within a Classification. By choosing the Support classification the system will automatically display all blogs within this classification on your web page. If in the future you create a new blog and also classify it in the Support classification, it will automatically appear on those web pages that have the other Support related blogs.
Most types of content can be classified. These include announcements, FAQs, literature and so on. This feature allows you to easily create a support area on your website and publish all support related Blogs, FAQs, announcements effortlessly in one central area.
Public v.s. Private Blogs (Secure Zones)
Do you want to keep your blog about upcoming products private to your registered customers? You can do this by clicking on the Secure Zones tab. By Adding a blog to a Secure Zone, you restrict access to it to members of the Secure Zone. Web Site Visitors will not be able to access the item via a link or any other method.
Secure Zones allow you to designate one or more areas of your public web site as Secure. Accessing the Secure Zone requires users to enter their username and password. If this is not entered they will be denied access to the Secure Zone. You can set up as many Secure Zones as you need to and assign various types of content to those areas. You can also grant various customers within your website access to a secure area and choose when each customer's access to the secure zone expires.
Customizing Blog Appearance
Your blogs are fully customized and are ready to be used on your website and should not require further customization. However should you wish to customize them, then you have full control to alter their look and feel.
In fact the blogs feature is extremely customizable where you can achieve any desired look and feel outcome.
There are a number of templates that you need to familiarize yourself with. You can find these in the Admin -> More Customization Options -> Blogs Templates area. The templates include:
- Blog Layout
- Blog List Layout
- Blog Post Layout
- Blog Comment Layout
- Blog Trackback Layout
If you are familiar with customizing FAQs and Announcements then blogs follow a similar path. The things to remember when customizing blogs:
- Blog List Layout defines how a list of blogs would be displayed. The blog list might show the blog title, number of posts, the date of last post, and so on. Blogs always appear on one of your web pages. That means you will need to add the blog module to a web page. If you tell the blog module to display a list of blogs, then this template is used for each blog as it is rendered out on the page. Refer to the Tag Insert option on the editor's toolbar for a list of available tags. To make your blogs look even better, you may want to manually add a header table just above the blog module on your web page that enhances the output of the blogs list.
- When a user selects a blog they are redirected to a system page that handles the display of post. Although this page is not one of your web pages, it is still entirely customizable.
- The Blog Layout is the overall template for your blog. It usually has the blog calendar, a placeholder for your posts, the blog title and so on. If you have chosen an overall template for your blog, the Blog Layout template is then placed inside the overall template to ensure your corporate identity is carried through in blogs.
- Blog Post Layout sets out how each individual post will be displayed. This template shows how the post title should be displayed, where the post body and author goes, links for comments and trackbacks and so on. Each post is rendered according to this template, then wrapped inside the Blog Layout template.
- The Blog Comment and Trackback Layouts are used to render out individual comments and trackbacks. By default the tags that relate to these are placed in the Blog Post Layout. You can customize both of these templates to give you maximum customization power.
Tags
{tag_postlist,number of posts} e.g. {tag_postlist,20} which displays 20 posts.
