How to make a blog

A blog (or web log) is an approach to publishing content, using a form similar to a diary: dated posts or articles, each on a unique topic or theme, and in chronological order. A blog can represent part of the content of a website, and pretty much every website will benefit from publishing some of its content in the form of a blog that’s regularly updated. Or a website can be restricted to the content of its blog (a “blog-only website, or blog website, or online blog”).

You can easily add a blog to your website, or create a blog, using the Blog add-on in the site manager.

A few useful blog terms

If you’re publishing your first blog, you’ll need to get to familiarize yourself with a few terms:

A blog post: each article you publish is called a blog post, and you’ll add content (articles) to your blog by “posting” (publishing) them in the site manager.
Publishing: like other site content, your blog posts can be saved as drafts, and published (added to your website) when you want people to view them online.
Display order: blog posts are added to the site as a list, in reverse chronological order. The newest ones are on top, and the oldest at the bottom.
Tags: each blog post can have one or more keywords added to it, which identify the theme or topic of that blog post. These keywords are known as tags, and you can display the most-used tags on your website, as a way of enabling visitors to quickly display all the posts about a given theme, by clicking on the tag.
RSS feed: blog posts are also added to a “stream” of information, summarizing the post. This stream is updated automatically each time you publish a new blog post on your site. Visitors who subscribe to your blog RSS feed (using an “RSS feed reader”) will be notified in real time each time you add a new post to your blog.
Your blog RSS feed is located using this address format: http://yourwebsite.emyspot.com/blog/do/rss.xml
Scheduling publishing dates: blog posts can be published when you create them, saved as drafts to be published later, or you can program a publication date for a post. It will be saved as a draft and published automatically on the date you schedule for the post.

Add a blog to your website

You don’t need to choose between creating a website or creating a blog: a blog is just a kind of website, or a part of a website that has other content.

You can enable a blog for your website from the Add-ons > Manage add-ons menu of the site manager.

Once the Blog add-on is enabled:

You can begin publishing content (posts) on your blog, then add links to blog content from your other site pages or menus.
See this tutorial for more on managing website side menus and this tutorial for details on editing your site horizontal menus.
You can limit your site content to the Blog add-on, to create a blog-only website.
Replace your current site homepage with the blog homepage from the Settings > Global settings > Homepage menu of the site manager.

Why create a blog?

Blogs are fantastic (and fantastically popular) for a couple of very important reasons:

To publish information regularly: adding blog posts to your site, on a regular basis, is perfect for keeping family, colleagues, clients, members or visitors updated with news, ideas, opinions and information. As blog posts have their own titles, theme and tags, they’re easy to search, and their chronological order makes them ideal for browsing.
To add new site content quickly, and easily: search engines are the key to success for most websites. Its no good publishing a website if no-one can find it, and search engines like websites that have lots of content, and content that is regularly updated. Each post is an opportunity to add new site content, to link it to existing site content, and to show search engines just what your site is about, and how important it is.

Latest blog posts

The Latest blog posts widget will display a list of links to the last posts added to your blog. You can choose to display just the titles, or – in a page – display the post title, image and introductory text.

To add your latest posts to a page: edit the page and add a new content block, or add a new column to an existing content block. Choose the Other widgets category, and then click Configure.
Select the Blog category, then select either the Latest blog posts (title links) or Latest blog posts(title links, images and text) widget, depending on whether you'd prefer to display just a list of links to each post, or the content of each post directly in the page.
Choose the number of posts to display, and then save the widget and the page.
To add your latest posts to a side menu: edit your menu from Settings > Menus, add a new widget, select the Blog category, and then choose the Latest blog posts widget.
Choose the number of posts to display, then save the widget, and the finally the menu template, at the bottom of the page.

Blog categories

By default, your blog posts are grouped together to make it easy to publish them. You can divide them up into distinct thematic categories if you’d like, then use those categories to display separate parts of your blog content, category by category.

To add a list of blog categories in a page: edit the page and add a new content block, or add a new column to an existing content block. Choose the Other widgets category, and then click Configure.
Select the Blog category, then the Blog categories widget. Save the widget and the page.
To add a list of blog categories to a side menu: edit your menu from Settings > Menus, add a new widget, select the Blog category, and then choose the Blog categories widget.
Save the widget, and the finally the menu template, at the bottom of the page.

In SEO - search engines

SEO basics: natural link building

On 01/10/2010

Natural links are strong Over the last few weeks, we've taken a look at getting started with improving your site's search engine ranking. Obtaining a good position in search engine result pages is a vital part of ensuring your website is a success; doing so will significantly increase the number of new visitors your site attracts, and help position you as an authority in your field, thus greatly enhancing your ability to communicate effectively with your audience.

If you've decided to make a free website to share a few holiday snaps with family and friends, then you needn't worry too much about search engines – your audience is sufficiently limited that you can simply email your site details to those that are likely to be interested.

On the other hand, if your potential audience extends beyond those in your immediate circle, then you need to think about building links to ensure your site gets noticed in search results, whether you've chosen to use a free website builder or invested in an on-site website development team for your company. This is especially true is you are looking to develop a widely successful website or online business.

Blog tags

Displaying a tag cloud of the most-used tags in your blog posts is a simple way for visitors to locate posts on a given theme. They click the tag that interests them to access a page on which all the posts you’ve created using that tag will be displayed.

To add a blog tag cloud to a page: edit the page and add a new content block, or add a new column to an existing content block. Choose the Other widgets category, and then click Configure. Select the Tags category, then the Tag cloud widget.
Choose the Blog add-on, and set the number of tags to display. Save the widget and the page.
To add a blog tag cloud to a side menu: edit your menu from Settings > Menus, add a new widget, select the Tags category, and then choose the Tag cloud widget.
Select the Blog add-on, and choose the number of tags to display. Save the widget, and the finally the menu template, at the bottom of the page.

Publish a blog post, step by step

To add a new post to your blog:

Head to the Add-ons > Blog menu, and click the Posts tab
Click New post
Begin by adding a Title (1), and choosing an optional category for the post (2) – you can add shortcut links to the post from other categories, via the Category aliases menu (3), so your post will appear in link lists of more than one blog category
Choose or create new tags for the post (4), which summarize the main themes, topics or items covered by the post
Add the content for the blog post: you can add the content into the first editor (5), or separate it into two editors. By adding all the content to the first editor, all the blog post content will be displayed in blog list pages on your site.
Any content added to the second editor (6) will only be displayed on the actual page of that particular blog post (to access it from lists of blog posts, visitors will click a “Continue reading” link at the bottom of the first section of content).
Choose an optional publication status (7): by default, when you create a new blog post and save it, it will be published on your site straight away.
If you’d prefer to save it as a draft and publish it at a later date, or to set an automatic publication date (for posts prepared ahead of time), you can define the post publication status before saving it.
Set an optional expiry date (8) if you’d like the post to be automatically removed from your site at a date in the future.