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Add a blog to your homepage

Creating a blog is simple - this tutorial outlines the first steps you’ll take when you make a blog.

Once you’ve enabled your blog, you can promote blog content right on the homepage of your website in two ways: either by adding blog posts to your existing homepage content or by replacing the content of your homepage with that of your blog homepage.

 

What’s the difference between the two approaches?

1. Adding blog content to your existing homepage

Your current homepage will remain the first one most visitors will see when viewing your site, and you’ll still edit its content from the Pages add-on.

  • To add blog content to the homepage, you’ll use one of the Blog widgets. You can either add a list of links to your latest blog posts, a more complete list of posts that display post titles, text and image content, a list of blog categories or tags.

Like all widgets, you can add Blog widgets to any of your site pages: you don’t have to limit yourself to your homepage.

2. Replace your homepage with your Blog

All content add-ons have their own index or home page. The default homepage of your website is the index page of the Pages add-on.

  • You can replace that page with the index page of any other content add-on, by changing the site settings, and choosing the new content add-on to be used for your site homepage. Choosing the Blog add-on as your site homepage will replace your current homepage.

Once you’ve chosen the new homepage add-on, the content of its index page will be displayed instead of your current site homepage, at your “root” site address.

1. Displaying blog content on your default site homepage

You’ll use one of the Blog widgets to add blog content to your current homepage, in addition to its current content.

  • Begin by editing your site homepage from the Pages > Manage homepage menu of the site manager.
  • Add a new content block to your page.
  • Choose the Other widgets category, then the Blog widget category.

To add content from the blog, you can:

Display a list of links to your latest blog posts 

If you only want to add a list of links to each of your latest blog posts, use the Latest blog posts (title links) widget.

  • All you need do is define the number of blog post titles to display on your page, and save the widget (and the page!).
  • Each blog post title will be added with a clickable link to the post’s page on your website.

Use this widget to display a list of titles of blog posts; each one will have a link added to enable visitors to access the page where the blog post is published on your website.

Here's what the list of blog links widget will look like:

Simplified blog content management

On 14/11/2012

Our new content explorer has made managing site pages (in the Pages add-on) a whole lot easier for webmasters, and provided new website content management features, built into the explorer.

The new content explorer has now been extended to the Blog add-on, and in addition to the great new features already available in the Pages add-on, like one-click content duplicating and a powerful content search engine, the Blog content explorer also has a new feature, specific to the Blog add-on, designed to make it simpler than ever to create a blog and manage blog content.

All blog posts are now accessible directly from the root category, in addition to their specific category. The unified blog post list makes it a whole lot quicker to access your latest posts, to rapidly update or edit a post.

Your new Blog content explorer is now live in your doomby site manager, and will be extended to the other site content add-ons over the weeks ahead.

The makings of a webmaster

On 07/11/2012

A lot of people hesitate before choosing to make a website, figuring that they don’t have the necessary skills, or anything interesting to say (my mother among them). Yet those same people don’t hesitate to doodle, to create a Facebook account, or plunge headfirst into creative activities like card making (my mother among them).

Being a webmaster isn’t about understanding the inner workings of web servers, HTML or web browsers – long gone are the days when you needed to understand complex things that aren’t necessarily your cup of tea. Website builder tools like doomby are designed to help anyone make a website, even people who have absolutely no knowledge of servers or code (my mother … well, you get the picture).

Get creative with your website design

On 06/11/2012

We’re mentioned in the past why we do the things we do: to help you express yourself online, to communicate on the web, and above all else, to make the kind of website that’s right for you. The internet is a big place, and ensuring your message gets heard online is a whole lot easier if your website design appeals to visitors. Your site design is one of the first things that visitors will notice, so we’ve taken time to publish a some great new website design themes over the course of the year to help you get your site looking its best, in next to no time.

New website content explorer

On 10/10/2012

It’s been a year since the last major update to doomby’s website builder, and the team has been hard at work adding new features ever since. Our latest and greatest is the new content explorer, designed to make it simpler to manage your site pages.

The new content explorer is now online in your site manager, in the Pages add-on (head to the Pages > Manage pages menu to start taking advantage of it today).

And yes, it still works with an iPad and iPhone. 

In News

WebUser UK review

On 25/09/2012

WebUser UKFor those of you who call the UK home (or happen to be passing through Heathrow in the next couple of days), check out the latest edition of WebUser UK magazine (dated 20 September 2012) for a review of doomby and 8 other great online website builders. You'll have to hurry though, the next edition is due out in just 2 days from now.

Nice work, though they managed to get one thing a little wrong (but hey, we're all only human, right?).

Like the hundreds of other great free website building features, enabling an online store in your doomby site manager takes a couple of clicks, and it's 100% free to publish from one to five products on your online store at any one time.

 

Personalize your website date, time zone and email formats

On 25/04/2012

It’s been a while since the new version of doomby has been up and running, and high time to fill you in on some of the great new features. In addition to all the existing tools to make a website that you’ve been used to in the previous version, your website builder tools now enable you to personalize your website in new and exciting ways.

Setting up website date formats

Your website settings include the possibility to personalize the layout of dates for items published on your website. Take this blog post as an example – if you look just under the post title, you’ll notice an automatic date stamp.

You can personalize the presentation of date stamps used on your website, to apply long date formats, abbreviated or numerical formats. And it doesn’t matter which side of the Atlantic, Pacific or Indian you live: you’ll find a date format that works for your website.

Define a time zone for your website

Personalize the time zone format for your website to ensure dates “rollover” the way they should, wherever you may live. Simply choose the time zone for your locale, or the one you’d prefer to apply to your website, and save your changes. It’s that easy.

Personalize your website email address

Whenever visitors subscribe to your newsletters, order items on your online store or receive reply notification emails via your online contact forms, you can now personalize the email sender address and name that will appear in your site emails, to harmonize your online communications. Choose one of your personalized email addresses if you have your own domain name for your website for a coherent end-to-end online marketing and communications strategy.

To adjust and personalize your website settings, just head to the Settings > Global settings > Site info menu of your site manager.

In News

Important: doomby V4 release update

On 25/09/2011

As we previously announced a few days ago, we're releasing our next version of your site managers and websites next week. We’ve been steadily transferring copies of your websites over to our new servers for the last few weeks in preparation for the release of our next (and very great) version. These copies are updated regularly, each time your sites are edited, or content posted by your site visitors (like comments, forum posts etc.).

In News

Boost your website for our new version

On 20/09/2011

We're in the mood for celebrating here at doomby, with our next fantastic version due for release next week, September 28. As our way of sharing the love, and for saying "thanks" for being part of what makes doomby everything it is, we're offering existing and new members discounts on domain names and doombyPLUS to help you make a website you'll be proud of.

In News

Make a website, with doombyV4

On 16/09/2011

Over the last year, the doomby team has been focused on two things: helping our members make a website that’s right for them, and redesigning our website builder from the ground up to help new and existing members create, manage and publish site content in new and exciting ways. With doomby’s second birthday just a few weeks away, we’re putting the finishing touches on the next version of your free website builder: it’ll be online September 28, and it’s our way of celebrating our second birthday with you.

Unleash your website: doomby V4

On 27/07/2011

We’ve been pretty busy here at doomby over the last few months finishing up work on the next version of our free website builder. One of the key driving forces behind this work has been to help beginners make a website more easily than ever before, by simplifying the layout of menus and unifying website builder tools like the new site content explorer.

One of the new features of doomby V4 is the new site menu manager, designed to make managing website menus more user-friendly than ever.

2. Replacing your current homepage with the blog homepage

The blog homepage automatically displays the content of each of the latest posts added to your blog. If your site is focused mainly (or solely) on blog content, you can replace the content of your site homepage with your blog. 

  • Begin by heading to the Settings > Global settings menu of the site manager (1) and (2)
  • Choose the Homepage settings (3)
  • Select the Blog add-on and save your changes (4)

Once you choose a new content add-on as your homepage content, a shortcut to that add-on is displayed in the site manager menu bar, replacing the icon of the previous homepage add-on. The previous add-on is still enabled, and you can access its features and content from the Add-ons menu of the site manager.

To adjust settings of your new homepage, like adding an optional introductory text appearing at the top of the page, or defining the number of posts to be displayed on your homepage, head to the Options menu of the Blog add-on.

A few useful blog 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.rss
  • 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.