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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:

Save, trash, and recycle site content: doomby V4

On 03/06/2011

How many times have you thrown something away, only to regret it later on? If you’re anything like me, the answer to that question is “too many to count”. Website creation – especially when you first begin to make a website - inevitably results in more content than you need, and in way too many hastily deleted pages or files.

Up until now, that, as they say, was that: a deleted page, image, blog post or other element of your site content was gone for good. Deleting whatever site content you don’t need anymore is a solution to dealing with clutter, but it’s also a very radical, and permanent solution. Too bad if you change your mind later on, that page and those files are gone for good.

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On 14/04/2011

Fonts cause a lot of problems, though it’s not necessarily easy to understand why; any old application can understand letters and numbers, but they need to be told exactly how to display them on the screen.

This is of particular concern for people who make a website, and has meant that website font choice had traditionally been pretty limited.

Fortunately, these days things are a little different. By taking advantage of modern website technology standards, it's become a whole lot easier for webmasters to control exactly how their site will look once published online, and to create a truly unique site design.

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On 07/04/2011

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After all, deciding to create a website means more than just adding content – it needs to be as accessible as possible for your visitors.

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On 23/03/2011

Although doomby comes with a wealth of ready-made design themes, one of the easiest ways of ensuring your site stands out from the crowd is to personalize your chosen design template. All the necessary website design tools are built right into the site manager, enabling you to choose colors, borders, fonts and images for your site header and background.

We’re currently finishing up work on getting the design editor ready for the next version of doomby’s free website builder, and it’s time to take a look at what’s in store.

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On 09/03/2011

One of the most requested features we receive here at doomby is a website search function. Site searching is particularly useful, it must be said, if you make a website that extends beyond the homepage; you can add tag clouds and menus, but sometimes your visitors like digging around all by themselves to find exactly what they’re looking for.

We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the best way to help visitors find your sites on search engines, and on ensuring they can easily access your site content, to make doomby even better for your website. Here’s a preview of the result of our hard work, coming up in the next version of your favorite free website builder: supercharged site SEO, with search!

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On 03/03/2011

People choose to make a website for all kinds of reasons, so website content comes in all shapes and forms. But not everything you publish on your website is destined for viewing by just anyone; that online photo album, for example, might contain some images that you’d really rather not put on public display. And if you’re looking to make a company website, you might prefer not to share details of your next business meeting with people outside the office.

As doombyPLUS users already know, it’s simple to restrict access to site pages or add-ons, like the Diary, Photo album, Blog or Forum, ensuring only site members can access them, or visitors who have the right password. Selective content access is one of our most-used doombyPLUS features, so we’ve spent time ensuring it’s even better in our next version.

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Adding videos to a website is a great way to engage visitors: it’s a much quicker, easier and more natural way of communicating certain types of content and ideas.

Unfortunately, web browsers have a hard time dealing with video content. Different video formats and browser technologies mean it’s difficult to make a website with videos function the same way from one browser or device to another. And sometimes, they just don’t work at all.

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On 18/02/2011

Just a quick note today, penned at the end of a busy week. Our servers have outgrown their current home, so they’re off to new and more spacious accommodations. Though they won’t be going far, unfortunately we’ll have to unplug them at some point so sites and managers will be offline for around 2 hours max., sometime between 21:00 GMT Saturday, 19 February and 07:00 GMT 20 February - timed perfectly to catch this weekend's light show, and to get a few hours rest.

 

If you catch this weekend's show on camera, post your photos to our Facebook page - we'd love to share them with everyone.

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The next version of doomby is not far away, so it’s time to take a look at one of the most visible changes to your free website builder tools you’ll be encountering very soon. One of the most-requested features we’ve been asked for is a way to manage files more flexibly from within the site manager, and we’re happy to deliver!

In response to your requests, we’ve completely overhauled the way you’ll manage files in the next version of your very own free website maker. The changes will make it even easier to create a website and to manage your site content, with a more user-friendly and intuitive file manager.

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On 27/01/2011

Over the last several weeks we’ve taken a look at ways to help people find your site on the web, and the kinds of things you can do to make it as easy for them as possible. We’ve seen how, even just as you begin to make a website, it’s important to have thought through who your potential audience is, and how they might find your site. In addition, we’ve explored how to put your site's free website builder tools to good use to optimize your site for visitors and those all-important search engines.

A website is a constant work in progress, and getting it listed with search engines is just the start. For your site to continue to attract new visitors, you’ll need to ensure that it figures prominently in search engine results – that’s something that takes time and regular effort. Search engines rank and re-rank sites for key word searches every day, so you’ll need to keep adding site content and working on making it visible on the web for as long as your site exists.

Even if you get to the top of the first page of search results for your key words, you’ll need to keep working to ensure you stay there. Here are a few external sites, tools and references that will help you ensure all that hard work you put into developing a website pays off.

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.