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.

In New and updated features

New look of the visitor stats

On 02/11/2016

From your website builder's dashboard, you can see the visitor statistics of your website and follow the flow of day to day traffic. Much consulted by emyspottians, we have decided to further enhance this data giving it a fresh look!

In Help to make a website

Screw SPAM

On 27/10/2016

Do you find yourself spending a lot less time these days doing useful stuff with your free website maker than you do cleaning up the messy leftovers of serial spammers? We at emyspot say screw spam. emyspot helps you manage the spam that starts seeping in when you create a website or make an online shop.

In E-commerce

Do it today: Prep your online store for the holiday season

On 19/10/2016

Oh dear me - October is already here and I have started seeing and hearing Christmas cheer all around - jingle bells, tinsel, and “I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas” getting stuck in my head and my incessant humming is harming those around me..

Christmas isn't even close, or is it? For those who have an online store, there is no such thing as “too early” when it comes to the biggest shopping and profitable weeks of the year.

In Help to make a website

Recently added tutorials

On 14/10/2016

This week we have been focused on adding tutorials to help use the page builder tool better. Be it to make a one-page website or to create an online store your page display is essential.

In Terms of Use and User Policies

Better your web vocab with the word of Friday!

On 07/10/2016

Many of the webmasters on emyspot are total beginners with building a website and learning how to use our free website builder tool with all the tools available. From now on you can build your vocabulary and knowledge with the word of Friday, a post that will help you understand technical web terminology.

In SEO - search engines

How the Google algorithm : Penguin 4.0 will affect you

On 29/09/2016

Google has unveiled changes as we all get back to work, school, and the daily grind. A new version of Penguin has arrived which impact your search engine optimization. The new algorithm filters are designed to penalize inappropriate backlinks could affect your website's position. So we want detail two important changes and share what will change with the new version of Penguin 4.0

In Widget Weekly

The new instagram widget! Get snapping.

On 28/09/2016

To promote your Facebook page or your Twitter account on your website have become common practice. Social media is a great way to create a community, but also to develop a web presence for your website. Well, we are pleased as punch to announce that you can now include Instagram on your website - Show off a photo or a video with this new Instagram widget !

In E-commerce

6 tips to better your product page

On 21/09/2016

For an e-commerce website product pages are the most important point of sale that can not be ignored. To create a product page that sells can be difficult, so we have picked 6 tips that are essential when you create your online store.

In New and updated features

Preview your pages before publishing at emyspot

Preview your page before publishing

On 15/09/2016

Since this morning, you can preview your unpublished pages when you have a VersionPLUS subscription! A practical feature that will allow you to see your page in action, check your links, spell check, or to just be reassured by your page's beauty.

In SEO - search engines

Avoid these five common SEO mistakes | emyspot

5 common SEO mistakes

On 12/09/2016

Good SEO can be implemented as soon as you create your emyspot website. Yet to get to that first place ranking, or close, be sure to avoid the 5 most common SEO mistakes.

Prev.
5
6
7
Next

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.