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Here you will find all the tools and options necessary for setting up a Blog and organizing comments that visitors may make on what you publish.
A Blog is like an online diary. The author writes about what he wants in Posts (articles), which he publishes more or less regularly.
Once it has been published, a WebSite X5 Blog is a separate entity of the main website, and it is automatically added to the website Map in the Special pages folder (see Sitemap Creation). If you want to add the "Blog" item to the navigation menu, you will have to create an Alias for the Special page, by selecting it and dragging it to the Menu folder.
Because it is a part of the website, the Blog has the same graphics and the website's template is applied automatically to it.
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Your Blog is published at the http://www.mywebsite.com/blog URL where http://www.mywebsite.com is that of the website with which the Blog is associated (your website). |
The Blog's main page lists all the posts that you have published, in chronological order. For each Post, the list gives the title, author, category, date and time of publishing and, if only a summary is displayed, an extract of the Posts is displayed with a link to "Read all". The "Read all" link opens the specific Post in a new page, and the entire article is displayed. Any comments that have been made are also shown, and new comments can be added.
Apart from the contents of the Posts, all the pages in a Blog have the same structure: there is a column on the right side of the page that shows tools such as Recent Posts, Monthly/category archive and Clouds. You can customize this column and decide which tools to make available to visitors, and in which order they appear in the column.
The possibility to receive comments on your Posts from visitors is a great way to develop an on-going discussion between readers and writers. To avoid abusive, irrelevant or otherwise inappropriate comments from being published, WebSite X5 provides you with an online Control Panel through which undesirable comments can be intercepted.
To create a Blog, all you have to do is define a few general parameters and create the list of news items that you want to publish.
Once you have started publishing your Blog, you will need to keep visitors interested by publishing new Posts with a certain regularity. To save time when uploading your project to the Internet, you can choose to publish only the updates to your Blog by selecting the Export only Blog and RSS Feed option in the Website Export to Internet window.
The commands for setting up a Blog and writing Posts are organized in the Posts, Layout and Comments sections.
You can use the commands in this section to define some general parameters and start creating the list of Posts to publish in your Blog. You have these options in the General Settings section: §Title: enter the title that you want to give to your Blog in this field. The title is displayed in the browser's title bar and is, obviously, an important element as it helps visitors and search engines to correctly identify the Blog. If you don't give your Blog a title, the title of the website is used by default (you specify this in the General Settings | Basic window. §Description: write a brief description of the Blog in this field. Be brief but clear and to the point: this description is used in the HTML code as the contents of the <description> meta tag, and it will be used by search engine spiders to identify your Blog. If you don't enter a description for your Blog, the description of the website, given in the General Settings | Basic window, will be used. §Create RSS Feed including the Blog contents: this option is active by default, and means that an RSS Feed will be created automatically with all the Blog's Posts. The path for the Blog's RSS feeds is http://www.mywebsite.com/blog/x5feed.xml where http://www.mywebsite.com is the URL of the website with which the Blog is associated (your website). The Post List section shows a table summarizing the Title, Author, Category and Date of publishing for each Post, and the commands for creating new Posts and organizing existing ones: §Add...: this opens the Post Setting window, where you can add a new Post. §Remove: this deletes the selected Post from the Post List. §Edit...: this opens the Post Setting window where you can edit the Post selected from the Post List. |
The commands in this section define the appearance of your Blog. The following options are available in the General Settings section: §Posts View Mode: you can choose how your Posts are displayed in the first page of your Blog. You can have the first Post displayed in full, followed by a summary of all the others, or you can have a summary of all the Posts. Summaries have the "Read all" link associated with them. §Show the 'AddThis' Button to share your Website with Social Networks.: if you select this option, the "AddThis" button is added automatically to every Post in your blog. When a visitor clicks on this button a submenu is displayed with a list of the most common social networks. If the visitor is already a member of one of these networks, he can select it and share the link to the Post with his contacts. §Button Type: you can select the graphics for the "AddThis" button from those available in the menu. §AddThis Account: if you have an AddThis account, you can specify it. If you have this account, you can view the statistics on how visitors are using the AddThis service.
The Side Blocks section gives a summary of the Title, Type and Width of the blocks in the side toolbar, and the commands for creating the block list: §Add...: this opens the Side Block where you can add a new block. §Duplicate: you can copy the selected block. §Remove: you can delete a block from the list of Side Blocks. §Move up / Move down: you can move the selected block up or down in the Side Blocks list. §Edit...: this opens the Side Block window, where you can edit the block selected from the Side Blocks list. |
You can use the commands in this section to organize comments made by visitors as feedback to your Posts in the Blog. First of all, you have to select the Let readers add Comments to your Blog option so that visitors can make comments on your Posts. Then you have to specify the Content Type, choosing from:
The options in the Comments Settings section are: §View Mode: you can decide whether comments made by visitors are to be pulished immediately online, or whether they are to be approved first, using the commands in the online control panel. §View Order: you can define the chronological order to the published comments, from the most recent to the earliest, or vice versa. §Show 'Abuse' button: select this option is you want an "Abuse" button added, so that visitors can report objectionable conduct. §Enable 'Captcha' anti-spam filter: you can add the Captcha anti-spam filter to the end of the comment form. A series of distorted letters is shown in random order and visitors must copy them correctly in a field in order to submit their comment. §Vote Style: select this option to define the style of the element that visitors can vote (for example, 5 stars). This is the only option available if you select Vote as Content Type.
You can indicate how data submitted in the comments form is to be saved and handled by the website administrator in the Data Save Settings section: §Subfolder on the Server where to save data: specify the folder on the server (with PHP write access) in which the submitted data is to be saved. The main server folder name is specified by the Server folder with write access option in the Data Management window. If you do not specify a sub-folder, the data will be saved in this one. §Send an e-mail to notify the comment has been received: a notification e-mail will be sent automatically when new data arrive. §User e-mail address: You have to set a number of parameters for each send option: enter the recipient address of the e-mail notifying data reception.
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When you create a Blog, a Special page is automatically created in the Map and it is labeled "Blog": select it and open the Page Properties window to define its main characteristics. |
Best practices:
Further information:
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