Creating a blog post

Post details

Use the ‘Post Details’ section to enter a date, name and thumbnail image for the blog:

The date you select in the 'Date' box will be the date that will display on the blog post. You can choose any date you want. Choosing a date in the future does not mean the blog will wait to post until that date. If you don't want the blog to post immediately, untick the box beside 'Publish this blog post immediately'. New settings will then appear that allow you to select when you want the post to be published:

Select a release date using the calendar. Optionally you can also select a release time. If you don't select a time, the post will publish at the default of 00:00 on the date selected. You will need to ensure that your post is 'active' in order for it to be published on your blog. Inactive blogs will not publish to the website and will only be available to view at the direct URL.

The name will be displayed on the home page for the blog and on the blog post itself.

The thumbnail for the blog post will only appear on the home page or category page for the blog and will not appear anywhere on the blog post itself. If you want to add images to the blog content, this needs to be done in the ‘Post Content’ section.

Post content

Use the ‘Post Content’ section to create the complete content of the blog post:

Use the HTML editor to help you style the content and add things like links or images to the content. Click here to learn more about using the editor.

Additionally in this section, you can choose if you want to write your own excerpt for the post which would be displayed on the home page and category page of your blog:

If you tick the box to write your own excerpt, you will be shown another HTML editor where you can write the excerpt.

If you choose not to write your own excerpt, the system will take the excerpt from the beginning of your post and will use the number of words that you have determined in your blog settings.

Post categorisation

In the ‘Post Categorisation’ section select which of your created categories you want the post to fall under:

You can also choose to create a new category for the post. Select + Create New Category and enter the name for the category:

You can also enter tags for the blog:

Tags are another way to organise your blogs, but most themes don’t use them. If you want to use them you will need to edit your theme. Please contact us for help with this.

Search engine optimisation

If you have installed the 'SEO Control' app, you will see a section, 'Search Engine Optimisation', where you can control the information that is displayed on search engines for each blog post that you make.

In the ‘Google Preview’ box you can see how this information would currently be displayed for the post.

If you choose to leave this section empty, the title, page URL and description will automatically be filled in using the information you entered in the ‘Post Details’ and ‘Post Content’ boxes, as seen below:

If you think it would be beneficial to supply different information to be seen on search engines, then type into the relevant box what you want to be shown instead.

To change the title that search engines show use the ‘Meta Title’ box. To change the ending of the page URL use the ‘Page URL’ box. To change the short summary of the page use the ‘Meta Description’ box.

The final box in this section is for meta keywords. Most search engines no longer use this function. Therefore, filling it in is not necessary, and it is recommended that you don’t.

After changing the information your SEO section would look something like this: