Each site can have its own blog, built and written inside the editor. Open Blog in the left rail.
Set up the blog
If the site has no blog yet, the panel says Add a blog to this site. Click Set up blog. This adds a Blog page with a list of your posts, plus a post layout you can design. The panel then has five tabs: Posts, Settings, Layouts, Import and SEO.
Write a post
- In Posts, click New Post. Enter a Post title ("For best results, keep this title under 200 characters") and choose a Post author, Post layout and Post main image, then click Start.
- The post opens on the canvas. The layout around it is locked. Add any widgets in the Post content area, the same way you edit a page.
- Click Post settings in the bar at the top. It has three tabs:
- Post Status: Post URL slug (up to 240 characters; nested slugs like seo-basics/meta-tags work), publish, unpublish, schedule and Publish date.
- Post Details: Post title, Post author, Post main image with its alt text, Post tags (type a tag and press Enter) and Post layout.
- Post SEO Settings: Post meta title (blank uses the post title; aim for 45–65 characters), Post thumbnail image (blank uses the main image), Image alt text tag, Post meta description (blank uses the start of the post) and Set post to no index. BlogPosting schema and social sharing tags are added for you.
- Click Publish Post. A post goes live on its own, with no site publish needed (unless the site itself has never been published). Use Republish Post after you make changes.
To schedule a post instead, open Post Status in the post settings, pick a time under Schedule Post and click Schedule. The post is saved as it is at that moment and goes live at that time. Unpublish takes a post down.
In the Posts list you can search (title, description, tag or author), filter by status (All posts, Drafts, Published, Scheduled) or tag, and sort by Created, Publish date or Title (A–Z). Each post's ⋯ menu has Edit post, Post settings, Duplicate, Unpublish and, on a multi-language site, Translate post. Tick several posts to Unpublish or Delete them together.
Client approval
If the client approves blog posts first (Client → Settings → Client approvals → Blog posts), Post Status shows a Client approval box: Send for approval, Approve for the client and, while it waits, Take back. Until the client approves this version, Publish, Republish and Schedule are held, and so is sending a post to the site from the Content Generator (it's saved as a draft instead). Changing the post after approval needs approving again. A client person publishing their own post, and press releases added to the newsroom, aren't held. See Client approvals.
Layouts
Layouts holds up to 12 post designs. One is the DEFAULT. Click Edit layout to design the page around the post, such as the title, image, author and related sections. The Post content area is where each post's own content goes. It can be a whole section, or a column beside a sidebar (for example an author card and recent posts next to the post). Each post picks its layout in its settings. An imported site gets a layout built from its own post page.
Settings
Set the Blog name, Blog title, Blog description and Blog thumbnail. You can also set RSS Feed Details, Show Next & Previous post navigation links, and Authors (name, photo and bio). Authors are a list for this site, not team logins. Settings changes show on the live site after you publish the site.
Import from RSS
In Import, paste an RSS feed URL and click Import Posts. Up to 300 posts come in at a time, as drafts, with title, date, author, tags, main image, and text, images and video turned into widgets. A post already imported from the same link is skipped. Images stay on the original site, so if that site goes away, replace them in each post.
Blog SEO
SEO lists every post's meta title and description to edit in one place. Generate Meta Tags has Zeus write them (agency team only, free). He works through every post listed, a batch at a time, with a progress bar and a Stop button, and saves each post as he writes it. If he stops partway, click Generate Meta Tags again to carry on with the posts still missing tags. Republish published posts to make the changes live.
Posts in other languages
When the site has more than one language (Settings → Languages), each language gets its own posts. A post's translation is a separate post, linked to the original, with its own address, its own publish status and its own date.
- In Posts, open the post's ⋯ menu and click Translate post.
- Choose the Language. Only languages the post isn't in yet are listed.
- Click Translate with Zeus to have Zeus write it (1 credit per post, agency team only), or Copy to translate myself to start from a copy of the original's words.
- The new post is a draft. Check it, then publish it like any post.
The list shows each translation's language next to its title, and Also in lists the other languages of a post. The address is translated for languages written in the Latin alphabet (for example /es/blog/consejos-para-el-techo). Other languages keep the original's short address with the language added when needed (for example /ja/blog/roof-tips-ja). You can change it in the post's settings.
On the site, /es/blog lists only Spanish posts, Spanish posts live at /es/blog/…, and Spanish visitors get their own feed at /es/blog/feed.xml. Blog search and tags work in every language, including Chinese, Japanese and Thai. The Language Selector on a post goes to the same post in the other language, or to that language's blog when there's no translation yet. The sitemap and search engines see each post's language versions.
Layouts are shared by every language. Switch the editor to a language while a layout is open to translate its words, like any page.
Blog widgets
Add All Posts, Recent Posts, Blog Search, Blog Tag Filter, Table of Contents or RSS Feed from Add > Blog. Every setting of these widgets is in Blog widgets. Posts live at /blog/your-post-slug, and the full feed is at /blog/feed.xml.
All Posts and Recent Posts can show posts as a Carousel: select the widget and pick Layout > Carousel (sliding row) in its Design panel. Posts sit in one row that slides sideways. Posts per view sets how many show at once on each screen size, Posts in the carousel sets how many posts it holds, and Arrows and Dots can each be turned off. On phones, visitors swipe and the arrows are hidden. The carousel replaces View more and page numbers.
Examples
- Monthly tips for a dentist: write the post, pick a time under Schedule Post for the first Monday of the month, and add Recent Posts to the homepage.
- Moving a WordPress blog: paste the WordPress feed (for example https://oldsite.com/feed) into Import. Posts arrive as drafts to check and publish.
- Sidebar layout: in Layouts, add a layout with Post content in a wide column and an author card and Recent Posts in a narrow one, then Make default.
- Clean up Google snippets: open SEO and click Generate Meta Tags to fill in every missing meta title and description.
Limits and what it can't do
- Up to 1,500 posts per blog and 300 per import.
- Up to 12 layouts. A blog always needs at least one.
- A post's URL slug can be up to 240 characters.
- Imported images aren't copied; they stay on the original site.
- Blog settings and layout changes need a site publish. Posts publish on their own.
- Authors are names for this site's posts, not team logins.
Credits
Writing, publishing, importing and Generate Meta Tags are free. Translate with Zeus costs credits per post per language (the current price shows at the top of this article). Copy to translate myself is free.
Who can use it
- Agency team members with the Mount Olympus tool can do everything.
- Client people with the Blog permission see the Posts, Import and SEO tabs: they can write, publish and import posts, but can't edit layouts, blog settings or authors, and can't set up the blog ("Ask your agency to set up the blog."). Client people with Editor also get layouts and settings.
- Generate Meta Tags, Translate with Zeus and Send for approval are for the agency team only.
Troubleshooting
- "Choose a time in the future": the schedule time has passed. Pick a later time.
- "Enter a URL for the post": the post URL slug is empty. Type one.
- "Post published — it goes live once the site is published": the site has never been published. Publish the site once; after that posts go live on their own.
- Publish is grayed out with "Needs the client’s approval first": the client approves blog posts. Use Send for approval or Approve for the client.
- "Only your agency sends posts for approval": client people can't send posts for approval.
- "Enter a feed URL starting with https://", "That URL isn’t an RSS or Atom feed" or "The feed returned 404": check the feed address. Open it in a browser; it should show XML.
- "That feed has no posts": the feed is empty.
- "That feed has 450 posts — the limit is 300 per import": use a feed with 300 posts or fewer, for example one tag or category feed at a time.
- "A blog can have up to 1500 posts": delete old posts first.
- "A blog can have up to 12 layouts" / "A blog needs at least one layout": delete or reuse a layout.
- "The feed is too large": the feed file is too big to read. Use a smaller feed.
- "Set up the blog first": click Set up blog in the Blog panel.
- A post isn't on the live site: check its status is Published (not draft or scheduled), and that it isn't set to no index if you're looking in Google. After changes, click Republish Post.
- Changes to the layout don't show: layouts go live with a site publish.
Good to know
- ContentForge's Content Generator can send a blog post straight to the site as a draft, or publish it right away.
- Client people with the Blog permission can write and publish posts but can't edit layouts. They can make a post's copy in another language and translate it themselves.
- Duplicating a translated post keeps its language. An old link to a translated post at the main blog's address sends visitors to the post's own language address.
- A translated post's address can't be the same as another post's, even in another language. If it would be, the language is added to the end (my-post-es).