Your SmartSpace website allows you to quickly and easily setup a blog page.

Blogs are a great way to provide fresh new content on your website and keep interested visitors in touch with what is happening.

Blogs also provide special navigation to ensure that visitors can get to your complete blog archive.

Setting Up the Blog

• Go to Content Manager > Manage Content Categories > New Content Category.
• Provide the following values in the category configuration;
  • Content Category: The name of your blog,
  • Title Behaviour: Include All titles,
  • Category Title Pic: Select one from the list if you have them uploaded and are using Title pics,
  • Category Page Name: Name the page that will be seen in the url (see here for more),
  • Description: A concise description of what your blog is about in 150 characters or less,
  • Archive keywords: Insert a few keywords or phrases that encapsulate your blog (up to 10),
  • User Access: Staff create content,
  • Archive format: Blog Style - standard,
  • Images - Default Content ID: if you wish to attach standard images the blog page, you can use images attached to a page of content - insert the content ID,
  • Allow Replies: Tick if you want to allow people to reply/comment on your blog,
  • Content Image Default Size: make a selection for attached images,
  • Archive Selections: Leave the Archive selections blank.
• Save your Blog configuration.
• Start your blog by clicking on Create New Post in the Content Archive section of the newly created blog.
• Once your blog is up and running, you can create new blogs from the blog page itself when you are logged in.

Linking to the Blog

You can link to your blog in one of three ways.

Main Menu Link

• Go to Content Manager > Website Templates > Main Menu > Add Main Menu Links.
• Place 1 in the extra links field and click Next;
  • The new link will appear at the bottom of the page - reorder the links order as necessary.
• Activate the link by clicking the Tick To Activate box.
• Select Link Mode: Auto.
• Select Auto Source: Content - Menu in User Created Category.
• Insert the ID of the content category you just created in the Category ID field.
• Place 0(zero) in the Records Returned field (this prevents a submenu from appearing).
• Naviagate to your home page and reload any webpage - the new link should appear;
  • Note: you need to ensure that you have sufficient main menu links available,
  • The number of links available is used as a guide - it does not prevent extra links from being created, however, your main menu has limited real estate so just ensure that you do not overbuild.
  • Otherwise reorganise your main menu to ensure that you have a space available.

Top Menu

The top menu is a simple menu system that allows an extra layer of links to commonly used pages.

• Although you cannot use this menu to link directly to your blog, you can use the SmartSpace content redirection feature to create the link;
  • Go to Content Manager > (Top Content Menu) Create New Post,
  • Click Source in the text editor toolbar,
  • Insert the URL of the blog - something like http://www.mywebsite.com/infopage/archive/my-special-blog (my-special-blog can be replaced by the ID of the blog but using a pagename is better for seo),
  • Click Publish.
• Return to your website and open any page to view the new link in the Top Menu.

Embed in Content

• In any content page you can link to your blog.
• Create a new post or edit an old one.
• Place the link text on the page and highlight.
• Click the Link icon in the text editor toolbar and insert the url (as above).
• Publish or Update as required.

Read more on setting up Content Catgeories here.