Blog

Blog

The Blog feature lets you create, maintain, and publish articles on your site. It provides tools to edit your individual post and blog designs, letting you provide a reliable stream of personalized content to attract visitors and create interest in your site.

Note

Starting January 20, 2025, all old blogs that have not been updated yet will be automatically updated.

Installation and Blog Page Overview

While some templates come with a blog, others will require a blog to be installed.

To install a blog:

1. In the side panel, click Blog.
2. Click Add Blog.
3. (Optional) Design the blog's main page (this page is added automatically upon installation of the blog):
4. In the side panel, click Pages.
5. Select the Blog page.
6. Design the page as desired while keeping the included All Posts widget.

When a blog is installed - either during site creation with a template that includes a blog or added later - a main blog page is automatically created and can be found in the Pages area of the side panel. By default, the page will include the All Posts widget.

The blog page is a standard page with all the options of a regular page. What makes it a blog page is simply that it includes the All Posts widget.

Warning

• Because the blog page that is automatically added is a regular page, it can be deleted.
• If the page is deleted and there is not an All Posts (or Recent Posts) widget on the site, it will not be possible to navigate to the posts from the site.
• To restore a deleted main blog page, simply add a page, place the All Posts widget on it and design it as desired.

Blog Permissions

Permissions for the blog work the same as on other pages.

Blog Set Up

Use the blog editor to set up a new blog and add posts. Two editing modes work together seamlessly so you can design the perfect blog for your business and update it easily with new posts that look great, have the content you want, and are optimized for SEO. The two editing modes are Layout mode and Post mode.

Layout Mode

Layout mode is where you create and edit your various blog post layouts. In this mode, you arrange elements, such as blog title, author, main image, content placeholder, rows, columns, and more. Changes made to a layout are automatically applied to all past and future blog posts that use that specific layout.

To view available blog post layouts, click Blog in the side panel, then click Post Layouts and click Browse Post Layouts.

Note

Changing the position of the content placeholder can be achieved by adding rows, columns, or sections around the content placeholder. Or, you can adjust the padding of the content placeholder. 

Change Position of Content Placeholder

You can change the position by changing padding settings or by adding columns and rows.

Note

You cannot delete, hide on device, or copy and paste the placeholder or the column/row that contains it.

To change the position of the content placeholder by changing padding settings:

1. In the side panel, click Blog.
2. Click Edit Layout to open Layout Mode.
3. Right-click the post placeholder to open the menu.
4. Select the container: row, column, main row, main column.
5. The Design Editor menu will open automatically.
6. Change the spacing settings to set the placeholder on the page.

To change the position of the content placeholder by adding columns and rows:

1. In the side panel, click Blog.
2. Click Edit Layout to open Layout Mode.
3. Right-click on the row that contains the placeholder to open the context menu.
4. Choose Add Column or Row: add adjacent, above or below.
5. Click Done.

Post Mode

Post mode is where you go to write individual blog posts. You have complete freedom over the content of each post (contained within the content placeholder section that is visible in Layout mode), and can add any widgets that you want. Editing a post is just like editing a page in the editor. All of the changes you make to an individual post in Post mode affect only that post.

When you are in Post mode, add any elements that you want to a specific post. For example, if you are working on a post that has multiple images, you can add several Image widgets. If a specific post requires a map, add a Map widget here.

To use Post mode for a specific blog post, in the side panel, click Blog, and then click Manage Posts. Click a blog in the list, or click the Edit icon to open the blog in Post mode. For changes in Post Mode to be visible online, you must republish the post.

Connect Elements

Connecting elements are what give your blog power and ease of use. These elements ensure that every blog automatically contains important details including title, author and image, and that these details appear consistently in every post.

You’ll be asked to enter the main post details as soon as you create a new post. You can change this information later, but adding it from the start keeps your posts organized. By default, post title, author and background image are connected. You can remove these connections or change them in Layout Mode, but we recommend keeping them to ensure your posts have all the information they need for SEO and to be found easily by users.

If you disconnect an element, you can reconnect it or connect it to a new element.

Changing Connected Elements in Post Mode

Change the content of connected elements in one of the following ways:

• Via the Settings Menu: Click to open the post details and then edit.
• Click the connected element (for example, post author) and edit the text in the popup that opens.

Changing Connected Elements in Layout Mode

You can replace connected elements, or remove them altogether, in Layout Mode. To replace the connected element, click on the blue Connected Data icon to open the Connect Data popup. From here, choose the connected element you want to use for this connection and then click Done.

To remove the connection altogether, click none. This will remove this connection for all posts in the blog, and the element will no longer appear.

All Posts (and Recent Posts) Widget

The All Posts widget (All Posts and Recent Posts; although these are listed separately in the widget library, once added to a page, they are both considered the All Posts widget) are the tools for displaying and accessing blog posts. These widgets allow visitors to navigate to posts.

Note

By default, an All Posts widget is included in the main blog page.

Customize the All Posts Widget

Content Editor

In the Content Editor, you can control what post information to show. You can also manage and add new posts from here.

To access the content editor, right click the widget and select Edit Content. Or, if you are in flex mode or Editor 2.0, the option to access the content editor is available in the floating menu. Click the element to open the floating menu, then click the option for the content editor.

The following settings are available in the content editor:

• Filter by tag. You can select multiple tags. This setting will be added once there are tags (if there are not tags, this option will not be available).
• Read more text. Type the text you want to appear or click the eye icon to hide the text.
• Show more button. Type the text you want to appear or click the eye icon to hide the text.
• Show blog name. Can enable or disable this option.
• Show author and date. Can enable or disable this option.
• Show thumbnail images. Can enable or disable this option.
• Single line title. Can enable or disable this option.

Widget Design

To access the design editor, right-click the element, and click Edit Design. Or if you are in flex mode or Editor 2.0, select Edit Design from the floating menu to open the design panel. Click the element to open the floating menu, then click the option to edit design.

In the Design Editor you can control image size, background color, text style, number of posts to show, hover effects, and more.

You can also select the number of visible teaser lines. Teasers are short post summaries, taken from the first paragraph of the blog or the blog settings.

If there are more posts than displayed, the More Posts button appears. You can customize the button text, background, and position. You can also hide it.

Search Posts Widget



The Search Posts widget allows visitors to search for specific posts or themes in your blog so that they can easily find articles that interest them.

The widget only searches for words in blog post titles, it does not search the content of posts.

Content Editor

In the Content Editor, the Placeholder text for the search bar can be customized.

To access the content editor, right click the widget and select Edit Content. Or, if you are in flex mode or Editor 2.0, the option to access the content editor is available in the floating menu. Click the element to open the floating menu, then click the option for the content editor.

Create Blog Post



To create new blog posts:

1. In the side panel, click Blog.
2. Click New Post.
3. Type a Post title for the blog, and select the Post author.
4. Use the Post Layout dropdown menu to select a layout.
5. To add a main image, click +Image and select or upload an image.
6. Click Start.

For better SEO, schema markup is automatically generated for every newly published post.

Edit Blog Post



To edit existing blog posts:

1. In the side panel, click Blog.
2. Click Manage Posts.
3. Next to the post you want to edit, click the Edit  icon.

To edit the post settings associated with a blog post, click the Post Settings icon. Post settings include post status, post details, and post metadata including tags.

Delete and Unpublish Blog Posts

Blog posts can be deleted or unpublished individually or in bulk.



To delete or unpublish a blog post:

1. In the side panel, click Blog.
2. Click Manage Posts.
3. Use the checkbox to select the desired post(s).
4. Click either Delete or Unpublish.

Blog Post Settings

For individual blog posts you can manage the post status, post details, post SEO settings, set a post to no-index.

Post Status

The post status is listed at the top of the section, and you can configure the post URL, and publish date for the post. Post status includes:

• Post URL (Permalink). Type to change the post URL, or click Copy to copy the URL to the clipboard. The post must be published copy the URL.
• Change publish date. Changing the publish date changes the order of posts in the blog.

Click Unpublish or Republish, as needed. On unpublished posts, click Publish, or click Schedule post to select a date and time for the post to be published.

Post Details

Add main post details to be connected to the layout and inherit the layout design. Post details include:

• Post title. Type a short title for the blog post.
• Post author. Select an author from the list. If an author does not appear in the list, search for the author to select them. Only users who have been granted blog access to the site are eligible blog authors. 
• Post main image. Click +Image to select or upload a main image for the post. If you need to replace an existing image, click Replace.
• Post tags. Enter tags so you and visitors can filter the posts you’re looking for.
• Post layout. Use the dropdown menu to select a layout for the blog post.

Post SEO Settings

Metadata improves SEO and enables search engines to understand the content of the post. Metadata displays in the All Posts and Recent Posts widgets and appears when posts are shared.

Tags are grouped into categories, so you can filter posts based on tags in the All Posts widget. You can add the All Posts widget onto multiple pages and sort the posts by their tags in the Content editor.

Post metadata includes:

• Post meta-title. Type a meta-title. The ideal length is 512px, which is about 65-67 characters. We do not recommend a meta-title less than 45 characters. If you do not complete this field, the meta-title will default to your post title.
• Post Thumbnail. Click +Image to select or upload an image. Alternatively, include alt text for the image which enables search engines to recognize the image content. You can type your own alt text. Repeat for each individual blog post thumbnail. 
• Post Description. Type a short summary of the post. If empty, text is taken from the beginning of the post.
• Tags. Categorize your blog posts by adding tags to your posts. To add tags, type a tag in the field provided, and type Enter.

Set Post to No index

Toggle the no-index setting on if you would like the post to not appear in search results. Once enabled and the post is republished search engines will not be able to crawl the post.

Blog Settings



Change the thumbnail, name, title, description, and backups for your blog. You can also find your blog's RSS feed URL here. Adding a blog name, title, description and URL are important because they help with your blog SEO. The more keywords used in the name, title, and description, the more relevance your blog will have on search engines. For example, using the term "food blog" in your blog name, title, description and URL helps search engines find your blog when users search for the term "food blog."

In the side panel, click Blog, and then click Blog Settings. You have the following options:

• Blog name. This name displays on the sites as the title of the All Posts widget.
• Show Next/Previous post navigation links. Set the text and appearance of posts' navigation links or toggle the setting off to hide these links (these are the links at the bottom of posts to navigate to the next or previous post). The changes made here apply to all posts. By default, the style uses the site theme. Once changes are made manually here to the style, it will disconnect it from the site theme and is unable to be reconnected.The underline for the link is connected to the Theme Text in the site's Theme and is unable to be removed or added here. To remove or add the underline, adjust it in the Theme Text. The post these links are linked to is determined by the post's publish date and is unable to be changed.
• Next post link. Update the verbiage or style of this link.
• Previous post link. Update the verbiage or style of this link.
• RSS Feed Details. This information appears in RSS feeds.
• Blog Title. Type a title for the blog.
• Blog Description. Describe what your blog is about so visitors know what to expect.
• Blog Thumbnail. Click +Image to select or upload a thumbnail for the blog.
• RSS feed URL. The RSS feed URL is auto-generated when your site is published.
• When accessing the RSS feed URL, you can use the Save function in your browser to download the XML as an .rss file. This allows you to export your blog.

Blog Backup

Blog content is backed up when your site is backed up. If you restore a backup, the blog will be the one in the restored version of the site. Note that you will not see the restored version until the restored site is published. Until then, the run time and editor will look different, as with any site backup. For more information, see Backup Sites.

A post on a non-published restored version of a blog is not live until the restored site is published (unlike with regular posts, which do not require the site to be published again for the post to go live).

As always, a new backup version is automatically created when restoring a backup version.

Blog Stats

As part of our stats module, we track blog posts page views. To see blog stats, from the dashboard, click Stats, and then click Content Data.

Import Blog Posts from RSS Feeds



Import blog posts from an RSS feed. All Blog posts are imported, however, only supported elements are included in each blog post. This includes: Text (H1/H2/H3, paragraph), images, videos (Youtube or Vimeo), HTML elements, dividers and Disqus comments, and post author and post date. After the import, the imported posts are in draft mode until published by the site owner.

Note

If you are importing blog posts from RSS feeds in Editor 2.0, there are a few constraints if the posts you are migrating were created with the old text editor:

• Text will not receive theme styles. However, you can add the theme styles and they will apply.
• Some text formatting might be lost when you open the post for editing, but the text formatting can be re-added.

Due to performance issues the maximum number of posts you can import via RSS feed is 300 and the total posts limit is 1500. If your blog contains more you should limit the RSS accordingly. A backup of your site is automatically created prior to the import process. If you restore a backup to a version prior to the RSS import the posts will be removed.

Note

If the old blog is deleted, images imported from the old blog are removed.

To import blog posts from an RSS feed:

1. In the side panel, click Blog.
2. Click Import Posts.
3. Type a valid RSS feed URL in the field provided, and click Import posts.
4. When the import is done, you will be notified (you will also be notified if it fails. If it does fail, the entire process fails, not just the problematic post. The failure message will have information about what failed).
5. (Optional) Review the imported posts.
6. Publish all the imported posts.

Requirements for Valid RSS Feeds

Following are the requirements for valid RSS feeds:

• The RSS feed URL must be in a valid URL format.
• There cannot be non-supported characters in the posts URL, which includes EN characters, numbers and supported special characters (only ASCII characters).
• There are several ways to present the content of your blog post. To ensure a valid RSS feed, you must include the full content and not just a summary.
• There are no more than 300 posts in your RSS.

We recommend validating your RSS feed prior to importing. You can use W3C Feed Validator to do so.

If the RSS feed does not import into the blog, there may be issues with the RSS link that you are using or issues with the format of the RSS feed. If the import does not work, check the following:

• Ensure you are using the correct URL for the import. The RSS link is NOT the link to the blog page. This should be a link to the blog RSS feed. Most WordPress feed links are in the following format:  www.example.com/blog/feed
• Sometimes the problem with import is that there is no access to the next page. For example, (https://xda-developers.com/feed) shows us the 10 last posts, but if you go to the second page of the feed (https://xda-developers.com/feed?paged=2), it shows the same posts on the second page. This means that the feed is not pulling posts correctly and it is not possible to import all posts.

Creating an RSS feed varies by platform, following are platform specific links:

• WordPress RSS feed
• Webflow RSS feed
• Wix RSS feed

Updating an Old Blog to the New Blog Platform

Starting January 20, 2025, all old blogs that have not been updated yet will be automatically updated.



On March 17, 2019 Website Builder released a new blog editor. Any blogs that were created before this date will have the old blog editor. You are eligible to update to the new blog platform if your site has less than 800 blog posts.

The update is irreversible, so before updating consider the following:

• Blog posts automatically take on the theme settings for text, images, background page, and so on.
• All post titles are heading level 3s, and left aligned.
• There may be minor spacing differences in the posts, so make sure to review each post before republishing.
• The date format will match the default site language. For example, if the default site language is English, the format is MM-DD-YYYY.
• The word "By" no longer appears before the author name.
• The number of comments is not visible at the top of each post.

To update to the new platform:

1. In the side panel, click Blog.
2. In the Blog panel, click Update Blog. This might take a few minutes. A success message will display when the migration is complete.
3. After updating, review the posts to ensure everything is correct.
4. Republish the site.
5. (Optional) If you use blogs in your Team Templates, we recommend updating those templates to the new blog platform as well.

Blog Troubleshooting

I have the blog tool installed, but the page the blog lives on is missing or was accidentally deleted. How do I get it back?

The main blog page is just a regular page. To restore it, follow these steps:

1. Add a new page to your site as you normally would. For more information on adding pages, see Add Pages.
2. Insert the All Posts widget onto the new page.
3. Customize and design the page to your liking.

This will recreate your main blog page with all your posts.