Set up a blog with Posts

Maintaining a blog is one of the easiest and most effective ways to use Finalsite Posts. Whether you’re starting a blog from scratch or moving an existing blog from Page Manager, a few simple steps will get you set up and blogging.

Setting up the board

Unless you are migrating posts from Page Manager, the best place to start in creating your blog is by setting up a new board. If this is your first time working with Posts, you may want to refer to Get started with Posts to learn more about how to create a board.

Once you have created the board, it’s a good idea to utilize the Board Description and Thumbnail options in the board settings to add information about the overall content of the blog. The article Edit board settings gives you more details for how to set up general board settings.

There are two other decisions to make within the board settings: who can view and who can post to the blog.

On the Privacy tab, decide whether “Everyone” or “Constituents Only” will be allowed to view posts. (Admin Only means the posts will not be visible on your site.) If you choose constituents, you will be given the option to select which groups of constituents to display the posts for.

On the Permissions tab, select one or more constituents who have access to create and publish posts on the board. Any “Admin” users of the board will receive email notifications about comments on posts as well as requests to publish posts. Refer to Manage board permissions to learn more.

Setting up the posts

Before you start putting together the page to display your blog on, it may be a good idea to create a sample post or two first. This way, you can familiarize yourself with all the options Posts offers and think about how you want the blog to be organized. If you don’t know how to make a post, the Make a new post article can help.

Consider how you’ll use tags and categories to organize the posts on your blog, as well. Categories and tags offers some food for thought about how to set these up.

Making the Composer pages

In Composer, there are loads of options for how you can set up your blog page using Post elements, Board elements, and Post Tools elements. Refer to these articles in our Knowledge Base to learn more about how these elements work.

A blog is essentially a list of posts, so a good place to start with your blog page is a Post element in List format. Expand the “Content Filters” section and use the dropdown menu to select one or more Boards. Use the checkboxes under “Content Details” to select which components of each post to display. You probably don’t want to display the full content of every post on the main page, so skip the “Body” tag and opt for the “Link titles to post details” or “Read More link” instead.

If you don’t display the full post initially, you’ll need to display that content somewhere else in order for users to continue reading. Decide whether that should happen in a popup window, another element on the same page, or a new page. Select the option you prefer by expanding the  “Link To” section.

For best results, especially in terms of SEO and sending out email alerts, go with the “Page” option. You’ll want to create a Blog Details page underneath the blog page, hide it from navigation, and place a Post Single-format element on that page. Open up that element’s settings, and make sure the blog’s board is selected under “Content Filters.” Choose “Override Page Title and SEO Metadata” from “Formatting” to always show the individual post’s title and information in the user’s browser tab. These instructions are outlined in more detail in this article about Posts and SEO best practices.

The Post List and the the Single Post elements are the most important building blocks for your blog pages, but there are other bells and whistles you may want to add. The Post Tools element has options for navigating to previous and next posts (this is handy for users on mobile devices!), tag filters, category filters, and search. If you put some time into your board description, you may want to display that with a Board element in Single format. Play with these elements and different layouts and configurations to settle on a page that works for you. Don’t forget that you can use layout elements, and the options in the Page Layout menu, to add rows and columns to your page!

Migrating Blog Posts from Page Manager

You can migrate Page Manager blog posts into Posts. Specifically, you can automatically pull in the posts made to “Blog”-type Page Manager pages. Each Blog Page you import will become a Board, and each entry on that blog will become a separate Post.

Note: You must be logged in as a site administrator to migrate posts. Further, your name will be filled in as the “Author” name for any migrated posts whose existing author name does not match a current constituent. You may want to create a generic admin account with a name like “[blog name] Editor” when importing posts.

To import a Page Manager blog, start by navigating to the blog page in Page Manager:

1. Click “Site Administration” in the module menu to open up Page Manager.

2. Navigate to the blog page using the site map at the upper left.

3. Click on the “Unpublished” tab. You’ll see a “Migrate this blog to Composer” notification at the top of the list of posts.

4. Click the “migrate” link to begin the migration process.

The entire blog and all of its posts will be imported to Posts in one operation, provided that each post has a title.

Moving Migrated Posts

The newly created posts are saved in a new folder, “System,” and a new board, “Migrated News,” which are created automatically during the import process.

After importing content, open up Posts and go to the “System” folder. Click on the three-dot action menu icon on the “Migrated News” Board, and select “Move to a New Folder.” If for any reason your posts do not seem to be displaying, make sure to check your display settings on your Posts element.

You can then select a destination folder for the contents of the “Migrated News” board.