A Blog is an Outlet for News or Topical Information
A blog is for authoritative content from small list of privileged authors (the authors are more important than the commenters, there is an author/reader separation). Blogs often have a single or few authors.
Blogs are best suited to provide announcements, news, and expert thoughts/ideas.
Blog Creation and Management
Blogs are created in the context of a group (as in applications).
Manage Blog Options
Blog options center around functions you can manage.
Blog Options | Identification, tracking, contact, and blogging options (see table below). |
Post Options | Post commenting, excerpting, placement, and rating (see table below). |
Posts | Search for all or unpublished posts. |
Mirrored Feeds | Create external feed mirrors. |
Comments | List of comments on blog's content |
Trackbacks | A list of trackbacks for the blog. |
Tags | Manage or moderate blog tags. |
Featured Content | Manage content in the blog that is featured. |
Permissions | Change permissions for site or group roles on the blog. |
Snippets | Create snippets to increase click-through rate in search results. |
Syndication SEO/SMO | Keywords in site description and blog content; Post, keyword/tag, and comment RSS options and URLs, iTunes support, Atom syndication, ping service, syndicate external links. |
About the Author | Copy for About the Author and enabling publication of the page. |
Blog Options
Blog Options center around options you can configure for the blog. The contextual panel contains the following options:
Blog title | The blog title can be set or changed here. |
Web address | The part of the URL that names this post. |
Blog group | By default, the blog's group is where it is created. However, it can be moved to another group. |
Blog Description | Describes the blog. |
Authors | A blog can have more than one author, which you can add here. You can also temporarily add someone as an author and then remove them. |
Enable AggBugs | An AggBug is a transparent image embedded in syndicated content that helps track remote views. |
Include posts in sitemap | The blog is placed in the sitemap so that sites such as Google can index it. |
Include in community aggregate | Includes posts when listing posts for the group, parent group, or entire site. |
Enable contact form | Enables readers to contact the owner or a different email address about the blog. |
Contact email address | Email address used to contact the blog owner or the different email address specified about the blog. |
Enable blog by email | Blogging by writing an email remotely from the local site. The subject and text are the post name and body. |
Post Options
Post options center around functions you can configure for individual posts.
Can readers comment | Allows readers to comment. This only applies to comments made after this check box is checked. |
Comment moderation | Requires that new comments (that is, after the check box is checked) be approved before being published. |
Can readers rate posts | Can readers use stars to rate a post. |
Collect trackbacks | Determines whether trackbacks should be collected from blogs that link to your post. |
Disable comments | This differs from "can readers comment" in that comments are allowed for a specified number of days and then closed. |
Display posts on blog's homepage | Newest posts are displayed on the blog home page. |
Use post summary | An RSS-related option that by default shows a 250-character excerpt in feeds, activity streams, email, and post lists (but note that blog authors can override this decision). |
Post summary length | The length of the summary, defaulting to 250 characters. |
Automatic post names | A post automatically uses the post title in the URL. |
Default post image | You can upload an image to be the default for all posts in the blog, using the Upload file below this option. |