If you’re familiar with blogging in iWeb, you’ll have a short learning curve when starting to blog in EverWeb version 2.0. Whilst the two products have many similarities, iWeb’s development stopped over five years ago. EverWeb on the other hand get’s regular updates throughout the year adding new features and enhancements to keep up with today’s technologies. In this blog we take a look at EverWeb’s blog main and archive pages, how to use them, how to get the best out of them and where there are differences for those used to iWeb.
EverWeb’s Blog Structure
Everweb 2.0s blogging environment is structured like iWeb with three page types: blog main, posts (called entries in iWeb) and archive. Each page has a specific purpose: the blog main page acts as the ‘index’ for the posts you create, the posts page contains all the blog posts you have created, and the archive page which lists older blog posts that you no longer want to see on the main blog page, or can be used as a reference catalog of all the blogs posts created. Whilst these pages look like any other pages in your Web Page List, each page has some unique functionality. In addition, you can create more than one blog for your website e.g. you may have one blog for desktop and one for mobile, or one for marketing & sales and second blog for technical posts, etc..
The Blog Main page
When you create a new blog in EverWeb, the blog main page is created as an open folder containing the posts and archive pages within it. The posts and archive pages cannot be deleted, only the blog itself. If you delete the blog main page you also delete all the posts you’ve created within it so caution is advised. If you delete the blog by accident, use cmd+Z to immediately undo the action. It’s also useful to set autosave and automatic backups on in your EverWeb-> Preferences menu just in case you need to roll back at any time.
The Blog Main/Archive Widget
The blog main page is the ‘index’ page of the blog displaying some, or all, of the blog posts you have created within the widget on the Editor Window. The widget can’t be deleted from the page. The same is also true for the archive page which has a similar widget which works in the same way as the blog main page. The blog main/archive page widget differs from ‘regular’ widgets as it only has selection handles on its vertical sides. Therefore, you can change the width of the widget whilst the length is automatically handled by EverWeb based on the Widget Settings e.g. the number of posts you wish to display, whether you include thumbnail images and where they are placed, as well as any extra spacing you may wish to add between posts.
The widget can be styled in a number of ways. If you’re familiar with iWeb or with EverWeb’s RSS Feed widget, you’ll find that the blog main and archive widgets are styled in the same way. The widget contains the blog post titles, optionally the date, and an extract of the post itself. To change the styling of the post titles, for example, just click on one of the titles in the widget. All the blog post titles in the widget become highlighted. Next, select the font type, size, weight and color you want to use from the Font Panel by clicking on the Fonts button in EverWeb’s Toolbar. The other sections of the widget work in the same way making it quick work to get the look you want.
Apart from the features outlined above, the blog main and archive pages work in the same way as any other pages so you can add Master pages to them or set other defaults using the page settings tab etc.
Adding the blog to the Nav Menu Widget
You can easily add the blog main page to your Navigation Menu widget. To do this, select the blog main page in the WPL, then go to the Inspector window and select the Page Settings Tab. Tick the box ‘include page in navigation menu’ in the Page Details section of to add the blog main page to the Navigation Menu widget.
If you also check the same box for the archive page, it will be included as a drop down menu option below the blog main page in the Navigation Menu. You cannot select only to have the archive pages or to have the posts pages in the Navigation Menu.
Hyperlinking Your Blog
You can add hyperlinks to the blog main, all blog posts and the archive page by hyperlinking using the Hyperlinks Inspector in exactly the same way as you would anywhere else in EverWeb e.g. if you want to link to some text to a blog post, create the text you want and then highlight it. Go to the Hyperlinks Inspector and ‘Enable as Hyperlink’. Make sure ‘Link To:’ is set to ‘One of My Pages’, then in the Page drop down menu, select the blog post you want to link to.
Linking Desktop and Mobile Blogs
Everweb allows you to link your desktop website blog to your mobile website blog if you have created one. You link from desktop to mobile in the same manner as you would do when linking regular desktop pages to mobile pages.
More about Blogging in EverWeb
The EverWeb YouTube channel has recently launched a series of videos on blogging that may be of interest so check out their YouTube Channel. Don’t forget to subscribe if you want to keep up with their latest vids!
For some further hints and tips on blogging checkout our EverWeb Blogging Hints and Tips article.
If you’ve got a question please let us know below, we’ll get back to you as soon as we can!
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