Creating Your First Blog Post with EverWeb

EverWeb version 2.0 introduced what was perhaps the most user requested feature ever: Blogging! If you’re familiar with blogging in iWeb, you’ll be immediately familiar with EverWeb’s blogging environment. Whilst looking familiar, EverWeb improves upon the iWeb blog by adding features such as Master Page support, Comment Engine support using Disqus or Facebook Comments, a dedicated Editor and Preview Window and more. There’s also a convenient Import feature so that blog posts from either iWeb or WordPress can be directly imported in to EverWeb.

Creating a Blog in EverWeb
If you have’t created a blog in EverWeb yet, it just takes a few clicks of the mouse button:

1. First, open your project file in EverWeb if you have not done so already.
2. Click on the ‘Add Page’ button in the Toolbar.
3. Click on the ‘Blank’ Theme Template which is the first theme listed on the left hand side of the dialog box.
4. Next select the ‘Blog’ page style from the right hand side of the dialog box.
5. A new blog will be created in the Web Page List.

The Structure of the Blog
The blog you have just created has three components:

1. The ‘blog’ page is also known as the Blog Index Page. It lists some, or all, of the blog posts that you have created depending on how you customize your Widget Settings. You can rename ‘blog’ to a name of your choice and it’s fine if you want to have more than one blog in your project file if you need it. Typically ‘blog’ lists only the most recent blog posts with older posts listed in the ‘archive’ page. The ‘blog’ page is a directory page containing the ‘posts’ and ‘archive’ pages. If you delete the ‘blog’ page, you delete the whole blog including all of your posts. Make sure that you have backup set up on your EverWeb Preferences just in case!
2. The Blog Posts Page. This page is called ‘posts’ and is where you create, edit and delete your blog posts. You cannot rename, or delete, this page without deleting the whole blog.
3. The Archive Page. The ‘archive’ page lists all the blog posts contained in your blog. As with the posts page, you cannot delete, or rename, the archive page without deleting the whole blog.

Creating and Editing Blog Posts
Creating blog posts is at the heart of your blogging experience. Begin by selecting the ‘posts’ page in the Web Page List. When you create a blog in EverWeb,the first post ‘New Blog Post’ is automatically created which you can directly edit.

There are three windows on the ‘posts’ page:

1. The Blog Posts List. At the top of the page is the list of blog posts that have already been created. Here you can add additional posts, delete unwanted posts and import blog posts from iWeb and WordPress by clicking the appropriate button at the bottom of the list. You can reorder blog posts by title and date by clicking on the ‘Blog Post’ and ‘Date’ labels in the Blog Posts List header. To change a blog title, click on its title then edit it just as you would do for a regular page in EverWeb. To change the post’s date or time click in the Date field. To the left of each blog post you’ll also notice a red or green button indicating whether the blog post has been published or not.
2. The Blog Post Editor Window. The middle section of the ‘posts’ page is the Blog Post Editor Window. This is where you directly enter your blog post text, or copy and paste text from the clipboard. You can apply fonts and colors to the body text and drag and drop in any images required for the post. The editor supports features such as ordered and unordered lists, hyperlinking, paragraph formatting, quote levels, justified text and more, all easily accessed from the Editor’s Toolbar. Remember, though, that the Blog Post Editor Window is just that – an editor. To see the fully formatted blog post in the Blog Post Preview Window.
3. The Blog Post Preview Window is located in the bottom third of the ‘posts’ page. This is where you see the formatted results of the text and images that you added in the Blog Post Editor. The Preview Window is much like a Master Page. Any content added directly in to the Preview Window will be displayed on all blog posts. The same is true if you change page settings in the Page tab in the Inspector Window for the ‘posts’ page. For example, if you change the Browser Background color, Content Height/Width etc. these changes will be reflected in all your blog posts. The ability to add such Master Page type features to the Preview Window is a guaranteed time saver.
4. If you want to change how much of each section is visible on screen just drag the splitter bar between sections up and down until you have the desired result.

Blog Post Widget Settings
Widget Settings are available to further customize your blog posts. Usually you’ll see the Widget Settings immediately when accessing the posts page. If you don’t, click on the Widget Settings tab in the Inspector and make sure that the blog content in the Blog Post Preview Window is selected.

Widget Settings are where you can set defaults for the Blog Post Preview Window e.g. Header Title font size and style settings, date formatting settings, and post specific options such as hyperlinks settings, post image, Comment Engine options and so forth.

Publish Your Blog!
Once you have finished your blog post, either preview or publish to the Internet.

We’ve only briefly covered how to create your first blog post in EverWeb. There’s a lot more to explore, the best way to do this is by experimenting to see what works best for you.

If you have any questions or comments please let us know, we’ll do our best to help! There’ll be more about blogging in the future so come back soon!