In this guide, we aim to give you a jump start on using the blogs application, within your invision commuinity suite. We will go through the basics of how blogs work, and just how easy it can be to tweak settings for you and your members.
On first installing blogs, the blog tab is empty of any blogs/content. By default, all members of the site have the ability to create basic blogs. Therefore they can create their own blog, and create their own blog entries within them.
Empty Blogs Area
One or more blogs can be set up by a user, for adding entries into. For example, someone may have a blog for their chosen sports team, and a blog for their training in that sport, and another for their physical fitness. Each of these can then have entries on a periodic basis, relating to those items.
Members create a blog, simply by selecting the "Create a blog" button. They will then be asked for to select a category, a name, description, and whether or not they wish for people to be able to use an RSS feed reader from your blog.
Creating a blog
Once you have created a new blog, you can add entries into it, using the button provided in the top right of that blog
Inside a blog
When creating a new entry, you can choose a feature photo for that entry, polls, and even link the blog entry to an album within your gallery if you have the gallery application installed.
Blog Entry Screen
If you wish to add more categories, you can do this from your adminCP, by visiting the following location
Community -> Blogs -> Blogs
Select "Create New Category" to add
Blog Categories
As we have just installed our community suite, we have the blog application installed and our members can use this. For our example blog however, we would like to change some setting, and make this more suitable for our site. Our aim here is to do 2 things.
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Create a blog in which all staff can post. This will serve as a site blog related to things happening in and around the site. Any member of staff may want to make an entry here
- We would like for people within our members group to be able to create blogs just for select friends to view. So we are going to allow them to create private blogs for this purpose.
As a group blog is a blog that does not belong to any individual, we will create this from the admin CP. To do this, log into your admin CP and visit the following location
Community -> Blogs ->Blogs
Once we are here, we will click the "Add Blog" button in the top right
Add Blog
Now we are in the creation screen, we want to click on "Group" rather than "Single author" and select all of our staff groups to post in. Hold cmd/ctrl on your keyboard, and select each of the groups whos members will be allowed to post within it. You can then give the blog a name and description.
Add Group Blog
Once you have saved this, all members of staff will be able to add entries into that blog.
Now we have sorted out the staff blog, lets give our members group access to allow only certain members to see their blog. To do this, go to the following area and click on the pencil icon on the side of the "members" group.
Members -> Members -> Groups
Member Group Settings
Once you are in here, select the blog tab, and you will see settings relating to that group of members. As we want to allow the member group to create blogs only their friends can see, we are going to allow them to set up private blogs.
Private Blogs
Now we have set this, our members will have an extra setting when creating blogs, where they can select who can view the blog entries.
Choosing who can see
As you can see, blogs are easy for your members to use, and can be handy for a great number of things within your site.
Example Blogs
You will see more guides available under Suite Applications>Blogs on the left, for this application. These contain more detailed guides on specific settings, along with some more site specific examples and tips.
As with all areas of our suite, if you are unsure where to find something, and cannot find how to do this in our guides, please feel free to submit a ticket to our support team. We are always happy to advise you on how to get the best from your Invision Community Suite.
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