So, I just purchased the blog application for our community, and was rather disappointed by the lack of functionality available.

Sure, you can create multiple blogs, but what about adding categories to those blog groups?

Category functionality and navigation is huge for blogging products. Is this something we can expect to see in coming updates? 

No chance. We've been asking for categories for years.

(You might've noticed that IPS's own blog, which has categories, is built using Pages rather than Blog. That tells a story, doesn't it?)

  On 5/20/2019 at 5:43 AM, Meddysong said:

(You might've noticed that IPS's own blog, which has categories, is built using Pages rather than Blog. That tells a story, doesn't it?)

Yeh, how odd.

And, just like I explain here:  

 

If you create a blog in a club section, only the leader of the club can write. It's not a collaborative blog effort. 

blogs is intended for multiple user submitted blogs whereas Pages is better suited to content from the community owner. There’s no story.

As Andy said, the blog application is really about collaborative blogging whereas we are just blogging for ourselves.

What would be your top 5 blog features on a wish list?

@Aetherdan, you can use wordpress as blogging app at the same time with IPS for everything else and connect those apps using oAuth2.

  On 5/20/2019 at 3:08 PM, Mr 13 said:

@Aetherdan, you can use wordpress as blogging app at the same time with IPS for everything else and connect those apps using oAuth2.

Thanks, I've actually started this process already when I noticed the limitations. Cheers for the insight though!

  On 5/20/2019 at 11:27 AM, Matt said:

As Andy said, the blog application is really about collaborative blogging whereas we are just blogging for ourselves.

What would be your top 5 blog features on a wish list?

 

Heres some missing features that I think would be essential to a good blogging product.

• Categories and nested categories
• Author following (specific to blog)
• Blog Navigation & internal linking
• Meta keyword/tagging to populate related article functionality
• Author blog profile/author blog list

 

  On 5/20/2019 at 5:22 AM, Aetherdan said:

Sure, you can create multiple blogs, but what about adding categories to those blog groups?

 

I'm only laughing at your post because, yes, I (and a couple of others) have been loudly requesting categories for blogs for AGES.  So far, no response whatsoever from Invision.  Hellooooo, Invision?

  On 5/21/2019 at 4:16 AM, Aetherdan said:

• Author following (specific to blog)
•  

I'm not sure what you mean by this.  You can already Follow blogs, but do you mean you only want to follow poster X when they post in blog Y?  You might want to consider making a custom Activity Feed; it's not as convenient, but you might be able to do it that way.

  On 5/20/2019 at 8:39 AM, Andy Millne said:

blogs is intended for multiple user submitted blogs whereas Pages is better suited to content from the community owner.

But in IPS "blog" different authors (not only community owners) write content:

If one purpose of Pages is to be a blog of the owner then the club owners should have this feature as well. Right now using Pages is not possible in the club and at the same time only club owners can write in the clubs blog.  Additionally club news from the blog are looking quite weird. 

I think if IPS would use blogs itself (also within clubs) they would better recognize the weakness. 

  On 5/21/2019 at 4:16 AM, Aetherdan said:

Categories and nested categories

+1 for this  - categories for blogs and also for posts in blogs.

Yes, we are wanting this real bad

 

For gaming communities, to be able to have set categories for the members to pick from better enhances the chances of them wanting to make/start a blog section

 

(in our groups/clubs, no one focuses on blogs there, it's all about the whole group contributing in what's available and not what the owner/admin just wants)

Ok, we hear you loud and clear on categories for blogs.

I've added this to our internal list.

  On 5/30/2019 at 7:59 AM, Matt said:

Ok, we hear you loud and clear on categories for blogs.

I've added this to our internal list.

Thank you, Matt!

  On 5/20/2019 at 8:39 AM, Andy Millne said:

Pages is better suited to content from the community owner

There is, however, one huge downside to using the Pages App as a blog: It is not possible (at least not by default/without custom coding) to display article comments in a block in the frontend. Also, I did not find any way to realize this via custom blocks in the backend (I am no programer/coding expert). So how can I draw the users' attention to article comments when there is no way to display those comments anywhere on the site?

I really do not know why a block for article comments is missing, but I'd really like to see this being added to the software.

  On 5/30/2019 at 11:28 AM, MMXII said:

There is, however, one huge downside to using the Pages App as a blog: It is not possible (at least not by default/without custom coding) to display article comments in a block in the frontend. Also, I did not find any way to realize this via custom blocks in the backend (I am no programer/coding expert). So how can I draw the users' attention to article comments when there is no way to display those comments anywhere on the site?

I really do not know why a block for article comments is missing, but I'd really like to see this being added to the software.

Agreed, this is the type of thing that is frustrating with Pages. Testing just now, I even tried to achieve it using custom RSS feeds, custom activity stream feeds, fed the not an RSS feed block but nada.

  On 5/30/2019 at 11:28 AM, MMXII said:

So how can I draw the users' attention to article comments when there is no way to display those comments anywhere on the site?

Usually with the activity feeds, like with any other content. All recent activity comes together there. 

(Not that I’m saying a recent comments widget would hurt.)

  On 5/30/2019 at 7:27 PM, opentype said:

Usually with the activity feeds, like with any other content. All recent activity comes together there.

If that was a valid argument, one could just remove almost every other frontend block, too, because... people can just check out the activities page.

(Sarcasm aside, of course I understand what you are saying. And I see, you also understand what I propose to implement.)

Surely it would be better to just have better WordPress integration with the site? the blog product will never be anywhere near the level of Wordpress.

  On 5/21/2019 at 8:35 AM, liquidfractal said:

I'm not sure what you mean by this.  You can already Follow blogs, but do you mean you only want to follow poster X when they post in blog Y?  You might want to consider making a custom Activity Feed; it's not as convenient, but you might be able to do it that way.

Follow only blog posts by a specific author. Not forum posts.

  On 5/21/2019 at 8:03 PM, Sonya* said:

But in IPS "blog" different authors (not only community owners) write content:

If one purpose of Pages is to be a blog of the owner then the club owners should have this feature as well. Right now using Pages is not possible in the club and at the same time only club owners can write in the clubs blog.  Additionally club news from the blog are looking quite weird. 

I think if IPS would use blogs itself (also within clubs) they would better recognize the weakness. 

This is also a great suggestion

  On 5/30/2019 at 11:22 PM, asigno said:

Surely it would be better to just have better WordPress integration with the site? the blog product will never be anywhere near the level of Wordpress.

This is what I ended up going in the end anyway.

I would absolutely love to be be able to tie comments from IPB into my Wordpress posts.

I saw this Page and the IPB comments at the bottom and was so jealous: 

If only there was some way to add comments to the bottom of my WP stories... anyone? 

  On 6/12/2019 at 6:06 PM, breatheheavy said:

I would absolutely love to be be able to tie comments from IPB into my Wordpress posts.

I saw this Page and the IPB comments at the bottom and was so jealous: 

If only there was some way to add comments to the bottom of my WP stories... anyone? 

Just to clarify, those articles are published in the Pages app, which is a first party native app to Invision Community.  It is not built on WordPress.