A blog on your site
Write blog posts at your own site address: the editor, the /blog address, publishing and scheduling, categories, the look, the RSS feed and what the blog does for search engines.
Your blog holds the articles you publish on your own site, at its address. Every post gets its own link, shows up in the RSS feed and in search engines, and readers see it in the look of your storefront or of a page you pick. This article shows how to write a post, publish it right away or schedule it, sort posts into categories and set the blog's look.
Where the blog is
In the sidebar, choose Your site → Blog (/sites/blog). The list holds every post, drafts and published ones, starting with the most recently changed. Each post shows its date and status: Draft, Published or Scheduled for [time].
Above the list:
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Blog look | Opens the Site look and menu screen, where you choose what readers see around the blog (below). |
| Categories | Opens the Blog categories window. |
| View blog | Opens your public blog in a new tab. It shows once you have at least one published post. |
| New post | Opens an empty post in the editor. |
Until you have a post, the screen shows a Start writing on your own site card with a Write your first post button.
The blog's address
The blog lives at your site address followed by /blog. When your site runs on your own domain, so does the blog (see Connect a custom domain).
| Address | What is there |
|---|---|
/blog | The list of published posts, 12 per page, with Newer posts and Older posts links. |
/blog/[post-address] | One post. |
/blog/category/[category-address] | A category page on a site in English. On a site in Polish (also the default): /blog/kategoria/[category-address]. |
/blog/feed | The RSS feed with the 30 newest posts. |
The blog appears on your site with your first published post. Before that, /blog shows no post list. You can add a link to the blog to your site's shared menu on Your site → Look and menu.
Write a post
Open a new post
Click New post. The editor opens full screen, and the arrow next to Blog in its header takes you back to the list.
Type the title and the body
Type the title in the Post title field and the body under it. It is the same editor you use for newsletter issues and course lessons: headings, lists, links, images and videos.
Save
Click Save. The post is saved as a Draft and from then on has its own address. Without a title you get "Give the post a title first."
A saved post has Preview draft (after publishing, Open post) and a Copy link icon in its header. Only your team can see the draft preview, under a bar that says the post is a draft visible to your team until you publish it. When you leave the editor with unsaved changes, the Unsaved changes window offers Discard changes and Return to editing.
Post settings
The Settings icon in the editor header opens the Post settings window. Click Apply, then Save, so the settings are saved with the post.
| Field | What you set |
|---|---|
| Address | The end of the post's link (/blog/[address]). Leave it empty to take it from the title. When another post has it, you get "Another post already uses this address." |
| Summary | A short summary on the post list, in the RSS feed and in search results. Left empty, it is taken from the start of the post. |
| Publication date | The date readers see. Empty means the date of the first publication. Set an earlier date when you move a post from another site; it cannot be in the future. |
| Cover image | An image from the media library (Choose image, Change, Remove). It shows on the post list and in the preview of a link shared on social media. |
| Categories | Up to 3. You can add a new category right in this field. |
| Tags | Up to 10 labels: type a tag and press Enter. |
| Title in search engines and Description in search engines | The title and description Google shows. They default to the post title and the summary. |
| Hide from search engines | The post stays available under its link, but search engines are asked not to list it. |
Good to know
Changing the address of a published post changes its link: the old link stops working. If the post has already been shared, keep the address.
Publish or schedule
A draft has two buttons in its header: Publish and Schedule. Only a post with a body can be published or scheduled.
- Publish puts the post on your blog and in the RSS feed at once. You get "Post published".
- Schedule opens the Schedule the post window. Pick the date and time (Polish time, the same as on the post list), by default tomorrow at 8:00, and click Schedule. The time can be a few minutes ahead at the earliest and a year ahead at the latest. The post goes live by itself at that time, and until then only your team can see it: it is not on the public post list, in the RSS feed or in the sitemap.
A scheduled post carries a Scheduled for [time] label in its header. Click it to choose Change the time, Publish now or Cancel the schedule (the post goes back to drafts). On the post list, the ⋯ menu has Publish now and Cancel the schedule. If the post did not go out on time, the label turns into Missed its time: [time]: publish it by hand or change the time.
A published post carries a green Published label in its header. Changes you save with Save are live for readers at once. Click the label to choose Unpublish: the post goes back to drafts and leaves the blog, and its first publication date stays when you publish it again.
To delete a post, use Delete in the ⋯ menu (on the list or in the editor). The post leaves your blog for good, with no trash. To only hide it, unpublish it.
Categories
Click Categories above the post list. In the Blog categories window you add categories and fill in Name, Address, Description (shown under the name on the category page and in search results), Title in search engines and Description in search engines for each. A blog can have up to 50 categories, and one post can sit in up to 3.
Every category has its own page on the blog with the posts in it. Above the post list, readers see the categories that have published posts, plus All. A category with no published posts stays out of search engines until you publish the first post in it.
A new category address moves its page: old links stop working. Deleting a category does not delete posts: they stay on the blog, just without it.
The blog's look
The Blog look button takes you to the Site look and menu screen. In its Blog look section, choose what readers see around the post list and each post, and click Save:
| Option | What the blog gets |
|---|---|
| Default (like the store) | Your store's header and footer. |
| Like my page | The chosen page's header, menu, footer, fonts and colours. Changes to that page show on the blog at once. When the page has its own menu, the blog shows its links. |
A blog template must be a published page open to everyone, without its own scripts, with a header and a footer. When no page fits, Like my page is turned off.
Post dates and the blog's labels (such as All posts or Older posts) follow the Site language setting: see Site address and main page.
Search engines, sharing and RSS
The blog prepares every published post for search engines with no extra work:
- a page title and description from Title in search engines and Description in search engines (by default the post title with your site name, and the summary);
- a canonical address on your site's main address, also when you connect your own domain;
- a social media link preview with the title, description and cover image;
- article structured data that Google reads;
- a place in the sitemap (
/sitemap.xml), together with the/blogpage and the categories that have published posts.
Drafts, scheduled posts, the draft preview and posts with Hide from search engines stay out of search engines and the sitemap.
The RSS feed at /blog/feed carries the 30 newest posts with their categories, and every blog page points feed readers to it. A scheduled post joins the feed only when it is published.
You can see visits to the blog and to single posts in Analytics → Traffic & conversions as "Blog" and "Blog post". Your team's draft previews do not count as visits.
Write with the assistant
The AI assistant can write a draft post, for example from one of your course lessons, pick a cover and schedule the post once you approve. See Blog with the assistant.
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