Essential Components of a Blog
- title
- author
- date of publication
- summary of content in the introduction
- subheadings or lists to break up the content
- call to action
- comments section
Essential Components – Details for the Divi User
First: Create a blog page. This will display your blog posts. Clone an existing page so that your site looks consistent. Remove the copied content and add a new section and/or single row. Add the blog module to this row. Under “elements” select show excerpt, author, date, and featured image. Lastly, under “design/layout”, select “grid”. When displayed, the reader may then click the screen to choose the post that s/he wants to read.
Second: Complete the following on the post form
- Focus key phrase – This is something that a user would type in the search bar.
- Snippet – This is a short description that will appear in a google search.
- Create a blog category.
- Add a new tag. This includes any other words that a user may search.
- Add a featured image that will appear on the blog page. Make it interesting!
- Excerpt – This is a summary that will appear on the blog page.
- Update – Click this button to save your changes. It is located in the upper right hand corner of the screen.
Third: Write your content. The goal here is to organize your content. Don’t make the reader read any more than they need. Start with a concise summary. Use subheadings that the reader can scan. Use lists and links so the reader can read more detail if s/he wants. Don’t be the blogger whose title is, “Top Three Things To Do on the Weekend” and then bury the things in a paragraph. List them clearly.
Additional Components
- Post Navigation
- At the end of a blog entry, add a new one column row.
- Add the “Post Navigation” module to that row.
- Update the Previous and Next link to : %title
- Related post section
- Add a new one column row.<.li>
- Insert a text module.
- To the text module/text body add <h2>You may also like</h2>.
- Next, add a new blog module under the text module
- Select the following: Post Content: 3, Included Categories: Current Category and Excerpt Length: 120.
- Leave Show Author, Show Categories and Show Pagination at “No”.
- Comment Section Add a new row and comment module. Style as desired.
- Call to Action Give your reader an opportunity to do something next: click on a link, subscribe to a newsletter, download a pdf, ect.
- Learn about more components on Divi.