Blogs Module - Allowing you to give the power of blogs to your team

Akismet Spam protection built in to comments

To power the front-end of your website or intranet, we provide a whole range of standard blog web controls to suit almost any circumstance.  We take a look below at some of the standard controls that are available to any web user in just two clicks.

 

The Blogs Complete Control

The Blogs Complete Control provides a full blogs implementation in a single click.

You will have a tag cloud, archive navigation and, of course, the full list of blogs.

This control is often used as a quick win, but sometimes the nature of your design may require that each of the components are used separately to better integrate into your template.

The Tag Cloud

The Tag Cloud control is often used as part of a blogs implementation but can, of course, be used to navigate any type of content in the Contensis Content Management System. The control renders a set of tags sized by the number of times a tag has been used. The more times a tag has been used, the larger the item will appear in the cloud.

Tagging can be adopted on any content in Contensis, and is often used to manage general page keywords. More on tagging can be found on our Meta Data pages.

The Blog Page

The blog page, or as called in Contensis, blog record control is the control that is used to render a blog.

You can add tag clouds, archive menus and comments to the page as standard.

Generally a menu control will also be added to allow navigation to other areas.

Commenting

Contensis has extensive support for commenting including full membership integration, moderation, Gravatar support, Akismet integration and much more.

Commenting is included with blogs as standard, but if you need more in depth information on commenting, check-out our commenting page.

RSS and Atom feeds

Most Contensis controls come with the option to generate an RSS feed or an Atom feed.

Blogs is no different. The RSS is categorised by either taxonomy or tags, and the body of the article is presented, which can be really useful for syndication purposes.

 

The Editor

Creating a new blog can be achieved in just three clicks. All you need do is login to Contensis and then simply click the 'create new blog' option.

You don't need any technical skills and new editors can be up-and-running creating new blogs in minutes.

We aim at every stage of the process to keep the editing environment consistent. If you have created an event, for example, you will immediately understand how to create a blog article.

 

Because it uses the Contensis WYSIWYG editor, we are guiding users down the path of creating accessible content without them even realising it.

As with all Contensis content, a full QA check is available and if the content does not meet the relevant criteria, then the page can be prevented from being submitted or approved, depending upon how you configure the QA module.

 

As standard, you will have keywords and description meta data to complete, but any other metadata can be entered if configured. When entering keywords the system will auto-suggest other keywords that have already been used.

Often it is also useful to configure a metadata element for tagging the content.  When this is done the listings will then be able to be filtered by these tags.

 

As you can see from the screenshot of the Blog Tag Cloud, using tags to organise data such as blogs, allows us to create a rich navigation experience for the end user.

Blogs use URL-rewriting, so you can navigate and browase the content by tags and sub tags. The Blogs module also has a tag crumb, so you can narrow your selection. You may be interested in content tagged with .Net, but also with JQuery, for example.

 

 

  

Blogs is an integrated content type within Contensis. This ensures that all of the same rules apply to this as to any other type of content.

From an administrator's perspective, you will need to initially configure the module and assign workflow and permissions.

Once this is done there should be no need for any involvement, other than just sitting back and letting the users create content

 

 

 

Hopefully you have seen the depth and breadth of the controls available to implement blogs on your site.

All of the controls have configurable options which allow for customisation to suit your needs, but sometimes this may not be enough, you may have specific requirements that are not included in the standard control set.

If you are using .Net then you can simply inherit from any of the standard controls and extend them to suit your needs, or you can use the same framework we use to develop new controls that meet your specific requirements.

If your idea is something that would be beneficial to all Contensis customers, then just run it past us, as we often will extend the system and provide new functionality based upon user specifications and ideas.

If you attend our developer training course, then you will be able to create any extra functionality or controls just like we do.