Blog

Updated by Darryl Waterhouse on 13 October 2026 7 min read

Blog adds a public blog to your site: posts with categories and tags, scheduled publishing, optional comments, an RSS feed and a choice of looks. Writers can draft posts; editors publish them.

What it does

Posts written in Markdown, with an excerpt, featured image, categories, tags and search-engine fields.
Drafts, publishing now, and scheduling for a later date and time.
Categories, each with its own page on the site.
Optional reader comments, held for approval if you want.
Six post layouts and four listing displays, all editable as blocks.
An RSS feed, and pages for each category, tag and author.
Shortcodes to show recent posts, a grid, a featured post or the category list on any page.
A Blog link added to your navbar when the plugin is turned on.

Getting started

Open Blog from the admin sidebar.
Optional: click the three-dot button beside New post and choose Add sample posts to see how the blog looks before you write anything (admins only). Remove them later from the same menu.
Click New post.
Enter a Title and write the Content.
Add an Excerpt, Categories, Tags and a Featured Image if you like.
Click Publish to put it live now, or Schedule to pick a date and time. Save keeps it as a draft.
Visit /blog on your site to see it.

Screens

The sidebar Blog item opens Posts, Categories and Comments. Every Blog screen has a Blog settings cog in the banner.

Posts

Figure chips at the top show All, Published, Drafts and Scheduled. Click one to show only those.
Search matches titles, excerpts and slugs. Filter by category, and sort by Newest first, Oldest first or Title, A to Z. Clear filters resets them.
Right-click a post (or use its three-dot button) for Edit, View on site, Copy link, Publish now, Unpublish, Duplicate as draft and Delete.
The three-dot button beside New post has View the blog, Edit layouts in Blocks, and Add sample posts or Remove sample posts (admins only). Removing samples removes only the sample posts, and sample categories nothing else uses.

Writers without the Publish permission see only their own posts.

Post editor

Field	What it does
Title	Required.
Slug	The last part of the post's address, for example `my-first-post`. With Auto ticked it follows the title. Changing it on a published post breaks links to the old address. Two posts cannot share a slug: saving one with a slug another post already has (a draft included) is refused with a message.
Excerpt	A sentence or two shown in listings. Also used as the search-engine description when SEO Description is empty.
Content	Markdown. Every shortcode the site supports works here too.
SEO Title / SEO Description	What search engines and link previews show. Leave empty to use the title and excerpt.
Post layout	Site default (follows Blog settings) or a layout of its own.
Categories	Type to find one, or click the box to see them all. A post can be in several.
Tags	Type a tag and press Enter or a comma. Tags already used on other posts are suggested. Each tag gets its own page.
Featured Image	Shown at the top of the post and in listings. Pick Image opens the Media library; Clear removes it.

The buttons:

Save (or Ctrl+S) stores your changes and keeps the post as it is. A draft stays a draft; a live post stays live and updates.
Publish puts it on the site now.
Schedule picks a date and time. The post goes live by itself when that time passes.
Move to drafts takes a live or scheduled post off the site.
Preview shows the post as readers will see it, in any layout, before you save.

The Status card shows the status, the scheduled or published date, when it was last saved and when it was created.

Comments

Filter by Pending, Approved, Rejected, Spam or All, and search.
Approve all pending approves every waiting comment at once.
Click a comment to read all of it. Right-click it (or use its three-dot button) for Approve, Back to pending, Reject, Mark as spam, Open the post, Reply by email and Delete.

Only approved comments appear on the site. If comments are switched off, the screen says so and links to Blog settings.

The public blog

These pages are served under the blog's base path (default /blog):

Address	What it shows
`/blog`	The newest posts, with paging (`/blog/page/2` and so on).
`/blog/<slug>`	One post.
`/blog/category/<slug>`	Posts in a category.
`/blog/tag/<tag>`	Posts with a tag.
`/blog/author/<id>`	Posts by one author.
`/blog/feed.xml`	The RSS feed.

Depending on the layout, post pages show reading time, a contents list, share links, newer and older post links, related posts and, when switched on, comments with a comment form (name, email and comment; the email is never shown).

Listings can offer readers a search box, category filters, sorting, a display switch and a right-click menu on each post (more in this category, more with this tag, more by this author), all without reloading. Blogs with more than 300 posts page normally instead.

Settings

Click the Blog settings cog in the banner. Only admins can save changes.

Setting	What it does
Base path	The address every blog page lives under. `/blog` gives `/blog/my-post`. Applies as soon as you save. The navbar link Blog added moves with it; links typed into pages do not.
Posts per page	How many posts a listing page shows. Default 10.
RSS feed length	How many of the newest posts the feed carries. Default 20.
Comments	Readers can leave a comment under each post. Off by default. Turning it off hides the form; existing comments stay.
Hold comments for approval	New comments wait under Comments > Pending until approved. On by default.
Post layout	How a post looks unless it picks its own.
Listing display	How the blog index and the category, tag and author pages show posts.
Readers can switch display	Shows a Cards / List / Magazine / Compact switch above listings. A reader's choice is remembered in their browser.
Search and filter in the page	Adds the search box, category pills, sorting and right-click menu to listings.
Related posts	How many posts sharing a category or tag are suggested under each post. 0 turns them off. Default 3.

Post layouts

Layout	Look
Classic	Title, image, then the story in one centred column. The default.
Feature	A full-width hero image with the title over it.
Minimal	Just the words: a narrow reading column, no image.
Sidebar	The story beside a contents list, details and share links.
Split	The picture on one half, the headline on the other.
Essay	A long read set like print: serif type, a drop cap and pull quotes.

Listing displays

Display	Look
Cards	A grid of picture cards. The default.
List	One post per row, picture beside the text.
Magazine	The newest post large across the top, the rest as cards.
Compact	Titles and dates only.

Every layout and display is a block you can edit in Blocks: blog-post-... for post layouts and blog-card, blog-card-row and blog-card-compact for listings. Copy one under a new name starting blog-post- or blog-card- (for example blog-post-long-read) and it appears as a new choice in the settings and the post editor.

Shortcodes

Use these on any page.

A list of recent post titles and dates:

[blog-list count="5" category="news" /]

A grid of post cards with pictures:

[blog-grid count="6" cols="3" category="news" /]

One post as a large card (leave out slug for the newest post):

[blog-featured slug="my-first-post" /]

A linked list of categories, optionally with post counts:

[blog-categories show-counts="true" /]

Attribute	Used by	What it does
`count` (or `limit`)	blog-list, blog-grid	How many posts. Defaults: 5 for the list, 6 for the grid.
`category`	blog-list, blog-grid	Only posts in this category (its slug).
`cols`	blog-grid	Columns, 1 to 4. Default 3.
`slug`	blog-featured	The post to show.
`show-counts`	blog-categories	`true` shows each category's post count.

Permissions and roles

Permissions appear in System > Roles under the Blog group:

Permission	Actions
Blog posts (`blog-posts`)	View, Write, Edit, Delete, Publish
Blog categories (`blog-categories`)	View, Create, Edit, Delete
Blog comments (`blog-comments`)	View (includes the commenter's email), Moderate, Delete

All three are granted to the Admin role. Publish also lets a user see and edit everyone's posts; without it, a writer sees and edits only their own.

Blog adds two roles:

Blog Author - writes posts and edits their own, and can pick categories. Cannot publish, schedule, delete or moderate comments.
Blog Editor - everything: publish, schedule, delete, categories and comments.

Users need the Blog posts View permission to see Blog in the sidebar. Adding and removing sample posts, and saving settings, are for admins only.

The Blog sidebar item shows how many comments are waiting for approval. Hover it for waiting, published, drafts, scheduled (with the next date) and the latest waiting comments.
A comment held for approval raises a notification, which goes to Super Admins unless you change who receives it. It clears when the comment is moderated or deleted.

Search engines

Blog adds the blog index and every public post to your site's sitemap, and gives each post page its proper address for search engines. Use the SEO fields in the editor to set what search results and link previews show.

Tips

Use Duplicate as draft to start a new post from an old one.
Keep categories few and broad; use tags for the detail.
Changing the default Post layout changes every post that has not chosen its own.

Limitations

Content is written in Markdown. There is no visual editor.
There is one blog per site. Several blogs, more layouts, themes, author pages and media embeds are part of Blog Pro.
Comment spam protection is a hidden form field. Keep Hold comments for approval on if spam is a problem.