Hi guys,
this is something I have been thinking about a lot for quite a while now. Something that was originally supposed to be part of version 15, but for reasons mentioned below I decided to make it as a Plugin.
Some time ago it occurred to me that there is in fact no possibility of writing articles, general info etc. Yes, there is the custom page option, but that always creates a new URL, would require new links in the menu etc. So I got an idea of creating a simple blog that would allow you to post anything you like as often as you like.
When I started thinking about it however, I realized this could be quite an extensive plugin, which means two things – first, the more functions it has, the more likely it is to have a bug (that´s just the sad reality :D), likewise I was not sure how popular this would be, I am now in a situation where I have more ideas than time so I try to concentrate on those things that seem to be well-received and popular. The problem with including something in the main template is that when there is a bug, or when I simply want to add something new/change something, it requires full template version update, which is something I only do on average about once every 3 months. Plugin on the other hand, is much easier to update and can be updated basically every day if necessary.
Based on that I did not include this in the previous template release and instead release it now as the new Blog plugin. I already included quite a few features, but I still have many ideas to extend this, whether I implement them will of course depend purely on feedback I get. And likewise, it is of course possible there are bugs, I tested it, but you never know, the scripts are not that simple so it is possible I made a mistake somewhere.
Here is a brief description of how it works. Basically it is a blog, similar to the one you are just reading. When you look at the page as a normal user, you see list of posts in the middle, with short post summary, date of publishing, category and title. On the left you see the individual categories, on the right you have a monthly filter. Clicking on a post shows you the full content of the post.
If you look at the blog as an Admin, you will see a button in the top right corner “Blog Admin”. When clicking it, you will get to the administration page for the blog. On this page you can create/delete categories, and of course, create/delete/edit new posts. When creating a new post you will be able to include images, videos, format the text etc. without any knowledge of HTML or Javascript – everything is done using graphical user interface, similar to a text editor.
There is also a setup page for the blog, where you select a title for your blog and the maximum number of posts / page. This is simply the number of posts shown on the homepage. When there is more to show, the previous/next buttons will appear.
In the demo you of course will not see the admin page, that one you will only see if you are logged in as the admin on your page. Feel free to report any bugs, or whether you think it is useful. At this point I will probably say concentrate on that rather than suggesting new features, because I have ideas how to extend this myself and I first want to see how useful people find this, whether it works as expected and only then start thinking about new features 🙂
Main features
- unlimited number of posts
- unlimited number of categories
- easy text formatting
- possibility to include images/videos, links etc.
Enjoy!
How to insert a Thumbail in the main menu of the blog?
Not sure what you mean, you mean the icon?
Bonjour, Jachym
C’est une bonne nouvelle.
Je trouve cela super d’avoir ce plugins “blog”, cela va me permettre d’écrire sur le temps passé, présent et avenir de ma région.
Je vais rapidement le mettre en place et travailler dessus.
Un peu plus tard je verrez pour intégrer les derniers articles du blog sur un Block en page d’accueil pour que les visiteurs puissent avoir un coup d’œil rapide dessus, cela pourrait être intéressant.
Bravo et un grand merci. 😉
Hi Jachym,
I looked at the Blog demo and have one more request.
I hate capitalized text except for some headers (and even then I prefer them without).
So I like to see an option to switch to normal text wherever you apply capitalized text. Thanks in advance!
Cheers, Luc
Hi Jachym,
As I stated in an earlier reaction I want to use the blog plugin as a kind of dairy.
I miss the possibility to add or change the date the item was added. For instance when my wind sensor got stuck, I didn’t notice this right away but a couple of days later. So I like to be able to add or change the date of a blog item myself.
Not sure if such a change is difficult to implement.
Luc
Hi Jachym,
I can hardly wait to test this new plugin!
I made a custom page ‘lucdesignNews’ myself, where I put new info in respect to my weather station. This is simple a very long page with dated items.
Cheers, Luc
Hi Jachym,
Thanks for the reply. Of course I don’t consider real-time updates to count as a page update – I was being facetious!
Personally I would not want to spend valuable time writing blogs unless I was able to make money from it. In that case, for those wishing to monetise their meteorology blogs, it may be preferable to add a link to their external blog site to the Meteotemplate menu.
For casual comments, observations and announcements though, this looks like a great plugin, thank you.
Hi Simon,
if you look at it from that perspective than yes, it would not make sense to write those posts. It is true that this is not for people who want to make money out of this. I could place ads on this Blog and my main site meteotemplate.com without having to pay any licenses (unlike the DEMO or your MT site), but it is true that I just prefer clean design and do this as a hobby, not a job. And with regards to the template as such – if I disregard the fact that I dont feel very happy about people placing ads in the template, it is also a problem with the licensing, not only you would need several, but you would also have to remove several blocks and plugins, which use data only provided for non-commercial and non-ad websites, there is quite a few.
Great idea!
When a new post is added, will it be recognised as an update by Google bots, and will individual posts be indexed separately? WordPress blogs for example are extremely SEO friendly.
If I am to take the trouble of writing blogs, I want them to be well-indexed by Google and therefore accessible to as many people as possible. I would also want to be able to include ads.
As far as SEO goes, Meteotemplate sites are not as SEO friendly as Jachym thinks. There are only a handful of weather templates out there so a search for “Meteotemplate” or “weather website template” does quite well. However in my case searching for “Dorset weather” shows my site on page three or four which is quite poor. I have discovered that changing the site title in the settings initially causes my site to rank more highly but over time it slips down the list. I assume this is because Google cannot see the site being updated regularly enough (even though I know it is updated ever 10 seconds!).
Google seems to like content that changes regularly (like blogs) and it penalises sites where the title is replicated many times within different pages which (correct me if I’m wrong) appears to be the case with Meteotemplate.
Is the blog likely to help with this?
Hi,
– post title – I can set the title to the post name, that is possible
– ads – 100% no to that
– updates – not everything is an update. I hope you don´t consider current conditions change as an update… Google is not that dumb, if this was the case then just placing a simple time display on your site would have to count as page update
Nice , I see that when I select (click) a blogpost to resd it entirely I cannot jump to the other posts I ve to use the back button of the browers (Chrome)