Blog

Leverage the power of Drupal's core Blog module

• Any registered site user can be allowed to write his or her own blog.
• Creates an aggregated page of all blog entries on your site sorted in chronological order, newest first.
• Creates the "Blog" menu entry linking to the blog page.
• Creates an individual blog page for each blogger.
• Creates the "Recent blog posts" block.
• Creates the "Blogger" user role with all the permissions necessary to write a blog on your site.

Add Blog posts

Your site has a "Blog entry" content type.

1. Click "Find content" in your site's gray shortcut bar. You will see two content items called "This is a sample blog post" and "This is another sample blog post".
2. Delete samples - Click "delete" to get rid of the samples and make room for your own blog posts.
3. Add new blog entries - Click "Add content" in the shortcut bar, then click "Blog entry".
   • Title - The title of these items is displayed with the full content, above content teasers and in the "Recent blog posts" block.
   • Body - Your blog entry. See Add your first content for more information on entering text, adding images, and tagging your blog posts.
4. Text format - Leave as "Safe HTML" unless you need other markup.
5. Settings panels - Blog entries are set by default to be published, promoted to the default front page of your site and to accept site visitor comments. The default settings (menu, revision, URL, comment, authoring, publishing) do not need to be changed under normal circumstances. They have been designed with the purpose of this content type in mind. Changing some of these could also have unexpected or undesired results. See the content type settings overview for more information.

Where Blog entries appear

Front page - If your site is configured to use the default Drupal front page, blog entries will appear there, newest first. Set the front page of your site at Configuration > Site information under "Default front page". It may be set to any URL on your site or left blank for the default content feed (a "river-of-news"-style page, newest content first).

"Blog" Menu item/URL - Your main, aggregated blog page is included in the main site navigation as "Blog" and is located at the URL /blog (http://example.com/blog).

Individual blogs - If you have more than one blogger on your site, each blog post will include a link to that author's individual blog page at the URL /blog/[UID] (UID is the User ID number). You can also add this URL to a menu item. As a site administrator, you can find any user's UID by going to their profile page and clicking the "Edit" link. The URL of the profile edit page is formatted as /user/[UID]/edit.

Recent blog posts block

Enable and configure the "Recent blog posts" block on the Blocks page at Structure > Blocks. For more information on enabling, positioning and configuring blocks on your Drupal Gardens site, see the Blocks help page.

The Blogger user role

Assign this user role to the registered users of your site who should be allowed to blog on your site.

As well as having all the permissions assigned to the "Authenticated" user role, the "Blogger" user role has a few more. To suit the needs and workflow of your site, you may add more or remove some of these on the "Permissions" sub-tab of the Permissions page at People > Permissions. For more information on user roles and permissions, see the User roles and permissions help page.

• Edit own comments
• Use the Safe HTML text format
• Edit own Follow links (allows Bloggers to add their own social web follow links)
• Administer-, View-, and Edit Media (allows uploading and embedding images in posts)
• Access the content overview page
• View own unpublished content (allows Bloggers to prepare posts for publishing at a later time)
• Create-, Edit-, Delete own Blog content
• Create-, Edit-, Delete own Poll content
• Access the administrative overlay
• Administer-, Create and edit URL aliases
• Vote on polls
• Cancel and change own votes on polls
• View voting results of polls
• Use advanced search
• Edit current shortcut set (create a personalized navigation setup in the shortcut bar)
• Select any shortcut set
• Use the administrative pages and help
• Edit terms in forums (create new forum containers)
• Edit terms in tags (edit site-wide tagging vocabulary)
• Use the administrative toolbar
• View user profiles

How to enable blogging

The Blog feature in Drupal Gardens is the combination of Drupal's core Blog module, its "Recent blog posts" block and a user role.

1. Enable the Blog module on the Modules page. This step creates the Blog entry content type, puts the disabled "recent blog posts" block onto the Block page and creates the default /blog and user blog URLs.
2. Where should the blog page appear?
   • You may add a "Blog" menu entry to your site navigation, linking to the /blog URL
   • Or set the front page of your site to the default content feed by leaving the "Default front page" field blank at Configuration > Site information. Make sure Blog entries are set to be published and promoted to front page by default (Click "edit" next to the Blog entry content type on the page at Structure > Content types).

     

3. Create a "Blogger user role" and assign it to registered users of your choice who should be allowed to blog on your site. Assign the permissions your bloggers will need above and beyond those assigned to normal, "Authenticated" users on the "Permissions" sub-tab of the Permissions page at People > Permissions. For more information on user roles and permissions, see the User roles and permissions help page.