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Creating a blog article

Creating a captivating blog article involves more than just writing content. To enhance your article's visual appeal and search engine optimization, you'll need to add descriptive thumbnails and eye-catching hero images. This guide will walk you through the process of setting up your article, adding descriptive text, and configuring images for maximum impact.

On this page:

By default, blog articles don't have photos and descriptions attached. The following steps will explain how to create an article, how to attach a description for thumbnails and how to configure images to use as both thumbnails and hero images. 

Create the article

  1. Go to Pages to view the site tree (paper icon on the left)
  2. Hover over Update & Highlights; select Add Child
  3. Click "Blog Article"
  4. Complete the basic page properties:
    • NAME: Type in the name of the article
      • For legibility reasons, try to keep this as short as possible. Ideally around 4 or 5 words but no more than 10
    • URL: The url will type itself as you enter the title
      • The URL's for blog articles always have the year, month and day posted baked in.
      • You can edit it if you need to, just don't use spaces.
      • You can always create shorter link URL's afterward via page paths.
    • PUBLISH DATE: leave this blank unless you want it to publish at a certain time.
      • If you use a publication date, format it like this: February 22, 2024 at 8:21:16 pm
    • LABELS: these are useful for categorizing articles, think of them as tags.
      • When tagging blog articles, it's best to try and limit things to under 5 categories.
      • Labels are both case and space sensitive, so you have to enter them exactly like above or they won't work.
      • At launch, there currently isn't a lot of functionality tied to labeling blog articles, but there can be with a few quick changes. Reach out to Cole if you'd like to highlight specific categories of articles.
    • PAGE TEMPLATE: this is always Article by default
    • ALTERNATE NAME: don't worry about this
    • TITLE & DESCRIPTION: this is for the meta-data that often pops up in search media and search engine pages.
  5. Click Save
  6. Hover over the new article; click "Edit in New Tab"

Configuring descriptions and images

How to add a description to an article on the homepage

  1. Click on Pages to view the site-tree (paper icon on the left)
  2. Find your article
  3. Hover over it and select "Properties"
  4. Select the "Custom Data" tab
  5. Scroll down to the description field and enter your description
    • Descriptions must be less than 256 characters including spaces

Photo recommendations

  • You can save time by using the same photo for both the article's thumbnail and its hero image. (Use this resolution: 1920x1200)
  • Keeping the file size for each below 500kb will ensure that the page will continue to load quickly with lots of thumbnails.
  • Make sure to name your files so they're easy to find. Also, prefacing file names with article-- will make it easy to filter all similar images.
  • For best results, use this PSD template in conjunction with adobe photoshops save for web feature.

How to upload an image

  1. Go to the Files section (photo icon on the left)
  2. Click the green "Upload Files" button on the top left
  3. Click and drag your photo file or click the "add files" button
  4. Click the Start Upload button
  5. Close the Upload Files popup

How to set an uploaded image as a thumbnail

  1. Go to the Files section (photo icon on the left)
  2. Hover over the photo you just uploaded or want to use
  3. Click "Edit"
  4. Under Public URL, highlight the link and copy it to your clipboard.
  5. Close the file properties window
  6. Go back to the Pages section
  7. Hover over the resource that you're adding the background image to and select "Properties"
  8. Click the "Custom Data" tab
  9. Scroll down and near the bottom you'll find the Thumbnail URL field and paste in the URL that was copied to the clipboard earlier
  10. Click Save
  11. You're done

How to set an uploaded image as an articles hero image

Configure the article to use a hero image

  1. Go to the Pages section (paper icon on the left)
  2. Expand the Updates & Highlights section, hover over your article; click "Properties"
  3. Click the "Custom Data" tab
  4. Check the "If blog article, show hero" box at the top.
  5. Click Save

Set an image as an article hero image

  1. First, enable the article to use a hero image via the steps above.
  2. Go to the Pages section (paper icon on the left)
  3. Expand the Updates & Highlights section, hover over your article; click "Edit in New Tab"
  4. Copy the label for the background image:  A screenshot that depicts where to access an image label for a hero
    1. Click the Edit Article Hero 1 Styles button at the bottom of the hero (see red arrow)
    2. Highlight and copy the text in the yellow bubble (see green arrow)
  5. In another tab, go to the Files section (photo icon on the left)
  6. Hover over the photo you just uploaded or want to use
  7. Click "Edit"
  8. Under Labels, paste text you copied from the yellow bubble and hit enter
  9. Click Save
  10. Reload your article and the hero image should display (make sure to save changes before reloading)