Design Diaries

Creating a blog on Showit can be challenging to say the least, let’s fix that.

I have tried creating my blog for the last 4 days, which brought me nothing but headaches and stress. It would have been amazing if I knew all of the little settings and backend things that I know now. Read on and hopefully I can answer some of your questions.

At the beginning of creating a blog on showit, you have to message Showit directly. In the bottom right of your home page of your website on Showit, you’ll see where you can message showit, click on that and tell them you need help creating your blog. They will email & message you next steps in your blog process, as well as a WordPress login. (You need this before you can create the blog). This could take them up to a day or so to get all of the info back to you. Once you get your WordPress login, you’re in business.

Showit Design For Your Blog

You can design you blog really however you want to. I created mine in a very simple way. Welcome, you are literally on my blog now. There are 3 different pages I created for my blog using showit, a main blog page, categories page, and content page. The main blog page had my 10 of my most recent blogs posted on it, as well as my 3 featured blogs at the top. I also added a categories menu, so the reader can go learn more about showit, web design, business advice, and social media best practices.

Main Blog Page Settings

Create the design you want the reader to see, include blog title, the date, blog excerpt, an image and a read more button. Once the design is to your liking on its own canvas, click on the blog title, and panel to text properties. Under placeholder, change to “Post Title”. For the Date, edit in the same way of the text properties to “Post Date” and choose how you want the date to be shown. Click the paragraph you provided and change that to “Post Excerpt”, this paragraph can be absolute nonsense. WordPress will change the text in the paragraph on your website itself. Next, Click on the image, in the panel choose “wordpress featured image”. WordPress will add the image you select in the backend to be the featured image, the only thing that will stay the same later on when you publish, is the layout. The title, date, paragraph, & image will all be unique to each blog you write and post. Lastly, you have to select you read more button, in the panel under “click actions”, under link & type, select “wordpress post” all the way at the bottom of the menu. You can duplicate this canvas if you want, and change the arrangement to alternate down the page as you post blogs. I think that is the best way and simplest way to do it, all of my following settings will be set to a blog like that.

Once you have your two canvases creates, you need to add a blank canvas to your design, make it one pixel and the same color background as you had before. Drag the blank canvas up under the 2nd blog canvas. Click on this canvas, in the right panel under canvas, change wordpress menu from “static”, to “in post loop”. Do the same to the first blog canvas, but make sure you also check “combine views as posts”. The 2nd blog post has different settings, in the panel under canvas, edit wordpress to, “next post start”. Make sure everything is set up and designed for desktop and mobile before you move on.

The Categories Page Settings

Duplicate your Main Blog page under blog templates, and rename to categories page. Add in a Blank canvas under your categories menu and add a category title. For example I have my 4 categories at the top under my blog title, and under them I have a category title like “web design” on a separate canvas. Click on the title canvas, and change in the panel under template info wordpress template to “category”. Then Click into the canvas to the title and change under canvas to “in post loop”. Lastly, click on the title itself and under text properties, change the placeholder to “post top category”. Also I personally added another small menu canvas below the blogs that have “older posts” & “newer posts”. Edit the text properties for those indivisually under placeholder, one should be “newer posts link” the other “older posts link”.

Content Blog Page Settings

All that you need on this page are your menus the categories menu & main category title at the top, and your blog photo, title, date, and text of your blog. The settings for the photo, title, date, and category are same as before. All you need to add in the properties panel is for the text of the blog, under placeholder add “post content”. Make sure the canvas the text lives on is “in post loop.” Make sure that you add to the content blog page in the panel under “canvas type”, you choose grow with content, or your blog with cover the footer and anything else you add to the bottom of the page.

WordPress Settings for the Blog

When you first get into WordPress, you need to go to settings , click reading and change the amount of posts that will be visible. My settings are 10, WordPress doesn’t recommend showing more than that. Next I go to posts and I choose “categories”. I then added all of my categories, if you don’t want categories on your blog, you can skip this step. Under the different categories in WordPress you can click them to “view”. You need to take that link and add it to the click action of your categories in showit.

Next all you need to do is add new post and get to typing your blog. In the panel to the right you have some settings for the blog. You can add which category you want your blog to go to, add tags for when the blog is posted, set your featured image, and write an except. You don’t have to write an excerpt since we set up the Showit settings in advance but if you want to add a specific part of the blog in there, you can. The set featured image is where you can add the photo you want to use for the blog post. This is a very important step, don’t forget to add this part!

If you have anymore technical issues, remember that Showit is the best at responding and connecting with their users right away! Always message them with any questions. Thanks for checking out my blog, head to my Showit category for my blogs about Showit Tips!