Content Creator / Editor Page

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Content Creator / Editor Page

(formerly the "Authors Portal")

by Scot Ranney • November 10, 2017

Scot's Blogger


(We are adding new features so fast that sometimes the docs can't keep up! Contact us if you have any questions)

The Content Creator is where where you and your authors create content. You can assign as many authors as you want without compromising your store administration because authors use customer accounts - they are not store administrators.

Set category author/publisher/moderator privileges in the Scot's Blogger module admin category settings and global privileges in the Scot's Blogger module configuration page.

The following is a description of the Authors Portal fields. Most of the fields are used in meta/micro data and should be filled in for best SEO.

Preview

Click on the tan (draft) or green (published) eyeball near the top of the screen to preview your post. This will not save or update your post, use the buttons for that.

Save Changes

This button saves your progress without publishing. Use it often because you don't want your customer/author session to time out during a save.

Publish

When you are ready to publish, click the green publish button. This will set the post as published and allow the public to view it.

UnPublish

Once your post is published, you have the option of unpublishing it by clicking the red unpublish button. You can then publish it again any time you want.

Title

This is the title of your post. The permalink is created from the title however you can change it later if you wish.

SubTitle

This is displayed under the title in the default blog template.

Synopsis

This is used to paraphrase the article. It is used as a description in meta and micro data unless you override it with the seo-description.

SEO Description

This will be used for meta data, micro data, and social sharing. 

Category

You can select your custom blog categories or store categories here. Categories in use are colored green. Categories are optional. If you select a store category, then any posts associated with that store category can be loaded when someone is viewing that category. This requires some extra coding on the CTGY page in your store (check the FAQ, there may be an example.)

Permalink

This is what will be used as the clickable link if you're using short links. Example:

this-is-my-article-title.html

Page

This will link a blog post to a particular page in the store. For example, if you wanted to have more control over your About Us page, you could create a blog post called About Us and link it to the About Us page.

Product

Same idea as the category and page, you can link blog posts with products. Useful if you want more flexibility in your product descriptions. If you have a blog linked to a product, you can use the review feature as a product review as well as post review.

Tags

Each tag will turn into a search term and be displayed as a button on the blog post. Clicking the tag button will bring up all posts that share the tag.

Order

If you are using this for content management, such as a set of FAQs or documentation, use the order field to control what order the posts display in. Normally posts will display in published date order.

Code

If you are using this for content management and want to display it somewhere in your store outside of the blog template, use a code to make it easy to display using a page item such as: <mvt:item name="scotsblogger" param="display some_code" />

If you share codes between content, then the display param will display them all in order unless you tell it which one to display:

<mvt:item name="scotsblogger" param="display some_code 2" />

The page item above will display the 2nd post that shares the code some_code

Sitemap Control

The system is set up to automatically update your blog sitemap (set the filename in the configuration) after a post is published or unpublished. If you  have content that you do not want in the sitemap, check this box.

Content that you would not want in your sitemap includes Content Management System (CMS) content blocks that you might be using in your store header, footer, sidebar, or wherever. The sitemap should be used for your posts and extra page content.

AMP Control

Similar to the sitemap control above, if you have content that should not be AMP Page discoverable, check this box. Leave the box unchecked for posts and page content.

Sticky

Sticky messages will be loaded at the top, always.

Comments

You can turn this off on a per post basis if you don't want comments. If you have an entire category you don't want comments on, you can turn comments off in the Categories section of the Scot's Blogger admin in Miva Merchant.

Publish/Unpublish Dates

It's a good idea to space your blog posts out. Search engines don't like to see a flood of posts all at once. However, if you're feeling inspired and write five posts in one night you can use this feature to schedule when they will be published.

Custom SEO

This area will be described in detail but in essence it allows you to customize all portions of basic SEO in your posts and other content. 

Custom SEO Variables:

  • seotitle
  • canonical
  • seoimage
  • twtitle
  • twcard
  • twcreator
  • twimage
  • twsite
  • twdesc
  • ogtitle
  • ogurl
  • ogtype
  • ogimage
  • ogsitename
  • ogadmins
  • ogdesc

These are new for version 2. If you need more information on how to use these let us know.

Writing Your Blog

Use the white space at the bottom to enter your blog post. You can control formatting using the tool bar or go into a feature filled HTML source view via the <> button. The double diagonal arrow button on the far right will give you a distraction free full screen mode.

Images

You can enter image URLs or drag and drop images into your blog post. It's important to set the image title and ALT (title) text if you want the full SEO benefit of writing blogs. To do this, click once on the image and then click the edit button. If you want the text to wrap around the image, set the location to right, left, or center. The title will show up as the ALT tag so be sure to be descriptive. Put the name of your business and the name of the article and the gist of the image.

Resize an image by clicking on it and then dragging the corners.


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The blog posts on Scot's Scripts are made using by Scot's Blogger, a full featured Wordpress replacement Miva Merchant blogging module.