Getting started

Create a profile as author 

One of the first things you’ll probably want to do, before you publish an article, is to add some information letting visitors know who you are and what your blog is about. If you go to your blog’s homepage you’ll notice in the top right-hand corner, underneath your blog’s header, a space reserved for your bio and a photo of you as author. If your blog will have multiple authors, we suggest writing a bio including all names of the contributors and adding each contributor separately as an author. This way, each author gets a profile, while you can use the general one for blog posts with several authors. More details are below.

You can add this information in the backend of your blog. Simply go to Users > Profile.

 

Add a Blog Description and Image

We implemented a blog description which will be displayed on the blog directory and each blog post of the individual blog. You can change it in the menu bar on the left-hand side by clicking:

For blog description, go to Appearance > Widgets and add a Text widget to ‘About Individual Site Text’

A text box then appears on the site. It is important to add ‘About’ in the title. so the site knows where to add the information.

Readers can search for your blog in the blog directory. This search function takes the blog description and title into account. Make sure you include related words or names readers might look for in the description.

 

 

 

To add a blog image (This can be a logo or a relevant image. It should be in the size of 512 x 512 pixels.) and the blog’s tagline and site title do the following:

Appearance > Customize > Site Identity

   

 

Author’s Bio

As mentioned above, you have the option to add the author’s bio and other professional information. Through an avatar, you can add your photo, too, which will be displayed on the top of each blog post. As the blog owner, you should have a profile already. We have used your previous added details. If you would like to change it go to User > Profile and scroll down to Biographical Info and Profile Picture.
If you want to add a link to your bio (eg a website) you can use the following code. Simply add <a href=”your URL“>Your Text</a> and replace the bold text with your URL and the text you would like to show.

If your blog has multiple authors, we recommend writing a bio including all names of the contributors and adding each contributor separately as an author. Each author is then registered with their own email and login details and will have their own profiles (this is still under construction but will be available soon). If authors write a blog post together, you can add the general bio first and add the contributors. They will appear below the blog post title, and by clicking their names, readers will arrive on the author’s profile page.

 

If you host contributors, you have the option to add a guest author. Each guest author needs to be added to the backend so they can be displayed in the author’s section. Once you select the guest author while adding a new post, the guest author’s bio and information will show on the right-hand side on top of the article. You can add almost the same information to a guest author’s bio as you can to your bio, however, they are not registered with their email address.  Therefore, they will not have a profile. Please note, that only UACES members can be registered authors. Everyone else needs to be added as a guest author.

To add them, simply click Users > Guest Authors > Add new

 

Write and publish

After logging in to the site, click on the ‘Posts’ tab which is situated in the menu bar on the left-hand side of the screen; then click ‘Add New’ to reveal the ‘Add New Post ‘ page (shown in the screenshot below). From here you can write, edit, and submit a post for review. To keep the overall standard high on the platform, we have an internal approval process which every new blog post goes through. The posts are usually approved within 24-48hr by the site moderators who check for the overall quality of the content and breaches of the blog policy.

To write your first post:

1. Enter the title of your post

2. Enter your article text

3. We recommend you add subheadlines, categories and tags, a featured image, and at least one author to the article. (See below for more details)

3. Click the big blue ‘Submit for review’ button

 

 

Categories and Tags

For SEO purposes, we highly recommend you add categories and tags. These help to position your article in a google search and most importantly, make it searchable.

Find categories and tags on the right-hand side of your text box for the post (under the option to publish – you might need to scroll down a little).

          

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories also help readers browse the content if they are interested in a specific topic. A box at the bottom lists all the categories on the Ideas on Europe’s landing page.

 

Add an author to your post

Below the text field is the option to add the blog post’s author. It might be already there if you are the only one blogging. If you work with guest authors, make sure to add them before you post the article so you can add them as authors. You can add up to 4 authors who will then be displayed on top of the blog post. Their name will also appear below the title of the post.

 

Add a featured image

You can add a featured image on the right-hand side of the article between categories and tags. This is particularly useful for social media as it adds a visual to the URL link metadata and link preview.

 

 

 

Excerpt

You can edit the intro text to each blog post you publish. Scroll down the page and enter the intro text into Excerpt. The intro text will be shown in the Blog listings on the platform’s landing page.

 

Comments

You can decide if you would like to allow comments or disable them. Let us know if you would like to enable or disable them. Please note, if you allow comments, make sure you have the capacity to check on them and to alert us if someone breaches the blog policy.