Last updated on February 1, 2023
Thinking about using SharePoint Online for blogging?
Fortunately, creating a SharePoint blog is easy. easy. In fact, if you’ve been using SharePoint Online, you must have come across it by now.
In this article, I’ll share with you how to create a SharePoint blog site quite easily and display your articles on the home page as well. .
Let’s get started.
Why blog in SharePoint Online?
SharePoint Online is pretty flexible. If you’re already using it in your organization, I don’t see a negative reason not to take advantage of it.
Here are some great ideas about using SharePoint Online for blogging:
Document unique experiences
Do you want to share some unique experiences that you have related to your work in the organization?
If that is the case, use SharePoint Online to record those experiences and automatically share them with your target people. easy.
As I said, if your organization already uses SharePoint in the first place, that’s a good reason to use it to publish your blogs as well for others to see.
Publish and share research
Do you work as a researcher for the organization?
If that’s the case, let me guess. You do your research, compile your findings into a document, and then share that document on SharePoint.
But what if you could shorten the process? How about writing directly to a SharePoint blog to directly post your work to others in your organization?
Share department news and trends
Do you regularly share news and trends with her department?
If that’s the case, blogging in SharePoint might make it easier — especially if your department has its own site.
You can even use the same blogging features to share reports department and display them separately from blogs on the home page.
Collaboration with external users
Do you use an indirect way of sharing what you know with external collaborators?
Well, using a SharePoint blog is a great way to collaborate with others — especially on ideas and knowledge.
Since SharePoint now has amazing sharing features, you can also coordinate projects between different teams that belong to different companies.
Documenting Important Projects
Lastly, you can also use the blog to document important aspects of various projects — such as challenges, problems, and even detailed instructions .
Depending on how you set up your blo g SharePoint Online, you’ll be able to make publications available for the entire company to use for learning. project to project.
Because of that, you will be able to increase the commitment and the spirit of collaboration in the whole company.
Note: if you need to To create a project site, check out this guide: How to Create a SharePoint Online Project Site: Step by Step.
How do I create a blog site with SharePoint Online?
The good news is that creating a blog site with SharePoint Online is not complicated. I’ll walk you through each step:
Step #1: Create the blog site first (optional)
This step is optional simply because you can always use the blogging features in SharePoint on any site you have.
You can use an existing site or create a new one. Others choose to create a new one for the following reasons:
- They want a new site to serve as the “main” blogging site.
- They want to set user permissions that they are unique to the other sites you have (such as the blog site being open to all).
- The blog site will require a different permission level (perhaps open to all) than existing sites .
- The primary audience for the site is external users (such as customers and external collaborators).
To create a new site:
- Go to the home page of your SharePoint tenant (home button)
- Click the “Create Site” button
In the right pane, select the option “Communication Site”:
Why a communication site?
Well, if your main goal is to create a SharePoint blog then a communication site is the more logical choicesince that is the main purpose of this type of site.
All that remains then is to finish creating the new communication site. You can also modify its appearance as much as you want before proceeding.
Step #2: Create a site column in the site page library
A little information about the site page library:
This is a special document library that stores all the pages of the site (both those created by you and those created by the system).
Note: Document libraries are technically still being lists, which means you can create new metadata (columns) in a library.
In this case, we’ll add a new column in the library that we can use later to filter only blog pages when viewing. display pages on the home page.
Let’s first navigate to the site’s page library:
- Click the settings gearon the top right corner of the screen
- Select “Site Content” from the options
Find and click the “Site pages” brary:
Once you are in the Site Pages Library:
- Click click on the “Add Column” header
- Select the “Choice” option from the list
In the right pane:
<ul
A little explanation here :
This column will categorize pages in the site’s page library, which is why I used the three basic types of pages you can create for your site.
On the other hand, feel free to add more options if you have other categories you want to include (like “research” or “guide” or something like that).
Step #3 : Prepare a page template for your blog posts
If you have a page template (think of it as a blog template), it will be easier and faster for you and your users to create a new blog post.
Now, creating a template is simply duplicating a page along with its settings so all you have to do next time is fill in the title and content.
But first or, you need to create a new post:
- Go back to the home page of your SharePoint site
- Click the “New” from the command bar
- Select “News Posting ” from the options
From there:
- Select the template you want to get started (I recommend the “visual” option)
- Click the “Create Post” button in the bottom right corner
In the new post :
- Configure it as much as you want
- Feel free to change the layout too
- Add as many web elements as you want to include in a blog post
- Click the “Page Details” button on the command bar
In the right pane, make sure to set the category of the page as a blog:
Then save the page as a template:
- Click the save dropdownbutton >from the command bar
- Select “Save as template“
Note: To create a site from a template, read this tutorial: How to Create a SharePoint Site from a Template – Full Tutorial.
Step #4: Start Creating Your Blog Posts
Strictly speaking, this part may be the last. But I want to put it here so you can at least see how this will all work on the home page.
In this step, we’ll use the SharePoint blog page template created in the previous step. step and take it from there.
To do this:
- Go back to the home page
- Repeat the steps to create a new news post
- This time, select the new blog template
Finish your blog post and once you have When finished, click the “Post News” Button on the command bar:
That’s it. When you start adding content in the future, simply repeat the steps above using the blog template.
Step #5 – Add a Modified News Web Part to the Home Page
The final step is to add a News Web Part to the home page that will display only blog posts (you can have more than one News Web Part).
With that:
- Go to the home page of the blog site
- Click the “Edit” button in the upper right corner li>
If you want to add a new news web part:
- Hover over the area where you want to add the web part
- Click the add
- Search ue and select the news
button
To configure the news web part to display only blog posts:
- Do click the pencil button of the web part (while it is selected)
- In the right pane, configure the filteroptions
- Set the filter options to the correct property (shown below)
Repost blog site and you will now see a section where only blog articles are displayed.
Benefits of using a blog in SharePoint Online
There are many advantages to having a blog. g for SharePoint Online. Here are some of them:
1. Easily categorize content
Similar to how you can categorize pages in the Site Pages Library, you can further categorize each blog post into different topics.
In fact, you can organize different posts on a site and categorize them into collections of thematic content.
You can also display them on the home page separately — in the same way that you can display blog pages and news posts separately.
2. Automated archiving of categorized content
SharePoint Online blogs are automatically categorized by date.
This means you can always locate an entry by searching for the month or year it was created.
It can also help with many other things if you want to sort important file information later.
3. Rating
Readers of SharePoint Online blogs can submit their own comments and even click the Like button.
These features allow you to gauge reader interest. It can also be used to determine the overall value of your blog in SharePoint Online.
It also helps if each article you write has its own view counter. There’s also a page analytics feature you can access.
Anyway, do you think you’ll be using SharePoint Online now to build a blog site? Share your thoughts in the comments section.
For inquiries and other concerns, please use the site’s contact form to get in touch and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
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