Semplice 6 comes with brand new blog modules, allowing you to (finally) design a fully custom blog.
The first thing to know: There are two different blog features available in Semplice 6.
The default WordPress blog
This is the default WordPress blog, which is just a blog overview (a list of your blog posts) and a single post view (once you click on a post). The style of the default blog can be slightly customized in 'Customize > Blog' but the layout and content structure is more or less fixed.
The new customizable blog
In Semplice 6, you now have modules and options to customize almost everything about your blog.
These are your main sections:
1. Your blog overview - Your list of blog posts
2. Single post view - A single blog post
3. Archives - Displayed once you click on a category or tag. It's basically a "pre-filtered" blog overview with the category or tag you clicked.
4. Search results - A list of posts found by keyword
Before, you could only change these templates by modifying the source code. In Semplice 6, you can now design these templates from scratch with our content editor, so each of these views can be customized from top to bottom.
Let's go through the workflow for setting up a blog with all the new features.
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1. The blog overview
You'll create your blog homepage like a regular page in Semplice, and link it from your navigation.
Here's how:
1. Add a new Page in Semplice (name is your choice: blog, journal, news, etc.)
2. Now click on "Modules" and add the "Blogposts" module.
3. Customize the content structure, formatting etc. to your needs.
4. Save your content once you're happy with the result.
Important: Instinctively, you would add a new page called "blog" and then set this page as your blog homepage. This would work fine if you're using the default blog, but not for the new custom features. There is no need to set the blog homepage with the new blog feature.
2. The dynamic templates
After creating your blog overview, navigate to Customize > Blog and enable the 'Design your custom blog templates' switch. This will deactivate your default blog template and allow you to design your templates (single post, archive and search results) from scratch.
Important: If you don't enable this option, you'll be stuck with the static template files, which limits your styling options and does not allow you to edit or add content.
In all 3 templates, there is a pre-installed blogposts module already configured to its use case. You can now change the pre-installed formatting and layout for each, or just freely build your page around it with our content editor.
Once your templates are done, your blog is set up and you are ready to go. :)
3. Writing your blog posts
Just like the previous / default blog, you will write the content for your blog posts within the WordPress Gutenberg editor - not in Semplice. Once published, each new blog post will appear in the template you custom designed.