Introduction

Adding blog content to your Chime IDX website is a great way to share valuable content to your site visitors/community/social network and improve the SEO value of your website (see HERE). Creating blog content will be your responsibility (or you can explore third party services) but you can use the available tools on Chime to display the blog posts as an embedded part of your Chime website.

Depending on when you started with Chime, there are two different ways to manage the blog: (1) using the Chime-built blog editor or (2) using a WordPress blog editor which is only available for those that have joined Chime prior to May 8, 2021.

 

Summary

• (1) Chime Blog Editor
• (2) WordPress Blog Editor
• Blog Page Components
• Customizing the Style of the Blog Page

 

(1) Chime Blog Editor

To access the Chime Blog Editor, go to CMS > Blogs:

 

Categories

Use categories to file specific blog posts under specific groups so that you can easily classify and display your content for site visitors. 

 

Categories Overview

All the categories that have been created are available on the Category List:

• Name: The name of the category
• Blog Count: The total number of blog posts currently in that cateogry

 

Add a Category

To add a category, click on the blue + Add New button in the top-right, add the category name, and then click on the green checkmark to add it.

 

Edit / Delete a Category

Click on the Edit or Delete buttons to edit or delete a blog category:

 

Posts

Posts Overview

View all posts, those that are published, drafts, or those that have been trashed using the tabs at the top:

• All: Includes that are "Published" or "Drafts."
• Published: Posts that are published and displayed lived on your website.
• Drafts: Drafts can be edited in the back-end but will not be visible on your website.
• Trash: Posts that are deleted can be recovered or deleted completely.

 

The columns display the following data:

• Title: The title of the post. A post with no title will show "no title" and any drafts will have a "Draft" tag next to them in this column.
• Author: The author of the blog post.
• Category: The categories of a blog post.
• Date Created: The format is dd/mm/yyyy and is based on the date the blog post was created. The most recent blog posts will display at the top.

 

Add a Blog Post

To add a new blog post to your website, go to Posts and then click on the blue + Add New button in the top-right:

 

You will then be presented with the blog post editor window:

 

Content

Title: The title of a blog post. If no title is added, the post will display as "no title."

 

Blog Post Content: The body of the blog post. Using the tools available, you should be able to build the content out in the format you would like, including adding images, embedding videos, changing the styles, fonts, etc. You can even embed source code in the blog post if you have coding experience and would like to use the blog feature to display something unique. 

As you add blog content, you can preview how it will display in the panel at the right:

 

Settings

The following are the settings that can be edited for each individual blog post. Click on the Settings tab to edit:

 

Author: The default author is always the owner of the website, but you can manually overwrite this if you would like to do so.

 

URL Slug

"URL Slug" refers to the last part of a URL that is specific to a web page. The default URL Slug is the post title but you can edit this without having to change the post title. This can support the following: letters, numbers, and line-through. Other characters cannot be recognized and will be changed into line-through.

 

Categories

This is where you will select the category that this blog post belongs to. Adding new categories is outlined above. A post can belong to multiple categories. A blog post that has no category selected will belong to "Uncategorized." 

 

Featured Image

The default featured image is the first image in the blog post content. The featured image for a post that does not have an image will be the logo from your website header. The featured image can be changed and/or deleted as needed.

 

SEO

For more information on SEO basics, you may want to reference THIS article.

To edit the SEO settings for an individual blog post, click on the SEO tab:

 

Meta Title: 

A meta title (also called title tag) is an element in the head section of an HTML document that defines the title of each page of a website. It is retrieved by web browsers and also used by search engines such as Google to display a webpage in search results (SERPs). The default meta title is in the following format:

Blog Title - Creator Name - Company Name

This can be edited and you can use the tool to "+ Insert variable."

 

Meta Keywords:

Meta keywords describe the content of a web page in a short and concise way and should be important indicators of a page's content to search engines. The default meta keywords are blank when you create a new blog post in Chime but you can add/edit as well as use the "+ Insert variable" tool if needed.

 

Meta Description:

A meta description is an HTML element that describes and summarizes the contents of your page for the benefit of users and search engines. The default meta description is the first sentence in the blog. post but can be changed by editing and using the "+ Insert variable" tool.

 

Edit / Delete a Blog Post

To edit or delete a post, click on the Edit or Trash icons for a post:

 

FAQs

How can I wrap text around an image?

1. Click Insert/Edit Image

2. Upload an image and click OK

4. Adjust the width and height of the image

5. Click Save

6. Add text below the image

7. Click on the image and click on Align left/right

8. The text will wrap around the image

 

(2) WordPress Blog Editor

*IMPORTANT: Please note that the WordPress blog editor will not be available to use if you do not already have it enabled on your account prior to May 8, 2021. You will still be able to add/edit blog content using the Chime-built blog editor if you do not have access to the WordPress blog editor.

 

Chime + WordPress Basics

Here is a video explaining the basics of how to access and use the WordPress/Chime blog feature:

 

Changing Post Meta Title & Description via WordPress

Chime uses a Yoast SEO plug-in to change the SEO title and Meta Description in WordPress. This will then be automatically synced to the Chime website.

Log in, access a post, and edit here:

 

Blog Page Components

All blog page templates have the same basic components  as seen in the screenshot below. 

1. Blog Posts listed on the left side of the page
2. A Search Bar that can be used to search for any keywords that are contained within the post titles or content
3. Categories that synchronize with the categories created in the blog settings
4. Recent Posts are shown on the right side as well

 

Customizing the Style of the Blog Page

As always, you can add, edit, and delete, blocks to customize your Chime pages. To learn how to do so, please reference the following article: Add / Remove / Edit Blocks on Pages.

 

Questions?

If you have any questions regarding this topic or any others, please reach out to our Support Team via email at <support@chimeinc.com> or by phone at 1 (855) 981-7557.