Creating a Blog with Solodev

Solodev Required

This tutorial covers building a blog module in Solodev using shortcodes.

Creating a module to draft and publish blog entries can be a great way to communicate with your audience as blogs become a staple of the modern company website. This tutorial will show you how to create a Blog Module in Solodev that will allow you to add blog entries without any coding knowledge. This type of module requires the use of two different STML pages. Generally these pages would be an index and a detail page. The index page will hold the repeater template which acts as a blog roll and displays multiple entries. The detail page holds the detail template which displays the contents of a single blog entry.

Part I - Creating the Blog Overview Page

The overview page will display all of your blog posts as shown above.

Step 1 - Create your Blog Module

Open the folder to which you want to add your blog module. Hover over the Add button and select Calendar.

Step 2 - Upload your Blog Form

The code below will add the appropriate fields to your blog module. First you will need to save this code to your computer as a simple text document with .tpl at the end of the file name such as "blog-form.tpl".

Click on Upload Form and select the file you just saved. Then click Submit.

Step 4 - Create your Repeater Template

Copy and paste the code below into a new file called repeater.tpl inside your module folder

Step 5 - Style your Blog Module

Add the CSS below to a file called blog.css in the 'CSS' folder of your assets

Step 6 - Add your repeater template to your index page

Navigate to the index page that will contain your repeater template. In order to place the file into your STML, you need to select the Dynamic Div (Drop Zone) in which you’d like to place it by clicking on it.

Part II - Creating the Blog Detail Page

The blog detail page displays the detail information for each entry. In this case it will contain the main image, title, intro and description.

Step 1 - Create your Detail Template

Open your blog module folder by clicking on it in the left hand nav. Hover over Add button and select File. Name the file and make sure you use .tpl at the end of the file name. Paste the code below into the file. Then click Save.

Step 2 - Add your detail template to your detail page

To display the detail information of your blog posts, you will need to create a detail page (detail.stml) in the same folder as your index.stml page. In order to place the file into your STML, you need to click on the Dynamic Div into which you would like to place it as shown below.

Part III - Map your Module to your STMLs

Now that you have created the blog module and have the index and detail pages in place, you will need to map the Module to your new folder and index and detail pages.

Step 1 - Modify your Blog Showcase Module

Open the blog module by selecting it from the left hand file tree. Click the Modify button. Open the Website Properties tab. Scroll down until you see the SEO URL Encoding field and click Browse. Select the page containing your detail template. Click Ok.

Step 2 - Select your Asset Category Map Anchor

Next to the SEO URL Encoding Input Field is the Asset Category Map Anchor (Folder Anchor) field. Click Browse and a new modal will popup displaying various folders - select the folder storing the index.stml and detail.stml pages of your module and click Ok, then click Submit in the bottom right of the page.

Step 3 - Add Entries to your Blog Module

Add the content for your blog post.

If you followed the steps above correctly and click on one of the logos on your index page, you will be redirected to the detail page of that particular blog post as shown below.