Amazing Blog – In this post we are going to discuss about best practices to have a professional blog using Jupiter Theme. Suggestions listed below only scratches the surface of good blogging practices, there are so many other factors that can help on your writing style and other stuff. But at least we can share with you what we know!
Be as simple as possible in blog listing
Blogs should be as simple as possible to go right into the subject and fascinate reader with the topic you talk about. You surly don’t want to distract viewer with too much fancy sliders or other animated stuff, from your golden words which was the main goal of yours to create a blog at the first place. That is why we suggest that you choose your words for the introductory section of blog wisely and use simple texts for that. You need to persuade viewer to click on that beautiful READ MORE button in 2-3 seconds, so better to go right into the subject there!
In Artbees we gave long thoughts about that and came into decision that the best way to do what we told above is to use the excerpt capability of our beloved WordPress CMS blog for listing introductory section, and we suggest that you do the same. Just go to dashboard menu and click on posts menu item. Then click on add new post, on that page click on screen options from top right and enable excerpt checkbox. Then you’ll see a new box at the bottom of the page which you can use to add those magic words of yours we talked about.
Use images in blog listing
We talked about simplicity before, but in listing page you will need images to catch the eye of visitor. Use smart and in topic images for this purpose.
You will not surprised that WordPress thought about this before and you can use the built in Featured Image option on each post in this case.
But here Jupiter will not leave you alone and gives you additional options to play around how you want to show those images. Simply go to Theme Options -> Blog > Blog Single Post and enjoy options there available for you 😉
Spice up your single posts
We suggested that keep things as simple as possible in blog listing. But that does not necessarily true regarding the post itself in single view when visitor clicks on Read More button. You can always use Jupiter different shortcodes here to spice up your post a little bit. But again lets be honest we are talking about a blog! so please no super fancy stuff! Keep it in the range of charts, Process Builders and these kind of things.
To take advantage of Visual Composer Graphical User Interface for posts to add your Jupiter shortcodes you can enable it via Dashboard > Visual Composer > Role Manager > Post Types > Custom and tick “post” element.
Be seen everywhere!
You will have a successful blog if your visitors can read your blog easily whether they are in the bus using their smartphone, or office using their desktop or at home with their tablet device. So your blog needs to be prepared for ALL screens sizes to be viewed.
Jupiter already took a huge step as it is a Multipurpose Responsive WordPress Theme and it shows great in all devices right out of the bat. But not everything can be handled automatically and sometimes you need to hide contents in mobile view or show some of them, only in tablets and so on. For this, you can use the Device Visibility option of Row or Page Section shortcodes of Jupiter and hide/Show specific content to targeted devices. For more information, please visit this article: https://themes.artbees.net/docs/configuring-visibility-for-devices/
Your design should match your topics
As a general rule of thumb, a blog should talk about one targeted area of interest. So you need to avoid having a post about how cute are cats! when your overall blog posts are about Science Fiction series (by the way Captain Kirk era is the best in Star Trek!). Now that you have your own topic scope to blog about, you need to also have a matching design for your area of interest.
Here is where Jupiter comes into play and gives you tons of options for the style of your blog listing. You need to do as follows:
Available Styles in Jupiter are:
Classic
This style is sort of a general purpose one and is suitable for most simple blogs.
Modern
This style is like classic one but with Social Media options more in reach. If you also have Facebook, Twitter or Instagram accounts then this can be a good choice for you.
Grid
This style has the one to four column variations. It takes less space so you can have more blog posts in a page. So if you are not that artistic guy but at the meantime not that solid business like person, choose this style.
Newspaper
WordPress was originally designed to be a good platform for blogging, specially for press (Well that is why it is called WordPress, dah!). That is why Jupiter decided to be loyal to that original goal and provide a style, for news agency blogs or something similar.
Spotlight
If you prefer to communicate with people through images on your blog this style is a good choice for you. No matter you are a Photographer or Have cool images to share on your blog! If you love your message be conveyed via images. Here you go!
Magazine
If you write a blog for Magazine, this style is just for you! It keeps the Leading article right in the face! and others smoothly sitting next to the hero post.
Thumbnail
If your image and text both have same weight and you can not decide wether you want to convey your message via text or image, well you can end that dilemma and use this style instead!
Blog Teaser
Actually this is a separate shortcode called Blog Teaser which you can use for your blog listing. It is similar to Magazine style but Jupiter took one more step and made that leading article a slider! So if you think you have more leading articles to show in one listing here we represent the awesome blog teaser 🙂
Your posts should have a type
You may think that what does it mean, the post having a type? Actually the type here means how you want to present your message in a specific topic. Is your message there in Image or Text or Audio or even a video? This is something that you need to decide before trying to right a specific post.
Jupiter gives you the option to have different post types. You can find them in Jupiter Posts Options inside each individual post page in your WordPress installation dashboard.
Upon each option selection, additional options will be available for you for that specific type to choose from.
We know that there are plenty other points which you need to know for having a good blog, that is why we encourage you to take part in making this article better and richer. So please kindly use the Article Feedback feature and give your suggestions and case scenarios. We will surely include your ideas here if we see it fit.
