Blog Posts

Introduction

We are using the Netlify CMS for blog posts. To access the editor, go to https://kodi-tv.netlify.app/admin. (this URL will change to https://kodi.tv/admin once we move everything into production). You will need to login with your GitHub credentials, and only team members who have write access to the kodi-tv repo can add or edit blog posts.

Workflow

When you first log in, you'll be presented with a list of existing blog posts, as you're looking at the Contents list. From here, you can search, sort, select - and then either edit a published post, or create a new one.

Adding a New Blog Entry

Once you have logged in, you can click the button labeled New Blog in the upper left part of the page. Blog posts have a title, publish date, author (optional), featured image (optional), and body. The featured image can be uploaded when you create the post, or you can use any image that has been used in a blog post before.

You can save posts at any time, and a post must be saved at least one before you can publish it. Once saved, to publish a post you set the status to READY and then select the PUBLISH NOW option from the publish menu. This will generate a series of commits to the main branch, and that will trigger a site build.

Editing a Published Blog Entry

Due to a known issue with the Netlify CMS, blog entries are initially listed in alphabetical order when you load the content manager. Assuming you want to edit a recent post, to get them listed in reverse chronological order, you need to select PUBLISH DATE from the SORT BY menu and then do it again. This first time gives you chronological, and the second time reverses it. It can take a bit to resort all the blog posts, so be patient. Yes I know it's a pain. No, there doesn't appear to be anything we can do about it for now. Once you open an entry, you get the same editor you used to create a post. Once you save it, you again need to set the post status to READY and the use the PUBLISH NOW option in the publish menu.

Editing a Draft Blog Entry

When you save a blog post, but don't publish it, it will not appear on the initial contents list: this is purely a list of published articles.

Instead, go to Workflow at the top of the screen to call up posts in various stages of their lifecycle: Draft, In Review, or Ready (based on whatever status is set when editing a post).

Formatting Entries

The post editor gives you the choice of a WYSIWYG editor or raw markdown. Either gives the usual basic formatting: bold, italic, code blocks, numbered/bullet lists, image insertion, etc.

While editing, you have an optional preview pane (eye icon) that gives you a flavour of what the post will look like. I say "flavour", as there's no real live view until a post is published - at that point, things like CSS kick in and you'll get the finished article. Guidance here: don't be too clever with formatting, as it's unlikely to survive or emerge as you intended.