All existing blog content will automatically carry over to the new Blogs dashboard.

From Day 1, your system and guide blogs, blog posts, and existing metadata will be listed on the Blogs Management screen — no extra steps involved!  

Now you get to dive in and explore new features!

Here's your chance to customize each blog's sidebar, change up the layout, turn on comment moderation, add featured images, and so on. 

While the new Blogs module is in Beta, you can toggle between both interfaces.

When you're ready to turn on the new Blogs UI, you can go live and switch your patrons over to the new-and-improved Blogs experience.

NEW! Horizontal Card and Vertical Card:

• Readers will see a preview of the blog content, then they can click through to keep reading. 

Full Post List:

• This layout is most similar to your existing blogs, with the full content of each post displayed one after another.
• This will be the automatic default layout for any existing blogs in the new Blogs UI — but you can switch over to either of the card layouts if desired!

Sidebar Customization 

We're bringing you additional control over the look and feel of your blog sidebar.

Blog creators get to choose a) if the sidebar is turned on, b) what content the sidebar contains, and c) the display order of content. 

When active, the sidebar displays on your blog homepage and blog search page, as well as when viewing an individual post.

Options for sidebar content modules:

• Search Blog: Let readers search your entire blog. 
• Subject Categories: Help readers find relevant posts based on their subjects.
• Recent Posts: Show a list of recent posts for easy browsability at a glance.
• Subscribe: Allow readers to subscribe for email notifications for new posts.
• Archives: Make it easy for readers to view past posts by month.
• NEW! LibAnswers Widgets: Display a LibChat button or embed widget.
• NEW! Helpful Links: Add links for other resources.
• Follow Us: Share links to your social media pages.

Sidebar settings and content can be customized for each individual blog!

Featured Posts 

You are no longer limited to one "pinned" post! With the new Blogs UI, you'll have the ability to feature up to 3 posts at a time.

The Featured box stays at the top of your blog homepage to draw attention to exciting announcements and important news.

As you add or remove featured posts, the Featured box adapts to accommodate the number of featured posts, whether you have one, two, or three posts selected.

Bonus: When adding a featured post, you can pick its display order!

Centralized Dashboard for All Your Blogs

Prepare yourself for streamlined Blogs management! 

Previously, you had to manage your system-level blog in one place, and any guide-level blog pages from within their associated guides. 

Now, you can visit the Blogs Management page for a listing of all blogs in your LibGuides system, as well as an overview of details like visibility, number of posts, and creation date. 

Add a new blog and it'll automatically appear on the New (Blogs) tab — you'll start here when you want to create a standalone blog or a blog that will be associated with a specific guide.

Head over to the Existing (Old Blogs) tab to easily find and maintain all of your current blogs!

Comment Authentication & Moderation 

Ready for more new features? Here's what you can do with comments!

NEW! Turn off comments for an entire blog.

When commenting is turned on, you can:

• NEW! Require commenters to complete a captcha or
• NEW! Authenticate comments via LibAuth integration or
• Allow comments from anyone with a LibGuides Patron account.

NEW! Activate commenting moderation, then approve, deny, or permanently delete comments — individually or in bulk.

NEW! Choose additional users to receive email notifications for new comments.

So. Many. Stats. 

What are your most popular posts? How many comments did your blog get last week? Did you see an uptick in followers this month?

The brand-new Blogs Statistics area is here to answer all of your questions! 

From the Statistics page, you'll find: 

• Blog Overview: Up-to-date numbers and downloadable charts for views, subscribers, comments, and likes — by blog or by individual post. 
• Browser/OS Usage: Breakdowns and pie charts showing the browsers and operating systems of your readers.
• Subscribers: New subscribers per month and over time, on a blog-by-blog basis.

• Modern Interface: Revamped UI uses Bootstrap 5 and Metronic template for a fresh look.
• Guide-Associated Blogs: Guides will now link out to a separate blog homepage if they have an "associated" blog, rather than the blog living within a guide page. From the blog homepage, there will be a link back to its guide.
• Autosave: Posts are autosaved so you won't lose content if you accidentally leave or close the post editing window.
• Rich Text Editing: We're upgrading from CKEditor 4 to CKEditor 5.
• Likes: When using LibAuth or Patron Accounts, commenters will have the ability to "like" individual comments.
• Subscribers: Full subscriber list, with options to unsubscribe a user or resend verification if needed.

• Images: Add an optional Featured Image and Thumbnail Image when adding or editing a blog post.
• Granular Permissions: Pick and choose which LibGuides users are admins/contributors for which blogs. Current regular users with "Edit All Guides" permissions will automatically be added as contributors to any guide-associated blogs.
• Subjects & Tags: Increase SEO by adding tags (blogs only) to your blog posts, in addition to any system-wide subjects.
• Hide Author: Choose to show or hide a post's author, on a per-post basis.
• Blog Imports: Use our blog importer template to import basic information like post content, subjects, and tags to bring an external blog into LibGuides blogs. Note: We're working on bringing you more complex import features in the future!