Sharepoint 2013 : Blogs

Long before sites like Facebook and Twitter, blogs (short for weblogs) existed for those people who had something to share with the Internet. Initially, techie and literary folks had blogs and wrote articles for select pockets of readership. Around the year 2000, the blogosphere evolved and people woke up to the fact that they could easily host a blog and say whatever they wanted to the world via the Internet. It seemed that everyone had a blog, ranging from intellectual ideas to ramblings of one’s personal life and social sharing. Sites such as Live Journal promoted personal blogging and were part of the beginnings of social networking.

Microsoft acknowledged the demand for blog engines and incorporated the blog site definition in SharePoint 2007. SharePoint 2010, and now 2013, continues to offer blogging capabilities and offers more integration with My Sites and social sharing of self-authored content in the enterprise. I’ll begin with blogs in My Sites.

1. Click the name of your logged on user in the upper right corner of the page.
2. Select the menu option “About Me.”
3. Click the Blog link in the left navigation of your My Site.
4. If you do not have a blog, SharePoint will create you one.
5. Your My Site blogs exists at the following location, by default: /mysite-managed-path/<username>/Blog/default.aspx

Blogs are not just limited to My Sites; administrators and site owners may add them into the site collection anywhere as subsites. Follow these steps to create a new blog underneath a site of your choice in your site collection:

1. Click the gear icon in the parent site or root site collection.
2. Click the Site Contents menu item.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the New Subsite link.
4. SharePoint shows a new Subsite Creation page, like that in Figure 1.

   

   Figure 1. New SharePoint Site

5. Provide a name and description for the blog site.
6. Provide the URL of the blog subsite.
7. Select the Blog template.
8. Change any of the navigation and permissions settings, if you desire.
9. Click the Create button.

Blog posts are effectively a collection of list items in a dedicated list, called Posts, in the blog site. From the Blog landing page, click the gear icon, followed by the Site Contents menu item. You should see the Posts list. Also, notice the Comments and Categories lists, which store—you guessed it—the comments and categories of blog posts.