Live Blog 2.0 for Journalists
Configuring your live blog
Click the Configure Blog button to enter your live blog's configuration section.
The configuration section contains five tabs: General, Front-end, Advertisement, SEO and API keys.
General
Language
The languages currently available in the drop-down menu are German, English and French.
Provider link
For an explanation of the options concerned with the embedding of your Live Blog (Provider link, Frontend server, Embed theme, Embed script), please see the chapter Publishing your live blog.
Configure type of blog
The ability to configure blog types is an emerging feature of Live Blog. Your chosen blog type controls what options will be available in the drop-down menu in the Edit tab (see the chapter Creating content and using sources). It is configurable both when the blog is first created (see the chapter Creating a live blog) and at any time afterwards in the blog configuration.
The default blog type contains the five standard posting styles: normal, image, link, quote and wrapup. Custom blog types consist of these five standard styles of the default blog type, hard-coded, plus your customisations.
Currently the only customisation available when you create a new blog type is the addition of predefined posts.
For example, you may wish to create a new blog type with predefined posts which welcome readers at the start of your live coverage and bid them farewell when you finish. To do this, click the Add New button.
The Add New Blog Type dialog will appear. First, give your new blog type a name, e.g. 'Default plus predefined posts'. Then click Create New Predefined Post. Proceed through the four steps of setting up a new predefined post.
Step one: Enter the post name, eg 'Welcome'.
Step two: Type the text of your predefined post, eg 'Welcome to our coverage of racing at Caymanas Park, brought to you courtesy of XYZ Sports Ltd'
Step three: Optionally customise the font style, colour and alignment of your predefined post.
Step four: Optionally customise the background of your predefined post.
Click Save. You will be returned to the Add New Blog Type dialog, where you can add further predefined posts in the same way. If you need to edit a predefined post, or delete it, moving your mouse pointer over the post name will bring up the required controls.
When you have added all the predefined posts you wish your custom blog type to contain, click the Save Changes button. Your custom blog type will now be listed in the configuration section, below the default blog type.
If you select the radio button corresponding to your custom blog type, and click Save & Close at the top right of the page, your predefined posts should now be available in the Edit tab in addition to the standard four styles.
User comments
If you wish to allow members of the public to comment on items which have been published in your live blog, set this switch to 'on' and then click Save or Save & Close at the top right of the page.
Verification status
If you wish to enable the new verification and assignment features of Live Blog, set this switch to 'on' and then click Save or Save & Close at the top right of the page.
Advertisement
In the Advertisement tab of the blog configuration you can enable the insertion of an advertisement into your embedded live blog. To do so, move the Advertisement switch to the 'on' position and click the Image Upload button to select an image via the Add Image dialog, either from your computer or from the media archive. Your chosen image will appear in preview below. You can then configure a target URL in the Advertisement target field.
SEO configuration
A new feature of Live Blog, introduced in version 2.0, provides a solution to the problem of how to ensure that the content you publish in your live blog gets properly indexed by search engines. For a full explanation of Live Blog's search engine optimized (SEO) publishing method, and how it can be integrated into your content management system, see the chapter Making your live blog search engine friendly.
Note that if you decide to use the new SEO publishing method, you no longer need to use the embed script method described in the chapter Publishing your live blog.
To enable the SEO publishing method, set the HTML Active switch to the 'on' position.
Choose a theme for this HTML version of your blog from the Embed Theme dropdown menu.
Click the Generate HTML button. The server will take a few moments to generate the HTML link, which will appear in the box above. Select and copy this link for inclusion in an article page in your CMS, as described in the chapter Making your live blog search engine friendly.
Below the Generate HTML button is a Show advanced settings link which, when clicked, will reveal additional settings you may wish to use.
The Refresh Interval parameter sets how often the server will regenerate a new HTML version of your live blog's content. By default it is set to 60 seconds. Choose an interval that suits the frequency with which your live blog is updated with new content. If you set a long interval, readers will miss any content which has been published to the timeline between the creation of the static HTML and the moment at which they loaded the page. If you set a very short interval, you may overload your server.
In the Number of items parameter you can set how many posts should be initially contained in the HTML which is generated on the server.
As described in the chapter Making your live blog search engine friendly, the SEO method of publishing your live blog provides the option for you to specify a Callback URL, which you can add here.
Additional HTML versions
There may be circumstances in which you want to have a number of different search engine friendly HTML feeds of your live blog's content, each styled with a different embed theme.
To create an additional HTML version, click the blue Add new button towards the top right of the SEO configuration section.
This will add another almost identical settings section below the previous one. Here you can select a different theme and generate its HTML link, with advanced settings available as before. The only difference with additional HTML versions is that a Remove button appears to the right of the Generate HTML button, allowing you to remove the additional HTML version and its settings if you need to.
Note that it is not possible to remove the first HTML version settings section. If you wish to revert to the non-SEO embed script method, just set the HTML Active switch to the off position.
API key configuration
In order for the Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Soundcloud external source tabs to work, you must enter the API key you have obtained for each of these services into the relevant field in the Configure API Keys section.
Don't forget, to save your settings in this or any other configuration tab, you have to click Save or Save & Close at the top right of the page.