How to create a blog in Magento 2?

One of the best marketing tools — blog is a great thing to implement on your Magento 2 website. It helps you to create a source of traffic and a free place to promote your store.

By creating a blog on Magento 2 you build trust and improve customers’ experience on your website. 

Magento doesn’t have the blog feature by default. So you need to install it on your instance to be able to manage a blog without relying on some third-party platform.

The market is huge. We already gathered the best Magento 2 blog extensions in one place and compared their features to save you time. Now, it shouldn’t be hard for you to choose a blog for your store.

However, in this article, you will learn how to create a blog post in Magento 2 Blog by Magefan.

Follow these steps to create blog post in Magento 2:

1. Navigate to Content > Blog > Posts and press the Add New Post button.

2. Enable Post and give it a Title.

3. Select the Category you want to assign the blog post to. 

Note: you can easily create new category by pressing a New Category button.

4. Write a blog post in the Content.

5. Add the Short Content.

You can enter short content, only if it is completely different from the main content. The short content will be displayed on the blog index page and post lists.

Note: there are 2 more options to configure short content for you: Default Short Content Length setting in post list configuration and read more tag.

6. Configure the blog post Display Settings.

• Upload Featured Image, set the Featured Image Alt, and upload Featured List Image (Blog+) together with the Featured List Image Alt (Blog+) but not these 2 last options are available only for Blog Plus and Blog Extra.
• In the Publish Date field specify the post publish date.

Note: if the publish date is not set, the current date with be applied. If you set the future date, you will schedule a blog post publication.

• Set the Author of the article.

Note: if you leave this field blank, your admin user will be automatically assigned to this post as the author. If you use Blog Extra you can create author page with the social media links and latest articles.

• Сonnect your Magento 2 blog posts with Tags. You can create blog tags and assign them to store views.
• Decide whether to Include posts in Recent Posts.
• Choose whether to Enable or Disable Comments for the blog post.

Note: you can disable or enable only Magefan blog comments for the individual blog post.

• Set the post Position in the post list. It is used in case you choose to sort posts by position on category blog index pages.
• Set the View Count.
• Limit post’s Visibility for Customer Groups.

Note: this option is available for Blog Plus and Blog Extra editions only.

7.  Upload photos for Blog Post Media Gallery which will be displayed at the bottom of the post page on the storefront.

8. Configure Search Engine Optimization.

• Set the URL Key which will be used in the article URL. If you leave this field blank, it will be generated automatically.
• Enter the Meta Title which should NOT be more than 50-60 characters. If you don’t indicate this field, the Post Title will be used.
• Set the Meta Description which should NOT be more than 160 characters. If you don’t indicate this field, the Short Content will be used.
• Specify Meta Keywords if needed. Please note that according to the latest SEO practices the usage of Meta Keyword is not recommended.

9. Configure the Open Graph Tags for your blog post.

OG tags allow you to set different titles, descriptions, and images to make blog posts more attractive and clickable on social media.

10. Choose which Websites you want the blog to be posted on. 

11. Set the Related Products Rules to generate related products automatically.

Note: this feature is available for Blog Plus and Extra users only.

12. Chose Related Posts and Products. They will be displayed on the article page. 

Note: you can configure auto-related blog posts and products to save time on adding them manually.

13. Configure blog post Design and Custom Design Update.

• Choose the Layout and the Layout Update XML for the Design.
• Choose the Date range (from – to) within which a new design will be applied and specify the New Theme, Layout and Layout Update XML.

 14. Enable the Publish on Facebook option to post to Facebook automatically.

Once you finish creating a blog, and don’t forget to Save it.

Then go to the post view configurations to define the design and set up additional blog post page elements.