General Blog Post Setup & Customization
Jun 16, 2022
Within HubSpot CMS, there is one element of a website that does not yet use the FULL drag-n-drop functionality of a theme... and that is a blog post template. A blog LISTING template can be fully drag-n-drop, like a web page, but the POST template is locked in to the template layout. Due to this, we have built in a number of blog post settings within the theme settings. This gives you the ability to customize the post template in ways that you wouldn't have access to otherwise without getting into the template HTML file. This post will walk you through the available options to make sure your blog posts contain exactly what you'd like... and exclude anything else. [ See our demo Fusion Blog here ] General Blog Post Settings From any page editing view, click the "Theme" tab on the left and open the Fusion Theme settings. These options will be applied to all blog POSTS that are assigned to the General Blog Post template. Post Content Background Color. This is the background color used for the blog content area, filling all of the space between the header and footer. Default is #f5f5f5. Show Recent Posts. By default, the right side column of the post template includes a dynamic feed with links to the most recent posts from this blog. You can turn this off if you do not want it there. Number of Recent Posts. In conjunction with the above setting, this controls how many recent posts are included in that feed. Default is 5. Show Previous/Next Links. This adds Previous and Next buttons at the bottom of the blog post page, allowing the user to navigate easily to other blog posts. Default is OFF. Show Topic Links. This adds, under the author box and above the navigation buttons, a list of text links to all tags/topics associated with the post. Clicking on the topic will give you a blog listing view filtered to show posts from that topic. Default is ON. Show Social Sharing Bar. This adds a vertical bar of social sharing links on the left edge of the screen. Default is ON. Show About the Author. This shows a box under the content with picture, name, social links and bio of the blog post author. Default is OFF. Show Subscription Form. This adds a blog subscription form at the bottom of the right side panel. To use this, you'll have to have first setup the blog subscription in the blog settings. For help on setting that up, click here. Default is OFF, but it is recommended to utilize. Use Subscription Form Background. This is a simple on/off for putting a background color behind the subscription form, if it is used. Default is ON. When on, the color options below are utilized and padding is added inside of the box. Subscription Form Background Color. This is the color behind the subscription form, intended to set it apart from other page elements. It defaults to the theme Tertiary Color. If the toggle above it is off, the color will not be applied. Subscription Form Text Color. This is the color of the text inside the subscription form box, so you can make sure it is visible with your selected background color. It defaults to the theme White Color. If the "Use Background Color" toggle is off, this color will not be applied. Other Options in Blog Post Editing Click on the "Contents" tab in the left column and you'll find other blog post options including: Hero Background Image. This custom module loads a full width background image starting from the very top of the blog post page and then has a gradient color at the bottom so you can blend the image in to whatever blog post background color you have set in your theme settings. If you do not want this image, you can simply remove the default image. CTA Block. Within the right side panel, you'll see an empty rich text field like this screenshot. This can be ignored, or you can use it to put content in that column that is specific to a blog post instead of global to all posts. Insert a CTA, an image, some text, or whatever else! Gradient Contact Form. This custom form module is added at the bottom of each blog post. Click here to edit the content of the module for the instance within each post, which could include changing the text or the form.