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Setting up and customizing your Showit blog

Blogging is one of the most powerful tools for boosting your business’s marketing efforts and SEO performance. The majority of my website traffic comes from people finding my blog content through Pinterest and Google. If you’re serious about improving your search rankings and driving substantial traffic to your website, implementing a blog is so helpful. And when you use a Showit blog, you get complete creative control over how your blog looks and feels, so it blends seamlessly with your brand and keeps visitors coming back for more.

Understanding the Showit-WordPress Blog Connection

Showit functions as your design platform, while WordPress serves as your content management system. You’ll create your blog’s visual design in Showit, but write and publish the actual posts in WordPress. You get to enjoy the best of both worlds: beautifully designed blog templates in Showit combined with the robust functionality of WordPress blogging. To manage your blog content, you’ll access WordPress through yoururl.com/wp-admin using your Showit login credentials (once your blog is initially set up).

In the Showit interface, you’ll establish placeholders indicating where specific elements should appear—such as post titles, dates, categories, and the main content (text and images). When you publish content through WordPress, it automatically displays on your Showit website replacing the placeholder content.

New to the Showit platform? You can try your first month at no cost!

Setting Up Your Blog

If you don’t have a blog set up, the Showit team will help manage this process. The process varies depending on whether you’re migrating existing blog posts or starting fresh. Either way, Showit will contact you once the setup is complete, at which point you can begin blogging.

Before proceeding, you’ll need a domain, which can be purchased through registrars like Google Domains. If you already own a domain, you’ll continue using your current registrar (Showit will request this login information).

Migrating an Existing Blog

Blog migration from WordPress or Squarespace is included with Showit’s Advanced blog subscription. Here’s the migration process:

  1. Access the Showit dashboard and navigate to “Site Settings,” then click “Edit” next to Custom Domain
  2. Complete the domain setup steps, and when asked about blog setup, select “Yes, proceed to blog setup”
  3. Choose “Migrate Existing Blog” and provide the requested information, including your blog domain and login (accuracy is crucial to avoid delays!)
  4. After Showit notifies you that migration is complete, log in to your new Showit blog and verify that all content transferred correctly
  5. If migration was successful, you can safely cancel your previous hosting plan

If your current blog uses a platform not supported by Showit’s migration services (like Wix), you can manually migrate your posts.

Setting Up a New Blog

If you’re starting a blog from scratch, follow these steps:

  1. Access the Showit dashboard and navigate to “Site Settings,” then click “Edit” next to Custom Domain
  2. Complete the domain setup steps and select “I want Showit to setup or migrate my blog”
  3. Choose “Set Up New Blog” and provide the requested information
  4. After Showit notifies you that your blog is ready, log in to WordPress through yoururl.com/wp-admin to begin creating and publishing content

Designing Your Blog in Showit

In the Showit interface, blog templates appear under the “Site” tab in their own section below “Pages.” Every Showit blog requires two fundamental pages:

  • Blog Page: Displays a list of all published posts
  • Single Post Page: Determines how individual posts appear when opened

If you’re using a Showit website template, these blog pages come pre-designed, though you’re free to customize them as you want. If working with a designer on a custom site, they’ll create these pages for you. But if you’re designing from scratch, you’ll need to build these pages for your blog to function properly.

Important note: In the Showit designer or preview mode, your actual blog content won’t be visible. It will only display on your live site.

Creating a Blog Page

First, when creating a new blog page, you must assign it a WordPress template type. Click “Template Info” in the properties panel and select “Post List (Default)” from the “WordPress Template” dropdown.

Showit blog pages function similarly to regular pages. You can add site canvases and other elements just as you would elsewhere. For static elements like headers, footers, and sidebars, select “Static Content” from the WordPress dropdown in canvas settings to indicate that these areas won’t display blog content.

For canvases containing your blog posts, follow these steps:

  1. Create a new canvas and select “In Post Loop” from the WordPress dropdown in canvas settings
  2. Design your post layout using text boxes and images, including elements like title, image, excerpt, date, and category
  3. Configure text boxes as WordPress placeholders through the “text properties” panel, selecting the appropriate placeholder for each element
  4. Set your blog to display WordPress featured images by enabling “WordPress Placeholder Image” in the Image properties panel

On your live site, Showit automatically populates these placeholders with content from your posts, replicating this template for all published entries.

You’ll also need to create pagination elements to help users navigate between older and newer posts. Simply create and style text boxes, then set them as “Newer Post Link” and “Older Post Link” placeholders. In WordPress under “Settings” > “Reading,” you can specify how many posts should appear per page.

Creating a Single Post Page

After setting up your post list page, design a layout for individual posts by selecting “Single Post” from the “WordPress Template” dropdown.

Design this page using placeholders like “Post Title,” “Post Category,” and “Post Content” to determine how your full blog posts will appear.

Creating Blog Content

With your blog template ready, it’s time to add content. Access your WordPress dashboard by visiting yoururl.com/wp-admin and logging in with your Showit username and password. I recommend writing your posts in a word processing program and transferring them to WordPress instead of writing directly in the WordPress editor so that you have a copy of your posts if needed.

Adding Images to Blog Posts

To optimize images for your blog:

  1. Resize images to 2000px on the longest edge for optimal loading times
  2. Compress images using Tinyjpg or a plugin like Smush (included with Showit’s basic blog subscription)
  3. Use descriptive filenames (e.g., “Kelly-and-Mike-Wedding-Reception-03” rather than “IMG_361305-03”)
  4. Add alt text describing each image’s content when uploading to your WordPress media library

Note that your WordPress media library is separate from your Showit media library.

Optimizing Posts for Search (SEO)

To enhance search visibility:

  1. Activate the Yoast plugin (included with Showit’s basic blog plan)
  2. Use Yoast’s evaluation metrics as guidelines for readability and SEO optimization
  3. Conduct keyword research using tools like Ubersuggest and Answer The Public before writing
  4. Set your focus keyword and craft a meta description in Yoast
  5. Aim for comprehensive content (at least 300 words, but 1,000+ is more competitive for Google rankings)

Preparing to Publish

Remember that content and metadata from WordPress will populate the Showit template on your live site. Ensure all placeholders in your Showit design have corresponding information in WordPress:

  1. Set categories and tags to help organize your content
  2. Assign a featured image that matches the dimensions used in your Showit template
  3. Preview your post to see how it will appear in your Showit blog template
  4. Choose to publish immediately or schedule for future publication

Recap

Setting up a blog in Showit is easier than it sounds—and the best part is that you get full control over the design without touching a line of code. Once you connect your blog to WordPress, you’ll use Showit to design the look and feel of your blog and WordPress to publish your content.

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