Apostrophe Blog

This module bundle helps developers quickly add blog articles to ApostropheCMS websites. It provides the blog post piece type (@apostrophecms/blog) as well as a special page type (@apostrophecms/blog-page) for editors to create a blog.

Installation

To install the module, use the command line to run this command in an Apostrophe project's root directory:

npm install @apostrophecms/blog

Usage

Configure the blog modules in the app.js file:

require('apostrophe')({
  shortName: 'my-project',
  // Activate the bundle
  bundles: [ '@apostrophecms/blog' ],
  modules: {
    // The main blog piece type module
    '@apostrophecms/blog': {},
    // The blog page module
    '@apostrophecms/blog-page': {}
  }
});

Enable the page type

To enable the blog page type for editor to select, add it to the @apostrophecms/page configuration:

// modules/@apostrophecms/page/index.js
module.exports = {
  options: {
    types: [
      {
        name: '@apostrophecms/home-page',
        label: 'Home'
      },
      // Adding the blog page type
      {
        name: '@apostrophecms/blog-page',
        label: 'Blog Page'
      }
    ]
  }
};

Note: The index page template (index.html), filters template partial (filters.html), and show page template (show.html) are primarily meant as a starting point for a project. They demonstrate much of the available template data, but developers will almost always want to override them to implement proper styles and layout.

Filtering by year, month, and day

The default field publishedAt ("Publication Date" in the UI) sets the publication date of the blog post. By default, only articles released in the past are displayed to the user. In the Apostrophe admin UI, all articles are shown to the editors and admin.

This doesn't mean that Apostrophe will automatically publish a draft update to an existing post on this date. To schedule the publication of new draft content, consider installing the optional @apostrophecms/scheduled-publishing module.

The blog page module, @apostrophecms/blog-page, provides query filters to refine blog results by year, month, and day. These are primarily used for index page filters (see the filters.html file), but can also be used in REST API requests and server-side queries.

Multiple blog piece types

Sometimes a website needs multiple, distinct types of blog posts. If the blog posts types can be managed together, it might be easiest to add a new field and query builder to customize blog views. But if the blog posts types should be managed completely separately, it may be better to create separate piece types for each.

Just as we extend @apostrophecms/piece-type to create a new piece type, we can extend @apostrophecms/blog to create a new blog post type. The blog post type will need its own module directory and UI labels. It can simply inherit the original fields, and other configuration or override them in the blog type's index.js file.

A special blog post type that has a blog URL field might look like this:

// modules/special-blog/index.js
module.exports = {
  extend: '@apostrophecms/blog',
  options: {
    label: 'Special blog post',
    pluralLabel: 'Special blog posts'
  },
  fields: {
    add: {
      blogUrl: {
        label: 'blog post URL',
        type: 'url'
      }
    },
    group: {
      basics: { fields: ['blogUrl'] }
    }
  }
};

As always with piece-page types and piece types, you must have a module extending @apostrophecms/blog-page that corresponds to each module extending @apostrophecms/blog. Apostrophe will match them up based on the naming convention.

// modules/special-blog-page/index.js
module.exports = {
  extend: '@apostrophecms/blog-page'
};

Do this as many times as you need custom blog types. Adding filtering and new fields to the base blog module is usually enough for most use cases, but organizations with more complex blog needs will find this strategy helpful.