Blog Posts

Introduction

We are using the Netlify CMS for blog posts. To access the editor, go to https://kodi.tv/admin (note that this URL changed from the previous https://kodi-tv.netlify.app/admin once we moved everything into production). You will need to login with your GitHub credentials, and only team members who have write access to the kodi-tv repo can add or edit blog posts.

Workflow

When you first log in, you'll be presented with a list of existing blog posts, as you're looking at the Contents list. From here, you can search, sort, select - and then either edit a published post, or create a new one.

Adding a New Blog Entry

Once you have logged in, you can click the button labeled New Post in the upper right part of the page. Blog posts have a title, publish date, author (optional), tags (optional, and more than one), featured image (optional), and body. The featured image can be uploaded when you create the post, or you can use any image that has been used in a blog post before.

You can save posts at any time (but please see the section below on previewing a blog entry) and a post must be saved at least one before you can publish it. Once saved, to publish a post you set the status to READY and then select the PUBLISH NOW option from the publish menu. This will generate a series of commits to the main branch, and that will trigger a site build.

Previewing a Blog Entry

The preview pane on the left of the page is active by default and can be toggled on/off using the eye icon. That preview will be 99% exactly what you will see on the site once it is published. The only difference is that because of a Gatsby bug, the footer for the site is not shown.

Editing a Published Blog Entry

Find the entry you want to edit and open it. Once you open an entry, you get the same editor you used to create a post. Once you save it, you again need to set the post status to READY and the use the PUBLISH NOW option in the publish menu.

Editing a Draft Blog Entry

When you save a blog post, but don't publish it, it will not appear on the initial contents list: this is purely a list of published articles.

Instead, go to Workflow at the top of the screen to call up posts in various stages of their lifecycle: Draft, In Review, or Ready (based on whatever status is set when editing a post).

Formatting Entries

The post editor gives you the choice of a WYSIWYG editor or raw markdown. Either gives the usual basic formatting: bold, italic, code blocks, numbered/bullet lists, image insertion, etc.