Pimp Your SharePoint Blog – Show your Latest Postings
- Pimp Your SharePoint Blog – Show your Latest Postings
- Pimp Your SharePoint Blog – Create a bloggers list in the sidebar
- Pimp Your SharePoint Blog – Personalize Your Blog Header with an Image
- Pimp Your SharePoint Blog – Use Windows Live Writer
This is Lee Reed’s first screencast in a series of six on how to make your SharePoint blog more useful. Here, he shows how to easily create placeholder content to see how your blog will look when it starts to grow. He also adds a quick web part to the right hand side of the page, displaying a list of the latest posts.
Five more on the way…
Author: Lee Reed ThoughtBridge, Atlanta, GA
Lee Reed is an expert in collaboration and user adoption on the Microsoft SharePoint 2007 platform. His consulting with companies large and small throughout the East Coast has resulted in many successful collaboration environments and increased user adoption.
Lee is currently the Director of Business Process and SharePoint Education for Thoughtbridge, a Microsoft Gold Partner focused exclusively on the Microsoft SharePoint 2007 platform.
- Pimp Your SharePoint Blog - Show your Latest Postings
- Pimp Your SharePoint Blog - Create a bloggers list in the sidebar
- Pimp Your SharePoint Blog - Personalize Your Blog Header with an Image
- Pimp Your SharePoint Blog - Use Windows Live Writer
- Pimp Your SharePoint Blog - Add a Short Bio About Yourself
- Pimp Your SharePoint Blog - Manage Your Blog Posts
Thanks for the tip. I liked and used the idea, but decided to implement it with the Content Query Tool Part instead of creating a view.
Thanks for the tip! I’ve also been using the Content Query Web Part to generate recent posts, but this is probably a simpler way for less experienced users to implement the solution.
This also got me thinking about how to promote blog comments better, since they aren’t very visible in the post footers. You can use the same steps to create a sidebar view of recent comments using the Comments list and editing the view down to 5 items, displaying the commenter’s name and the post title associated with the comment. This is something I’ve been trying to achieve for a while, so I’m glad I checked this out! Thanks again!
Glad that you found it useful, Lorenzo and Ben. I agree with the CQWP approach as well, but Ben absolutely hit the nail on the head…I’m laser focused on helping those that are new to MOSS learn how to do some things that will positively impact their working world all while learning how to move around in the MOSS interface. Those of us with deep experience with the platform have forgotten what it’s like to be intimidated by the interface and SP capabilities.
As well, I am focused on presenting my viewpoints and experiences to everyone here while hoping that something I say will jog an idea for a new capability or offering and you will take your MOSS environment to a whole new level (and then share the thought here). Ben…you made my day with your comments! Thank you.
Great tip – I am getting constant complaints about the OOB Blog. I will implement immediately.
Also appreciate the comments on the CQWP use as well which I will also take advantage of.
Eagerly awaiting your next installment.
Thanks
Hello Lee –
Simple yet quite useful feature indeed. Thank you for posting. I am wondering do you happen to know how can I display only first ‘n’ lines of a post in all the posts and than provide a “read full post..” at the last few characters of the ‘n’ the line? and when the user clicks that link it take him to that post.This is common feature in most blogs and I am wondering if there is simple way to accomplish it in Sharepoint.
This will allow my Blog main page to be concise and yet provide links to read further or more like provide a brief overview of all posts. If user wants to read it they’ll click the link otherwise they can glance through….
Thanks
Hi Jephthah,
SharePoint doesn’t offer that functionality OOTB, unfortunately. I did notice, however, that Live Writer has the option to provide a “Read More…” link when posting to other Blogging platforms, so I’m not sure why there isn’t that option when Live Writer is switched to a SharePoint Blog.
There is probably something that can be done within Designer to the Blog Interface to allow for this option to be enabled for every posting, but it would alter the blog interface and ghost the page. Someone more well versed in SP Designer might be able to answer this question.
You can also type “=lorem()” into Word to generate Lorem Ipsum text.
Syntax:
=lorem(paragraphs,sentences)
Example:
=lorem(6,20)
Or if you want random actual words from Word help files, you can use “=rand()” with the same optional (paragraphs, sentances) syntax.
Ericka – I like that one! Just added it to my bag of tricks. — Mark
I love this video! Very helpful. I have applied to a blog site, however if a visitor acceses the site they do not see the Latest Post web part. Why is this?
Hi Jennifer,
I’m not certain what the issue might be but I do have two guesses. If the users can read the blog postings then they will have the ability to see the latest blog posts.
Did you possibly apply a group name in the ‘Audience’ field on the web part? This would limit the ability for people to see the recent postings listings to only those that are included in a group in the audience area.
Also, could you have modified your personal view of the page before you added the web part? If this is the case, you will see that you are editing the personal view of the page in the upper left portion of the screen when the page is in edit mode. Any changes you make to your personal view of a page in SharePoint won’t be seen by others as they will see the ‘public’ view of the page.
Hope that these suggestions help. Let me know what you find.
how can i make the latest posting part work when i am using themes? i have sharepoint designer 07 here is an example of how my code looks
Categories
i fallowed your video and made the new web part but i don’t know how to get it into my theme??
Instead of Last Posts, could I show Past Posts to hype those Posts buried way down? I’m not so concerned about the Last 3 or 4 posts since they are closer to the top on the main screen already.
Hi, great series! I heard the word “tag” mentioned and I see tags on this site. How do I get those to work with SharePoint blogging? Thanks.