Writing Blog Posts & Using Categories
A blog is one of the best ways to bring new visitors to your site, answer the questions customers ask most, and show off your expertise. StoutStack's blog gives you everything you need: a place to write posts, categories to keep them organized, and reader-friendly listing and category pages that are built for you automatically. Here's how to write a strong post and keep your blog tidy.
Writing a new post
- Go to Blog → Posts in the left-hand menu.
- Click Create New.
- Fill in the fields described below.
- Click Save to keep a private draft, or Publish when it's ready to share.
Here are the fields you'll work with and what each one does:
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Title | The headline of your post. Shows at the top of the post, on your blog listing, and in search results. |
| Excerpt | A short summary shown on your blog listing cards. Always write one yourself. It is not created for you (see below). |
| Featured Image | The main image. Appears on listing cards, at the top of the post, and as the preview when your post is shared on social media. |
| Content | The body of your post, written in the rich-text editor (headings, bold, links, lists, and tables). |
| Extra sections | Optional ready-made building blocks you can add below the content, such as a call-to-action or a gallery. |
| Author | Who wrote the post. Defaults to you; change it if a teammate wrote it. |
| Published Date | The date shown on the post. Defaults to today; you can set it to any date you'd like to display. |
| Categories | The broad topics a post belongs to. A post can be in more than one. |
| Tags | Optional keywords for finer-grained labeling, handy once you have lots of related posts. |
Always write an excerpt
This one deserves its own note because it's easy to skip. The excerpt is the short summary shown on your blog listing cards, the teaser a reader sees before deciding whether to click. StoutStack does not write the excerpt for you. If you leave it blank, your listing cards will simply have no summary, which looks unfinished and gives readers less reason to click through. Always write a sentence or two. Think of it as the "back-cover blurb" for your post: what's in it, and why someone should read it.
About the Content editor
The Content area is where you write the body of your post using the rich-text editor. You can add headings to break the post into sections, make text bold, insert links, create bulleted and numbered lists, and build tables. A good habit for readability: use headings to split long posts into clear sections so readers can skim and find what they need.
Organizing posts with categories
Categories are the main way to group your posts by topic. A design studio, for example, might use "Brand Design," "Case Studies," and "Industry Trends." Categories help readers find more of what interests them, and they give your blog a clear, browsable structure.
To create a category, go to Blog → Categories and click Create New. Each category has:
- Name: what the category is called, such as "Brand Design."
- Slug: the web-address version of the name, created automatically (for example,
brand-design). You can edit it. - Description: an optional sentence or two describing the category, which can appear on the category's own page.
Once a category exists, you assign posts to it using the Categories field on each post.
What your readers see
You don't have to build any of these pages yourself. StoutStack creates them and keeps them up to date as you publish:
- Your blog listing at
/blog: all your published posts, newest first, split across multiple pages (paginated) when you have a lot, with filters so readers can narrow down by category. - Category pages at
/blog/category/<name>: every post in a single category, gathered in one place. - Individual post pages at
/blog/<slug>: the full post with its featured image, your content, and the author and date.
So a post titled "Choosing Brand Colors" on a site at yourname.mystoutstack.com would live at yourname.mystoutstack.com/blog/choosing-brand-colors.
Good to know
- The blog is an optional feature. If you don't see a Blog section, or
/blogisn't available on your site, it may not be switched on yet. Just contact support and we'll enable it for you. - Deleting a post is limited to Site Admins. If you're not an admin and want a post off your site, you can unpublish it (which removes it from your public site) and ask a Site Admin to delete it permanently if needed.
- Posts use the same publishing tools as pages. Drafts, Live Preview, scheduling, and version history all work exactly the same way. See Drafts, Live Preview, Version History & Scheduling.
- You control how the blog looks, too. This article covers writing posts; the design of your blog is a separate set of settings. See Designing Your Blog Listing Page for the cards on
/blog, and Designing Your Blog Post Pages for how a single post reads.