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Need ideas to integrate blog into my site/app

Need help
#1

I know this is a topic that has been discussed here in a variety of ways but I’d like to ask a few questions to help determine the best way to go.

I’ve built a few apps with Bubble and done well including corresponding websites. I have not yet integrated a blog into any of my sites.

Basic questions:
Is it feasible/beneficial to use some outside blogging service that can co-op with my domain here on bubble in the form of a subdirectory or something? Why reinvent the wheel concept?

Building blog-like pages within Bubble… can it be as easy as just manually creating a new page in Bubble (like your index page) that basically is a single article, then just duplicate that page (with linking) every time I want to create a new post and updating the content for that? Would this approach be SEO-beneficial?

I don’t need a fancy system that allows for many contributors or outside people logging in. It’s completely internal and would need a new blog post about once a week.

Or is a dedicated Bubble blog template a better way to go and then try to copy/paste that template into my existing website? Any thoughts or discussion?

Thanks,
Dan

#2

Hi Dan, were you able to get a solution. I am new to bubble and at step one - wherein I want to first start with blog and then build app - do you have any recommendation on how to go about doing it?

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#3

Hi there,

No I haven’t found a perfect solution yet. I haven’t had a single reply to the question.

What I figured I would do is to just create a blog master page for my sites, and then create a specific blog post page for each article we write and publish, duplicating that page each time for each new article and renaming the page. We’ll add information about that new blog page into our database, and then display the blog posts on the master blog page as you would expect.

If you are starting from scratch and you know you want to integrate a blog solution right up front, there were a couple of really good looking blog templates I saw available here. It’s all dependent upon what your needs are for your site and whether you want people to be able to write and publish their own blog posts.

My sites are not blog-related sites, they are SaaS sites, that will also have an area for blog posts that we create internally so our needs are a little different.

If anyone else is reading this and wants to chime in I’m sure we would be interested to hear your opinion.

#4

Thanks Dan, yes I am starting from scratch and there are good blog templates - but what i am not clear on is how to I use this blog template and release it while working on my app in parallel? I want this blog later to appear as a separate blog page once my app is developed.

#5

Hey @underhill.dan! I recently went through a similar decision-making process for an app and I’d like to share some of the solutions I found. I ended up using an external service for my blog for the ease of signup and built-in optimization tools. The solution that’s best for you will depend on the time you’re willing to invest in integrating/building vs. your budget for an external tool. Here are some options to consider:

  • Hosting on another site: This is a quicker option where you can keep your main Bubble app on your domain and host your blog on a subdomain. There are several blogging tools on the market, such as Feather(uses Notion as the CMS so it’s really quick to get started), Ghost, and Versoly, each with varying levels of complexity.

  • Embedding a blog : You can embed a blog on your site using services such as Dropinblog or BlogHandy. This approach provides an easy integration, as the blog will inherit the design of your page, and eliminates the need for hosting on a separate subdomain.

  • Integrating with a CMS
    For a highly customized experience, you can integrate with a CMS through the API connector or custom code. This option may be more complex but can offer a lot of customization. I recently ran into the here.co blog which is Bubble + Storyblock CMS.

  • Bubble Templates : There are also some useful templates such as markdown template by @rico.trevisan

  • Build a blog yourself in Bubble: You can also build your own blog in Bubble, but you’ll need to consider the interface for creating posts and pages. You can have a single page with a “blog post” type of content and set the page’s slug to be the unique title so you don’t need to duplicate the page each time for the blog post. I use a similar approach for integrations directory there are over 800 integration pages each with its unique URLs but in my editor, it’s just a single page that’s the template for all the pages. Happy to jam about that if you get stuck.

Anywho, curious to find out what you end up going with.

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#6

Hi @lola,

Thanks for the great reply. I’m looking through the various options. What solution did you ultimately go with and why?

Question: if I use an offsite blog that uses a subdomain, do I still get the benefit of SEO for my site? I assume so.

Thanks agian,
Dan

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#7

I’m not an SEO expert but it apparently does slightly affect the SEO for the main site. I ran into this Niel Patel article that talks a bit more about that.

I ultimately went with an external blog on a subdomain becuase it was the quickest option and I wanted to get going on the content. i also use Notion a ton for a lot of my writing so Feather is what I chose since it makes my whole process simpler.

I think there’s a way to actually put as part of the file directory instead of subdomain they have a few blog examples that are website.com/blog instead of blog.website.com haven’t experimented with that yet but once I figure it out, i’d be happy to share with the community in case anyone else runs into something similar!

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#8

Thanks for all of that. Always appreciate hearing different perspectives. For me, my goal is to maximize SEO to my site/app.

Mine will not be a blog that has outside contributors so a pretty interface is not required. What I think I may do then, is to just create another Bubble page that shows the main blog page linking to the articles.

Then just create each blog article individually by duplicating a master blog post page and slugify it. So in effect, each article will be its own page, content stored in the DB so I can then sort and display all of the content however I please on the Main Blog page. No subdomains.

If you have other thoughts I’m open to hearing.

Thanks,
Dan

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#9

I think that should work pretty well! and since you have the raw content you can always transform it and change the format later if you need to. And bubble can read bbcode so you can do some formating from those entries in the database.

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