Signing Up
Have these things ready to sign up for a free account:
- Your name (however you are referred)
- An unclaimed email
- Password
- Being over 18 and agreeing to the BlogPDQ terms of service
Passwords must at least: have 8 characters, have one lowercase and one capital letter, and contain one number. Special characters are encouraged.
Once completed, you will be signed into your account, but must verify your email address to make your site public.
Account Settings
Your email and name can be updated from your account settings. This information good to keep current as we will send notifications and updates to customers that may impact customer sites.
Upgrading to Pro
From the same account settings you can unlock pro capabilities by subscribing montly or anually. New offerings and capabilities will be prioritized for pro customers.
After choosing one of the Pro options from the account setting page, you will be redirected to our payment gateway to complete setting up billing. Once that's completed your account will have pro features.
Blocks V1
Most modern editors:
- Drag and drop capability that falls short of their promises
- Are slow, buggy, prone to break pages
- Have more options than anyone uses or needs
Instead, we designed our content management for your success. Our tools:
- Do what you need them to do, not what we think you want them to do
- Prioritize safety of content, reuse, reliability
- Have fewer options to prevent common design pitfalls
The foundation of a site's pages are blocks of content. Each one can be reused any number of times on a template and can be made unique for each page it appears on.
Every block has a type which describes the kind of content it puts onto the page. A block's type can't be changed after it's made, but it is easy to create a new block and remove an old one.
If a block is marked as unique per page and one or more page uses it, it cannot be removed without removing it from each page. This prevents accidentally destroying content on pages as many editors happily allow.
Navigation
Navigation blocks will put links on your page in the order you add them. Each link has a URL and text that will be visible to site visitors. The HTML block can be used to make equivalent content, but this provides an easier to use editor.
For convenience, options to display the links vertically or horizontally are given.
Example Output
<nav>
<a href={url}>{text}</a>
<a href={url}>{text}</a>
<a href={url}>{text}</a>
</nav>
HTML
HTML blocks allow content to be added. By default, this block uses a rich text editor supporting various headings, styles, images (but requires uploading them as files first).
Video
A video can be reused as its own block by providing the video ID from YouTube. Currently, YouTube is the only source for video embeds. BlogPDQ doesn't currently host video content.
CSS
CSS content can created as a block and added to a template or page. In general, you'll want to add the CSS as a file a add to a site as a resource instead. A block can be useful for quick, unique modifications to a page while CSS as a site resource loads on every page in the head (allowing caching).
JavaScript
JavaScript can be created as a block to add to a template or page. Adding the JavaScript as file and attaching to a site as a resource is a better practice overall, but blocks can be useful for quick per-page scripts.
Templates
Templates break a page into regions and put blocks inside them. Those regions are:
- Header
- Left Sidebar
- Main Content
- Right Sidebar
- Footer
Regions can be activated or deactivated on a template as you see fit. Templates can also be reused for any site you own, so they only need to be made once.
Custom Template Layout
Our templates use semantically correct HTML to wrap region blocks. The benefit is incredibly clean pages that load fast and provide good SEO and usability by default. If you require different wrapping HTML, you can provide your own in the Custom Layout field.
This field allows placeholders that will be replaced by the template's blocks. Just place these (including all four curly braces) in the layout:
- {{header_blocks}}
- {{left_sidebar_blocks}}
- {{main_content_blocks}}
- {{right_sidebar_blocks}}
- {{footer_blocks}}
Note: You must include these regions in your template otherwise the placeholder will be printed out.
Template Blocks
Once the template is made, blocks can be added to any of the activated regions and rearranged. Additionally, each block can be configured to be unique per page or hidden.
Unique per page blocks will allow customization for that block on each page it is featured.
Hiding a block can be useful for staging new content before removing old content from old pages or simply hiding out of date content out of view.
Domains
A domain is a unique name that directs customers to your site. Generally a registrar provides this at an annual cost. We offer free subdomains at no cost and require no additional setup. These are called Free Domains
If you already have a domain with a registrar, it can be used. We refer to these as External Domains The entails setting up a few records to ensure no one is falsely claiming your domain in our system.
Verifying External Domains
When an external domain is made, a key is produced and can be seen on the Domains page. Copy this key and create a TXT record in your registrar with the key as the content.
For convenience and simplicity, only one TXT record is needed per root domain. For example if you want to use shop.magicdogs.net and blog.magicdogs.net as external domains, you only need to set up one TXT record for magicdogs.net.
Files
A site relies on many files to work. These can be CSS files for styling, JavaScript for dynamic content, images, and even PDFs, CSV, simple text for download. We support all of these cases.
If you want to add custom CSS as a resource to a site, it's uploaded as a file first. If you want to set up a site favicon, or images on a page, also upload these as files.
Our roadmap plans for paid file downloads, but currently all files are considered public. This means that you should never upload files you do not want to be seen publicly.
Sites
The site organizes pages, templates, and styles into a single branded space under your domain name. Sites have a public name, a description, a favicon (the icon that appears in the tab for that website), and a online status.
Configuring a Domain
Once you have added one or more domain, it can be linked to the site. If this is a free domain, you are finished at this step. An external domain requires that you set up a DNS A record to our IP from your registrar.
SSL
Site's need encryption to build trust, otherwise visitors will think twice to visit.
By default free domains are encrypted but if you are using an external domain, a certificate must be set up. Cloudflare offers origin certificates for free which can be used for this purpose.
Resources
CSS and JavaScript files that you've uploaded can be attached to your site so they load on each page. We offer a variety of available styles and scripts (System Resources) out of the box which can also be used.
Special Pages
There are special cases every site must handle including when a URL is visited but doesn't match any page. By default a system page is shown, but it won't have any styles or branding provided by your templates or resources. This can be any page belonging to your site by updating the Not Found Page
Similarly, if you have put your site in a status of Unavailable a default page is used, but can be any page of your choice by updating the Maintenance Page.
In order to select a page, it should be set to Published. Otherwise, it will not show from the page selection.
Favicons
Your site favicon can be updated to use any one of your uploaded image files. Upload an image first, then select it from the Favicon setting.
Site Pages
Each URL available on your site will refer to a page. That page will use a template to order and structure its default blocks. Blocks marked as unique per page can be overwritten.
A page has a Published status which can be in a state of Published or Unpublished. If a page is not published it can't be publicly visited.