Blogging using Sparkle

I am interested in porting my blog pages over to Sparkle. Does Sparkle have an auto blogging feature or do I have to create the index pages manually? TIA

We don’t currently have anything automated. For the Sparkle blog we do exactly that, add a new article and manually update an index page.

Duncan what would be the correct workflow in this case? I’ve always thought that when you make changes to the site you have to export everything again but if I change only one page, can I upload to the server only that or should I always upload the whole site again? From what you write I think it is only possible to load the page concerned, or am I wrong?

You should let Sparkle deal with publishing only changes, that’s a separate topic of some complexity, but Sparkle does the right thing.

So as mentioned. We add a new article and manually update the index page.

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Hi Duncan,

I really love Sparkle. In 2018 I found the courage (at last) to stop using iWeb. It took so long because the alternatives were not appealing. I then went for Everweb, but immediately ran into annoyances and problems. Now I’m overjoyed with Sparkle. :slight_smile:

Saying that, I’ve always been a big fan of iWebs simple take on blogs. For me that’s now the one missing functionality in Sparkle.

I read your suggestion, but have another one. A workaround could be: making each blog-item a concealed (folded-in) ‘row’ of text/images on your blogpage and revealing the item by a kind of ‘folding out’ when the user clicks on the title of the blog-item. You will technically get a very large page of course after a while, but the user only sees the unfolded part(s) he/she needs.

Alas… I don’t know how to do this in Sparkle… Is that possible somehow?

Not sure I follow what you’re suggesting… sorry!

The problem we want to solve for is making publishing a “blog post” a more streamlined activity, in addition to supporting some constructs that are common on blog engines.

I wonder if for now there is a way to hide a group of text/images on a page and only reveal it when the user clicks somewhere.
That way I could put all blogposts in one page. The user would at first see e.g. one paragraph and a picture of every post, one after another in a list. He or she clicks on one and - tada - the rest of that one post would appear, between the others.
The problem: all those hidden parts of the page should not be empty until asked for, that would be stupid. :slight_smile:
They should be invisible in another way: ‘folded’ into the page only to be ‘unfolded’ or ‘slided out’ when summoned.
I can’t find this in Sparkle, but maybe it’s too far fetched as a workaround. Is it?

Hello @Monux

I think what you mean is the “accordion” effect, like the demo on this website:

https://jqueryui.com/accordion/#collapsible

Is that correct?

So when you click on each title (section) the text is revealed, or as you call it “unfolded”.

As far as I know Sparkle does not offer this functionality at the moment.

@Monux, I know what you mean and it is a good “javascript” trick wether by unfolding a hidden section or sliding in a hidden section but for blogging it is far from a good idea. Not will it only bloat the page and increase the load time but it wouldn’t be a great experience on mobile and far from ideal to try to get SEO traction via Google and the likes.

Check out how Duncan (the blog on the Sparkle website) has done it because I think for now this is the best method…

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Thanks @Shadowfax
Never heard of the accordion effect, but it is certainly an answer to my question!

Thanks @FlaminFig
Oww, SEO and mobile, I guess you’re right…