Blog & announcements

This documentation is changing during the beta

SCNX Sites is in active beta, and we're changing a lot of things as we go. We'll be reworking this documentation once the current beta cycle wraps up, so some details on this page may be outdated in the meantime.

Give your community somewhere to read your news. The blog is a set of posts with its own page on your site, an RSS feed, a block you can drop onto any page, and optional announcements in your Discord server.

The Blog screen

Open Blog in the Sites menu of your dashboard. It is split into five tabs:

• Posts - all your posts, with search, filters and bulk actions. See The Posts tab.
• Authors - profiles for the people who write for your blog. See Authors.
• Categories & tags - your categories, and tools to tidy up tags. See Categories and Tags.
• Display - Blog layout and Post page extras. See Layouts and The post page.
• Announcements - Announce new posts on Discord. See Discord announcements.

The Posts tab

At the top, a row of numbers shows All posts, Live, Scheduled, Drafts and Blog views, 30 days. Below it, find posts with:

• Search posts - looks in titles, teasers and tags.
• Status, Author, Category and Tag filters. For categories you can also pick No category. Clear filters resets them.
• Sort by - Newest first, Oldest first, Title A-Z or Most viewed.
• The Layout toggle - Cards or Compact list. We remember your choice in your browser.

Each post shows its cover, title, a status badge (Live, Scheduled with the time it goes live, or Draft), the date, its author avatars, its category and tags, the views of the last 30 days, and a note when it was announced on Discord. Unpublished changes appears on a live post that has edits waiting. Click Edit to open the post editor. The ⋯ menu on a post has View live, Publish now, Move to drafts and Delete. Publish now does not post to Discord. If the site has an announcement webhook and the post was not announced yet, the menu also has Publish and announce on Discord.

Publishing a single post from this menu never announces it on Discord. To announce a post, use the publish window in the post editor, see Publishing and scheduling.

Bulk actions

Tick the box on a post, or Select all on this page, and a bar appears with the actions for your selection. You can select up to 50 posts at once.

• Publish - makes the selected posts live right away. Tick Announce on Discord to announce them. It is off by default, so publishing 30 posts never floods your channel. The checkbox is disabled until you set up announcements.
• Move to drafts - turns the selected posts back into drafts.
• Set category - pick a category and click Set category.
• Delete - removes the selected posts for good, after you confirm.

If some posts fail, for example because one was flagged by our content check, the others still go through. You see how many worked, and a reason for each post that did not. The failed posts stay selected so you can try again.

Click New post to start a new post.

Writing a post

The post editor is a full-screen writing page with nothing else in the way. From top to bottom:

1. Cover image - optional. Pick a picture from your server's image library. You can replace or remove it later.
2. Post title - the headline of your post.
3. The formatting bar - Bold, Italic, H2, H3, Link, Image, Bulleted list, Numbered list and Quote. Each button wraps the text you selected, or inserts the formatting where your cursor is. It stays at the top of the screen while you scroll.
4. Your text - written in Markdown. The box grows as you write.

Shortcuts: Ctrl+B (bold), Ctrl+I (italic) and Ctrl+K (link). On a Mac, use Cmd instead of Ctrl.

A few things to know about the text:

• Images come from your server's image library. Use the Image button to pick one. Images from other websites are removed from the post.
• Links must start with https://, http:// or mailto:. On your site, they open in a new tab.
• Headings: your post title is the main heading of the page, so a # heading in your text shows up as a section heading.
• If a post gets very long, a counter appears under the text and turns red when you are over the limit.

Saving happens on its own

You don't need to save. The editor saves a moment after you stop typing, and the top bar tells you how it went:

Top bar shows	What it means
Saving… / Saved	Your changes are being saved, or are saved.
Add a title to save	A new post is only created once it has a title.
Not saved: fix highlighted fields	Something is not valid. Fix the field that is marked, and saving picks up again.
Not saved with Retry	Saving failed. Click Retry. If you try to leave, we warn you first.

Saving never puts anything on your site. Only Publish and Update do that.

We also check posts for unsafe content when they are saved. If something is blocked, you see a message telling you what to change.

Post settings

Everything that is not the cover, title or text lives in Post settings in the top bar. It opens as a panel on the right. Close it with Esc or by clicking next to it.

• URL slug - the web address of your post. The full address is shown underneath. For a new post it follows the title until you change it yourself, and Reset to title builds it from the title again. It uses lowercase letters, numbers and dashes. Each post needs its own slug.
• Excerpt - a short teaser. It shows under the title on your blog page and in the Latest posts block, in your RSS feed, and in Discord announcements. Optional.
• Tags - short labels, shown on the post, on its card and in your RSS feed. Press Enter after each one. Tags you already used on other posts are suggested as you type.
• Authors - pick one or more of your author profiles with Add an author. The first one is the Main author, and the arrows change the order. A post can have up to 5 authors. Leave it empty for no byline. Manage authors takes you to the Authors tab.
• Category - pick one of your categories, or No category. Manage categories takes you to the Categories & tags tab.
• Search & sharing - the Share title, Share description and Share image used when someone shares the post. Each falls back to the post title, the excerpt and the cover image.
• Delete post - removes the post for good, after you confirm.

Preview

Switch from Write to Preview in the top bar to see your post the way it will look on your site, with your theme, menu and footer. It shows exactly what is in the editor right now, even changes that are still saving. Use the desktop and mobile buttons to check both sizes.

The preview leaves out the previous/next links, and the date shows when the post is scheduled for, or that it is not published yet. Links in the preview don't go anywhere. Switch back to Write and you are right where you left off.

Publishing and scheduling

A post is in one of three states:

• Draft - only visible to you in the dashboard.
• Scheduled - goes live on its own at the time you picked.
• Published - on your blog for everyone to read.

To publish, click Publish in the top bar. A small window opens:

• When - Now, or Schedule for a date and time. Times are in your own time zone, and we show which one.
• Announce in Discord - tick this to announce the post in your server. It only shows up when announcements are set up, see Discord announcements.
• A short checklist reminds you if the post has No cover image or no excerpt. It never stops you from publishing.

Click Publish now or Schedule to confirm. A scheduled post goes live by itself at that time. You don't need to be online for it.

To change a scheduled post's time, click Scheduled in the top bar. You can pick a new time or publish it right away.

The ⋯ menu next to the button has the rest:

• Unpublish - turns a published or scheduled post back into a draft and takes it off your site.
• Discard changes - see below.
• Open on site - opens the published post in a new tab.

Editing a published post

You can keep working on a post after it is published. Your edits are saved as you type, but your visitors keep seeing the published version until you click Update. The top bar shows Published · unpublished changes while there is something waiting.

• Update puts your changes on your site.
• Discard changes in the ⋯ menu throws your changes away and goes back to what is published.
• Unpublish keeps your latest changes, so nothing you wrote is lost. The post just becomes a draft.

Scheduled posts work the same way. Your edits wait until you click Update, so a half-finished edit never goes out on its own when the scheduled time comes.

Your blog page

Published posts appear at /blog on your site, newest first. With lots of posts, the page is split into pages with Newer posts and Older posts buttons. There is also a visible link to your RSS feed.

Each post has its own page at /blog/<slug>.

The blog uses your site's theme, menu and footer, so it feels like the rest of your site. To link to it from your menu, add the built-in Blog item on the Navigation screen. Your blog page and every post are also in your site's sitemap for search engines.

Layouts

Choose how posts are arranged under Blog layout in the Display tab of the Blog screen, then click Save.

Layout	What it looks like	Best for
List	Clean rows with the date beside each post. Your newest post gets a larger title.	Most blogs, especially posts without covers
Featured	Your newest post gets a large, decorated panel at the top. The rest are listed below it.	Blogs with one big story at a time
Grid	A grid of cards with cover images. Posts without a cover get a simple text card.	Posts that all have a cover image

The layout changes on your site straight away, without publishing your site again.

The post page

Every post page starts with a header in your theme's colours:

• a Back to all posts link,
• the date, the authors and the read time. Every author is listed and links to their author page,
• the category as a small chip, linking to the category page,
• the title,
• the tags.

The cover image comes right after the header, followed by your text. After the text:

• An About the author card for each author, with their picture, name, bio and links.
• Related posts, up to 3. Posts in the same category come first, then posts that share a tag. If nothing matches, the block is left out.
• Links to the previous and next post.

Under Post page extras in the Display tab you can turn off Show estimated read time and Show previous/next post links. Both are on by default, and changes show up on your site right after you click Save.

When someone shares a post, the link preview uses the post's Search & sharing settings, falling back to its title, excerpt and cover image.

Authors

Authors are profiles you create once and add to as many posts as you like. They are not Discord members, so nothing about your staff is shown. Open the Authors tab and click New author:

• Name - up to 60 characters, like "The Mod Team".
• Link - the address of the author page. Leave it empty and we create it from the name. Changing the name later does not change the link.
• Bio - a short text, up to 500 characters.
• Picture - an image from your server's image library.
• Links - up to 5 links, each with a label and an address starting with https://.

You can have up to 50 authors per site, and a post can have up to 5, with the first one as the main author.

Every author gets a page at /blog/author/<slug> with their picture, bio, links and all their published posts. The list of all authors is at /blog/authors. An author only appears there, and their page only exists, once at least one published post lists them. A profile you created ahead of time stays private until then. Because the address /blog/authors is taken by this list, a new post cannot use authors or tags as its URL slug. Existing posts with those slugs keep working.

Posts you wrote before authors existed kept their free-text author names. We converted them into author profiles automatically, so every existing author page keeps its address.

Deleting an author removes them from their posts. The posts stay.

Categories

A category groups posts by topic, like "Patch notes" or "Events". Each post is in at most one category. Open the Categories & tags tab and click New category to give it a Name (up to 40 characters), a Link and an optional Description (up to 300 characters) that shows on the category page. You can have up to 30 categories.

Each category gets a page at /blog/category/<slug> with its description and all its published posts, once it has at least one. Your /blog page shows a Browse by category row. A post's category shows as a chip on its card and on the post page.

Deleting a category keeps its posts. They just have no category afterwards.

Tags

Tags are free text, added in the settings of each post. Every tag links to /blog/tag/<tag>, a page that lists all your published posts with that tag, newest first. All your tags are listed at /blog/tags, and your /blog page shows a Browse by tag row with your most used ones.

The address uses a simplified version of the name: lowercase, with spaces and punctuation turned into dashes ("Patch Notes!" becomes /blog/tag/patch-notes). Spelling variants like "News", "news" and "News!" count as one tag and share one page, and the heading uses the spelling you use most. Names that simplify to the same address are merged, so "C", "C++" and "C#" all land on /blog/tag/c. A tag that no published post uses returns a "not found" page. Only a page past the last page of a listing is hidden from search engines. Listings that have posts are added to your site's sitemap automatically.

Tag tools

The Tags list in the Categories & tags tab shows every tag with the number of posts that use it, drafts included, and the spelling variants it covers. Use it to tidy up:

• Rename - gives the tag a new name on every post.
• Merge - tick two or more tags, enter the tag they should become, and click Merge.
• Delete - removes the tag from every post after you confirm. The posts stay.

These tools change all posts at once, drafts included, and the changes are live right away. If a tag is on too many posts to change at once, nothing is changed.

RSS feed

Your blog has an RSS feed at /blog/rss.xml. It lists your newest posts with their title, excerpt, tags, all of their authors and a link to the full post. Readers can subscribe to it in an RSS reader, and you can use it to plug your posts into other tools that read RSS.

The Latest posts block

To show your newest posts somewhere else, for example on your home page, add the Latest posts block to any page. It shows cards linking to your most recent posts. Set how many cards to show with How many posts in the block's options. It shows 3 by default. In the editor it shows sample cards. On your site it always shows your current published posts.

Your blog in the editor

You can also look at your blog inside the site editor. Open the page switcher at the top of the editor and pick Blog below your pages. It shows up once you have a published post, or once your menu links to the blog.

The editor then shows your real blog page with your design. Click a post to look at it, and use the page buttons to browse. This view is for looking only. The panel on the left has Open Blog and Blog layout settings to take you to the Blog screen. The Design and Footer & bar panels still work, so you can tune your theme while looking at your blog.

Discord announcements

Your blog can post a message in a Discord channel whenever a post goes live. Set it up under Announce new posts on Discord in the Announcements tab of the Blog screen:

1. In Discord, open the settings of the channel you want to post in. Under Integrations, create a webhook and copy its URL.
2. Paste it into Discord webhook URL.
3. Optional: to ping a role, enter its ID in Role to ping (optional). You can copy a role ID with Discord's Developer Mode turned on.
4. Click Save.
5. Click Send a test to check it works. The test message never pings anyone.

To turn announcements off, empty the webhook URL and save.

The announcement shows the post's title as a link, the excerpt, the cover image and your site's name. Only the role you picked can be pinged. Nothing written in a post itself can ping anyone.

How announcements behave:

• Each post is announced once, ever. Editing, updating, or unpublishing and publishing again does not send it again.
• Scheduled posts are announced when they go live, usually within a minute.
• Skip it if you want. Untick Announce in Discord when you publish, and that post is never announced. Publishing from the Posts tab only announces when you tick Announce on Discord for a bulk publish.
• Your existing posts are not announced. Setting up announcements does not post your back catalogue to Discord. Only a post that went live in roughly the last hour may still be announced once you save the webhook.
• Your site needs to be live. While your site is not published, or is in maintenance mode, no announcements are sent.
• If Discord is unreachable at that moment, the announcement is skipped and not retried.

When announcements are set up, the publish window shows Announce in Discord. If they are not, it tells you so with a Set it up link. Once a post has been announced, it shows the date it was announced.

What is live and what needs publishing

Posts don't wait for you to publish your whole site. When you publish or update a post, it shows up on your blog straight away. The same goes for the blog layout, the post page extras and the Latest posts block, which always shows your current posts.

Authors, categories and tags are live the moment you save them, because their pages are public right away. They are checked by our content check when you save. Changing the authors or the category of a post that is already published works like any other edit: it waits in the draft until you click Update.

Two things to keep in mind:

• Your blog is only visible while your site itself is published and not in maintenance mode.
• The theme, menu and footer around your blog come from the last version of your site you published. If you change your design, publish your site to see it on the blog too. See Publishing.