Unstack has always shipped with a blog by default. We knew this was important for users. In fact, content creating is one of the top ways that cash-strapped startups and SMBs can build authority, traffic, and sales without unloading cash on paid advertising and sponsorships for user acquisition.
The initial version of our blog gave users a simple blank canvas, lightweight editing, and standard SEO options. We wanted to keep it intentionally simple so users could focus on content.
We use the blog extensively ourselves and have spent a lot of time talking to customers and SEO specialists about what would make it better. We looked at our own data to understand what was working and where we could double down.
All New: Blog 2.0
Today we've released an all new Blog 2.0. This is a major refactor of our initial blog system that we launched a year ago. We've maintained the simple editing experience that users have come to love while bolstering the SEO and collaboration capabilities for bloggers, content marketers, and full-sized media content teams.
Here's what's new:
Collaborative UI and Content Management
See who owns which articles and whether someone has been recently working on edits and updates. Filter articles by status type or get focused by showing only your articles.
Dynamic URL settings
Control how you want your URLs to look at the blog and article level. Automatic 301 redirecting anytime you make a changes. These options are only available to account administrators.
Categories
Create categories with full control over title, slug, and description. Then add categories to your articles. Unstack will automatically create SEO'd category pages for you.
JSON-LD metadata
Rich JSON based metadata helps Google better understand your content and index it appropriately. We now automatically create this for all pages and posts.
Contributing author role
Invite writers to create content on your blog while limiting what they can see and do in Unstack. The contributor role gives external writers a focused view for creating draft content, viewing their published posts, and managing their account settings such as adding a profile photo, byline, or Twitter handle.
New grid layout
By default all blog content showed up in a list format. Now you can change this to show off your content in a beautiful grid based format with a featured article. You can also control how many articles you show by default on each page.
Featured images
By default Unstack grabs the first image your content and uses it as the default image for sharing or previews on dynamic pages. Now, you can overwrite that by adding a default image in the article settings. This is especially great if you don't want an image in your article but want something for previews and sharing beyond your default sharing image.
Global article sidebar and footer
We previously adding a sidebar call to action option. We've moved that into the global article settings. Additionally, we've added the option to add global HTML/JS/JS to blog articles. For example, you could add Discuss or a global call to action at the bottom of your articles.
Scheduled publishing
Set your author date in the future to schedule content that posts automatically, enabling you or your team to load up content and have it ready to go directly in Unstack.
Performance and Caching refactors
We've refactored a number of processes to significantly boost the app, rendered site, and publishing performance, making sure your content scales from the first article to your ten thousandth.
AMP Pages for Articles (coming in July)
Enable blog content for AMP in your blog settings to maximize mobile page performance for your blog content.
Automatic RSS feeds
Need RSS? Turn any blog index, category, or author page into an RSS file that will show the most recent published articles on that page.
Author pages (coming in July)
Enable author pages to automatically generate a unique page for your authors where users can see their work. Perfect for news site or multi-author blogs with guest contributors.