CMS Development

DomP
Miembro

Internal Blog

Hi, we are currently getting our content marketing program off the ground after changing over to HubSpot. 

 

As we have a team of writers and posters, as well as a bunch of new templates I wanted to create a resource centre within HubSpot for users to go to and read about how to post, what they should look lie etc. I did this at my last place and it worked very well, I spoke to HubSpot support and they said it wouldn't be possible but I should ask here. The irony that this forum is hosted on the last system I did this for!

 

Anyway, I assumed that I would be able to create a blog and not have it public facing as standard functionality, especially if we were redesigning and not ready to launch but apparently this isn't possible.

 

Has anyone done anything custom that would fit this description?

 

Thanks,

Dom

8 Respuestas 8
Samantha_Alford
Colaborador líder

Internal Blog

Hi @DomP,

I can think of two options for you, but understand if neither are suitable.

Firstly, you could create pages with the content you want internal staff to view instead of an internal blog, and password protect those pages then give the password to the internal team to view.

Alternatively, to address exactly the issue you're facing, I've created a Wordpress membership site plugin that creates a secure membership site that integrates with HubSpot called Inbound Member.  Obviously this forum is for COS environments so I presume this won't be applicable for you, except that if you wanted to you could add a menu item for internal staff login on the COS and point it to the secure wordpress site.  Feel free to message me if you'd like more detail. And I won't be offended if that isn't the solution you're after 😉

Cheers,

Sam


Samantha Alford
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relabidin
Exmiembro de HubSpot
Exmiembro de HubSpot

Internal Blog

Hi @Samantha_Alford

 

Thank you for your suggestions here! The only thing to note about password protection is that only Website Pages and Landing Pages can be password protected. Blogs and Blog Posts cannot be password protected on the COS. Here is our knowledge doc on password protecting COS pages.

 

Your Wordpress plugin sounds like an excellent solution too, cheers!

 

Rami 

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DomP
Miembro

Internal Blog

Hi everyone, thanks for your replies.

 

I have gone with the simplest solution and simply not publishing articles and instead marking them as archived so they don't fall in with other drafts. It's an OK work around but to see the article someone still has to go there in the blog dashboard and preview the article rather than simly follow a URL.

 

It definitely seems like a piece of functionality missing from HubSpot though, I have worked in 5 or 6 organisations of varying sizes, from 10 up to about a 1000 staff and all have ran internal blogs, sites etc. which run behind log ins.

 

It's especially strange when the functionality is there, it's just limited to different types of pages which suggests it's a deliberate decision to leave this out from just one section of a HubSpot site, very strange.

 

Do you think it's something that could be implemented quickly if we request it?

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relabidin
Exmiembro de HubSpot
Exmiembro de HubSpot

Internal Blog

Hi @DomP,

 

Thank you for your response.

 

An internal blog feature doesn't exactly align with our product roadmap as we are focused creating features to enhance our customers' marketing and sales practices, and not necessarily internal operations. This is not to say the feature will never be implemented if you suggest it on the ideas board, but I wouldn't expect a quick turnaround.

 

Rami 

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Samantha_Alford
Colaborador líder

Internal Blog

Hi @relabidin,

 

thanks for clarifying, yes that's what I meant re pages but obviously my post wasn't as clear lol.

 

And thanks also for the comment re my plugin. It has a lot of uses for restricted access content and things like internal sites and membership sites. One of my goals is to learn enough about the COS to be able to build something similar there.

 

Cheers,

Sam


Samantha Alford
Did my post solve the issue? If so, please accept it as a solution!
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relabidin
Exmiembro de HubSpot
Exmiembro de HubSpot

Internal Blog

Hi @DomP,

 

HubSpot does not offer a point solution for hosting a blog internally. However, you could create a new blog and block search engines from crawling it by excluding it entirely in your robots.txt file. This way the blog will never appear in search and you would not link to it on your public facing site, so it would essentially be internal only since it would be very very difficult for someone outside of the company to find it or know that it exists. However, if a visitor typed the URL of your internal blog directly into their browser they could still view your blog.

 

Rami 

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DomP
Miembro

Internal Blog

Hi rami, thanks your reply.

 

What would you say the best way of hosting a redesign in progress? Where there is a lack of styling and testing content etc.? Is there no way to have this in place without it being live?

 

Thanks

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relabidin
Exmiembro de HubSpot
Exmiembro de HubSpot

Internal Blog

Hi @DomP,

 

You can use our Content Staging Tool to redesign your site in a sandbox environment and only push out changes when you are ready to go.

 

Rami

HubSpot Support

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