Create Your Own Stories: New Story "Curator" Feature


Creating great new stories and content just got easier with the new "Curator" enhancement to the blog system. This allows you to create a story by pulling 3rd party news stories, videos, tweets from other sites and wrapping your own editorial comments around them, as well as allowing people to comment via the Disqus commenting system used by big newspaper sites like the Telegraph. 


In effect, you can quickly and easily add your own content-rich newspaper or magazine with minimal writing on your part. 


Built off the existing blog system, combine this with the Guest Blogging enhancements we introduced in Rel 3.0 and you can build your own community contributing valuable content to your site - great for engagement and SEO! 


This enhancement is best-suited for content-powered sites or ecommerce sites with a special-interest community.


Note: Charges apply if you want us to train on / implement this feature: £75+VAT. Requires 1 hour. Implementation as a newspaper/magazine/guest blogging platform: £250+VAT. Requires 4 hours.


Setting Up The Story Curator Feature


Follow steps 1 - 6 if you wish to allow the Disqus commenting system to be used at the bottom of your blog posts. Disqus provides an easy way for people to post comments and for you to gain more audience, providing a full range of moderator tools. Read more about Disqus


  1. Set up your Disqus account and go to My Home
  2. Click the "cog" Settings symbol in the top right nav bar
  3. Click Add Disqus To Site and enter the required details
  4. Make a note of your "unique Disqus URL" which is your shortname 
  5. Click Finish Registration
  6. Go to Admin in your website > Blog Manager Settings > Disqus Integration
  7. Tick "Use Disqus Commenting System" 
  8. Enter your Disqus shortname in the available field
  9. Click Update
  10. Go to Connect > click to Connect to Disqus


The Disqus commenting system will now be available underneath your published posts.


Adding & Publishing Blogs With New Story Curator


You can build up your story with your own content (held in Content Blocks) and external content (held in Reference Blocks). Try adding several external sources, interspersed with your own comments and editorial:


1. Via Add Blog: add a title, upload your image, add content etc as per normal

2. Use the Add Content Block to add another text block to your post

3. Use the Add Reference Block to add an external reference, i.e. a link, to your post e.g. a website url, youtube video url, twitter post url

4. Drag and drop the blocks into the desired position using the left hand bar which shows up when you hover over the block

5. Publish your blogs with your selected sharing options


All done! You have created your very latest story. Keep an eye on comments and moderate them as you wish in Disqus, or turn off comments for a particular story.