2 Ways to Access Your Wix Blog

I'm old school. I still work primarily on a desktop computer, although occasionally I do blog from the laptop while watching -- okay, actually while just listening to -- the news. Once, mostly just to see what all the fuss was about, I blogged from my phone. See Testing Wix App for Blogging for more on that. My fingers and neural synapses aren't really wired for typing on a phone, which you could probably guess from my use of the word typing. Only those of us of a certain, ahem, era still even use that word, typing.

I wonder if there are speed tapping tests for iPhones. Hmmm.

I digress. My point is that there are 2 basic ways to keep up with your Wix blog -- by desktop / laptop, which for the purpose of this post we shall consider to be the same thing just like horses and ponies are both equines, and by phone, a different animal altogether.

BTW, we designers keep asking for capability to design and edit on tablets like the iPad. Wix seems to be rolling out a possible app for this, but at the moment it looks like it is using ADI -- artificial design intelligence -- which most of us don't like because it is actually harder to design and edit with if you have a designerly mind and vision. And one of my clients claims to have tried the ADI version on her desktop computer, spending 18 hours a day for a week just to end up with a frustrating mess.

Okay, so I should probably get to the point.

Blogging by Cell Phone

Both iPhones and Android phones can be used. You will need to install and set up the Wix Productivity App from either the Apple Store or the Google Play store. This should be pretty self-explanatory. My best advice once the app is installed is to poke around and learn what icon or button or link does what.

Once installed, you can add a new blog, and any photos already in your phone. Unfortunately, you can't access photos you have uploaded from your desktop to your Wix image library, because these aren't viewable in your phone.

If you haven't read my blog on Testing Wix App for Blogging, now would be a good time to do so.

It is possible to start a blog from your phone, and finish or edit it from your laptop. However, if you do that, it seems that you lose the ability to then re-edit or add to the blog from your phone. The phone app also does not provide all the editing tools that you can find on the laptop version, for those of us who are finicky about nuances, but it is handy enough for capturing your stellar thoughts while out to lunch.

There are limited editing capabilities on the Wix phone app of posts previously published from your desktop computer. But you can correct typos, add or delete a paragraph, add tags and categories, and even promote on your social media pages.

But honestly, that is much easier done from the laptop tools because the social media tools in the phone app don't automatically pick up the blog post's url to create the linkback to the website's blog page. I'll write another blog about other problems with social media posting from the app. Ugh.

Blogging by Lap/Desktop

Even if you are using a laptop or desktop computer, there are sort of two ways to access your blog -- (1) via dashboard link, and (2) via site page link.

Dashboard Link. This route is basically a shortcut from the opening screen of your Wix account to the dashboard for the blog.

1. Login at Wix.com with your usual account user email and password.

2. Find and click the Blog link in the left side column.

3. When the blog dashboard -- pictured below -- opens, you'll see a list of previous posts, and a button in the upper right for adding a new post. Clicking the New Post button will open a blank screen for pasting in a post composed offline, or composing a post and access photos from your Wix image library.

4. To edit an already published post, or to finish a post you've left in Draft mode, hover over the photo or title, then click on the Edit button that appears under the post date on the right.

Site Page Link. This route takes you to the same blog dashboard by a longer route. This can be useful if you want to have a quick glance at the basic blog page with all your existing snippets and anything else on the page, nearly as the public sees it, or if you want to make some universal styling changes to the blog, before accessing the blog dashboard.

1. Open your Wix account - this opens the account dashboard.

2. Click the blue Manage & Edit Site button - this opens the website dashboard.

3. Click the next blue Edit Site button - this opens the website editor to the homepage. It will take a few seconds to load because it's a massive tool with a lot of sophisticated technology.

4. Click the top icon on the left side column for Menu & Pages, then click on your blog page link. This takes you to the page, but not to the blog dashboard. You may have to scroll down a bit to get to the display of the blog posts on the page.

5. Click once inside any blog, on the photo or title or content. This opens the general blog tool bar where the universal styling tools are found. From this toolbar you can also access the blog dashboard with the Manage Posts button, or you can go right to a new blank blog for uploading or writing a new post.

No matter which way you have entered the blog dashboard, once you are working on a blog, your writing is autosaved. If you choose not to publish right away, the blog post is autosaved as a draft and will be found right in the list of all blog posts, ready for completion if you return in hours, days, weeks, or even years.

When you are done blogging, either Publish the blog, save as draft, or click the X in the very upper right corner to close the blog dashboard.

These steps, whichever access method you use, will become second nature the more you blog.