What your readers see

Your blog is public and needs no sign-in, except to read the rest of a members-only post, or any post if you limited the whole blog. See Posts only members can read. It wears your community's colours, fonts and logo. Its corners and buttons follow the Site look of your website's home page, and your Customize settings when you have no home page. It never shows a draft, a scheduled post or a post you unpublished. While the blog is off, every one of its pages is simply not there.

The blog's home

• Your blog's name, and your headline and intro if you wrote them.

• Your posts, newest first, 12 to a page with Older posts and Newer posts links. How they are laid out is your choice, below. In the default Grid layout the featured post comes first and largest, then your posts as cards.

• A row of your categories, in the order you set, once you have some.

• A search box. It finds posts by their words as the reader types, and looks inside titles, subtitles, excerpts and the text of posts. For a members-only post it looks only at the title, subtitle and excerpt.

• The subscribe band at the foot, when you have one.

Your blog's home layout

Pick it in Blog, then Settings, under Home layout, from three pictures:

• Grid: the newest post large, then cards in rows of three. This is the default.

• List: one post per row, with the date, the title, a line about it and a small picture.

• Magazine: a lead story, two posts side by side under it, then the rest as a tight list.

Category pages and author pages, and their numbered pages, follow the layout too. A members-only post keeps its lock in every layout. The change applies when you press Save.

A post

• Its categories, title, subtitle, byline with faces, date (unless you turned off Show post dates) and how many minutes it takes to read, then the cover and the words.

• A short About the author section when the author has a bio or a page.

• The subscribe band. On a blog that sits beside your community, a card inviting the reader to join, unless the post already holds a membership offer, form, pricing or call to action section that the reader can see.

• On a wide screen, a contents rail beside the words that lists the post's headings and marks the part the reader is in as they scroll. A post gets it when it has a Contents block, or when it is long: at least three headings and about five minutes of reading. On a phone nothing changes, and a Contents block stays where you put it. On a wide screen the Contents block is hidden so the list is not shown twice.

• Related posts under it: other posts that share its categories first, then ones by the same author, then the newest.

The share row

Under every post, a Share row lets readers pass it on. Copy link says Copied. X, LinkedIn, Facebook and Threads each open that network's own share page in a new tab. Email opens the reader's mail app with the post's title and link. More opens the phone's own share sheet, and appears only on devices that have one. Nothing loads from a social network until a reader taps, so your pages carry no tracking from them. The link to a network is tagged so that visits from it count as Social in Your blog's numbers. A post that is hidden from readers below its tier has no share row on the page its readers open.

Members-only posts

A members-only post carries a lock on its card in your blog's lists. Its page shows the title, cover, excerpt and everything above the members-only line, then a panel saying who the rest is for. A reader who can read it sees the rest open in place, at the same address, a moment after the page loads. Anyone else is told why: join or sign in, finish joining, renew a membership that is not active, or move up to the tier the post asks for. See Posts only members can read.

A post limited to a tier can also be hidden from readers below the tier. For them it is on no list and in no search, and its link shows page not found. Members on the tier find it under For your membership on the first page of your blog's home.

The blog tab for members

While your blog is on, your members get a tab named after it (Blog, Journal, Notes), beside your other tabs at the top and in the phone menu. It opens your public blog, where a signed-in member reads members-only posts in full. You can switch it off. See Start your blog.

The header and footer

The header carries your logo or name, the blog's name and, on a blog that sits beside your community, a Home link to your community's address and a button. The button says Join and opens your join page, unless you set your own words and link under Website, then Header, which the blog then uses too. On a phone the blog's name steps aside to leave room for Home and the button. On a paid publication with no community around it, the Home link is Account instead, which opens the reader's subscription page.

If you uploaded Logo (Dark) under Customize, then Brand, the header shows it when the blog's background is light. Without one it shows your logo. The footer carries a link to your RSS feed. On the Free plan it also carries a Powered by Drry link, as your other pages do.

If your community has a website, your blog wears your website's header and footer instead, with a slim bar under the header for the blog's name, Account or Sign in where they apply, and the RSS feed. See Your blog on your website.

Your own code on the blog

The boxes in Website, Settings, Custom code that are set to Every website and blog page run on every public page of your blog too, and so does a Google Tag Manager container. Boxes set to only chosen pages never run on the blog. Your code does not run on a post's draft preview or on the blog's page-not-found page. See Website look, address, search and custom code.

Dates and width

Two switches in Blog, then Settings change how posts read:

• Show post dates is on by default. Turn it off and readers no longer see when a post went up, on the post or in the lists. Your RSS feed, sitemap and search engines still get the dates, and the newest posts still come first.

• Let the cover and galleries run wider is off by default. Off, the cover picture, galleries and page sections line up at the width of the text on a computer, as they do on a phone. On, they spread a little past it. An image block's own Wide and Full-bleed choices are not affected.

Category and author pages

Each category and each author with a profile has a page that lists their posts, in the same layout, with the same page links. See Categories, authors and featured posts.

If your blog is your homepage

Visitors who are signed out open on your blog, and a Sign in button sits beside its name so members can get in. See Your blog's address and homepage.