While each individual blogger will have his or her preference when it comes to setting up a live blog, the tips below will prove handy for those looking to update the readers in real time with or without external tools, such as Cover It Live and Twitter.
How to enable live blogging plug-in?
- With WordPress, the first thing you are required to do is selecting a post that is to be used as the shell for live blog. You may either create a new one, or choose an existing one for the purpose of editing.
- Then just to the right of post screen, there should be an option, ‘Enable live blogging on this post’’. Once this option is enabled, you can insert new live blog entries into this post!
- It is also necessary to insert somewhere within your post the short-code [liveblog]. It indicates exactly where the liveblog will appear. Once the process is finished, your live blog is all ready!
- You may select ‘Add New’ from the sidebar just under ‘Live Blog Entries’, and also the live blog that you wish the relevant update to apply to from the sidebar list, and create entry as per usual steps.
- Once done with your live blog, you may put on hold any further automatic updating as well as new updates to the live blog by unticking the box denoting ‘Enable live blogging on this post’.
Practical advantages of the plugin
As a WordPress explanatory note points out, live blogging is a plugin that lets you insert micro or live blogs into posts with automatic updating. This plugin is specifically developed for supporting blogs for running events like mega sport tournaments, festivals, tech conferences or major political and other news stories.
The plugin by default makes use of AJAX polling to let your readers instantly (follow) update what they are currently seeing, also including new comments, if any, posted on the blog. Meteor is supported for professional bloggers, thus providing for a seamless and smooth updating experience for the viewers. It also cuts down the additional load on server, to a considerable extent.
Support integration with Twitter
Additionally, the tool can support integration with popular networking sites such as Twitter. Once activated, each live blog entry’s first 139 characters will get posted to the social network when they’re made live.
Once you install Live Blogging, it is advisable proceeding to the relevant settings, comprised in your ‘Settings’ panel as ‘Live Blogging’ in the admin area. You then can enable functionality like posting to Twitter, altering the method for updating of live blog and customizing the live blog entry style. In case of a Meteor server used for streaming updates, it is necessary to enter details of your Meteor server and also set ‘Stream using Meteor’ as the live blog update method.
