Nowadays, people want to get involved with websites, if only to boost their online image. If you’re a blog owner and you want to get more from your readers, it can be a good idea to allow them to submit their own posts. If you don’t want to have to constantly worry about editing submissions and then scheduling them for publishing on the main blog itself, why not create your own community blog section dedicated to just reader submissions?
Kapost allows you to do just that and although your submissions are hosted with them, you can seamlessly integrate them into your blog to suit your requirements.
Overview
Kapost is an app allowing you to add an extra community-driven section to your blog where your readers can contribute posts and be rewarded if they gain popularity, by exposure in your main blog. It works mainly with the WordPress publishing platform but also allows bloggers to install the widget code into the sidebar of their blogs on almost any platform through the use of Javascript.
Overview
Quick and easy to install, the app provides a seamless experience between your blog and your new community blog section that will surely give your readers a say and then promotion for the privilege.
Pricing
At the present time, all pricing plans for Kapost are available free of charge due to the fact that it is in beta. Though the pricing for the premium plans is quite a big investment if you run a small blog, larger blogs would definitely pay off with adding this functionality and in terms of connecting with your readers, it is something that will greatly yourself and your blog.
Plans & Pricing
The free plan is still quite good and doesn’t compromise much functionality compared to the premium plans, and could still be quite a good thing for small blogs to have, despite the small limit on contributors.
Getting Started
The first thing you’ll need to do to get started is to register your blog with Kapost. This won’t take too long and all you have to provide is some basic contacts details, and information about your blog, such as the URL and platform.
Registering a Blog
For the purposes of this article, I will be using WordPress as the platform as it is one of the most popular, but I assume that the steps will be quite similar for all platforms. From here, you will be able to choose a Kapost subdomain for your blog where the community-submitted section of your blog will be hosted. It’s all quite straightforward and once you’ve done this, you will be able to access Kapost through the subdomain you chose.
Install the Kapost Plugin
Now that you’ve got an account, you’ll need to add the widget onto your blog. Because we’re going to be using WordPress and we have full access to the plugins system, we can do this easily. If you do not have access to the plugins system on your blog, you can opt to use the Javascript Widget by accessing the Settings page of Kapost, and you can then integrate this into any blogging platform that allows custom code or design.
To install the plugin, visit the dashboard of your WordPress installation and in the left sidebar, find the Plugins dropdown and select Add New. If you’re unfamiliar with this section of the administration panel, it allows you to install plugins directly from the WordPress plugin directory. In the search field, enter “kapost”.
Adding Kapost WordPress Plugin
Underneath the name Kapost Social Publishing, choose Install Now and when prompted, confirm that you wish to install it. You may then be prompted to enter the FTP details for your server. Once you have done this, you can activate the plugin and it will then be integrated into your blog.
Activating the Plugin
Configure the Kapost Plugin
You must then authenticate your Kapost account. You can do this by expanding the Settings dropdown menu in the left sidebar and then select Kapost. To login, simply the username and password you chose during registration as well as the subdomain for your Kapost community.
Configuring the Plugin
Add Kapost Sidebar Widget
You can now add the Kapost widget to your blog’s sidebar. To do this, go to Appearances and then Widgets in the WordPress administration panel or simply click the link in the Kapost notification to go directly to the page.
Drag the “Kapost: Feed” widget to the chosen widget area and then you will be given the option of changing some related settings. You can choose a name for the feed, change the feed’s appearance, select how many items you wish to display from your community blog and also show a link to where your readers can submit their posts.
Configuring Kapost Widget
Promote Posts
Another cool feature of Kapost is the ability to promote posts to the main blog automatically. You can either choose to do this when a post reaches a certain number of votes or simply automatically when a post is published. This is a useful tool that will allow you to reward good writers by giving their work some extra coverage on your main blog.
Post Promotion Settings
Customize Design
You can customize a variety of elements of the Kapost newsroom on your website to allow the community section of your blog to be well-integrated into the main blog. From the Layout Manager page of Kapost, you can choose different elements to customize and with the live preview pane below the customization pane, see exactly how it’s going to look before it’s saved.
Layout Manager
Final Thoughts
Overall, I think Kapost is quite a good idea that’s been put to use well. It’s a great way for rewarding your contributors and giving them a way to speak out without having to go through the long process of creating a blog themselves.
It’s a really simple process to set up Kapost on your blog and it’s clear that they’ve thought a lot about implementing this idea and it’s paid off, showing that the app has a lot of potential.