How to Create Editing Templates in Wagtail CMS

Hi everyone, I got a Wagtail content editing trick that I'm trying out on our own blog and I wanted to share with you today because I think it'll save you a little bit of time and it'll also help you remember very important things to include include in your blog posts. So when I do a blog post on Wagtail. org, like this one recently for Wagtail6. 4. uh which goes over all the great new features. You can find the newest version of Wagtail. You know there's definitely key parts of the blog like the image and the body and all the different pieces that go into it But it's pretty important whenever you do a blog to also have other things to encourage your readers to keep reading. And so generally I include a call to action that encourages people to either sign up for our newsletter or to try out the starter kit.

And then also down here in our blog, we also have these related pages here. Now these pieces are very important, but they're also pretty easy to forget. when you're on a deadline. And so one thing that I am trying out for myself and for the other people who work on the blog with me is I started it creating a draft template in Wagtails so that we don't forget key pieces. So I'm going to show you what that looks like. Over here, this is the example of the template. So I just named it something that stands out amongst all our drafts, like template and big. capital letters definitely stands out. And I went ahead and filled out all the required bits on uh for our blog posts.

Like I definitely wanted to make sure that I don't forget to change the introduction part. Lots of exclamation There to make sure that's not forgotten. And even if it is, the internet will have a little laugh on my behalf, and that's that's that's fine But the key parts that I wanted to make sure that aren't forgetted at forgotten about anytime I try a new blog post are the CTA, which includes like, you know, this a link to our Starter Kit blog post And then also I included two uh related pages down here that are related to the starter kit and might be interesting to folks who would consider trying out the starter kit. I might change these based on whatever the topic of the blog post is,

but I'm ultimately not going to do that until I know what that content is and at least by including these I have two defaults that would be great to include even if I forgot to change. them and so since I have this draft saved um I can go to our list of blog posts here And so right now it's at the top and I might change the date uh after a while of it sitting there so that it stays kind of close to the top. Uh you know, you can search for it to find it again. That's why I gave template right at the beginning as a great way to search for these posts. And then also like keeping it as a draft status can make it a little easier to find as well. But when I'm ready to start a brand new blog post that includes all those bits and those important

parts I can go ahead and use this copy function right here to create a whole new blog post. So let's just, you know, do Something like wagtails are awesome because you know rat wagtails really are awesome. And I'm going to change the slug here. and make sure that matches as well. It's important to change that because it's controls what the URL looks like. And that's also why it's all lowercase. So I can just hit copy this page and now I have a fresh blog post at the top here that I can just open up and it already has like my CTA and other key parts here.

Uh that I've already set up and it'll save me a little bit of time 'cause I don't have to do or any of that. And I don't have to remember it either You know, this is very useful if you have specific campaign codes or different URL formattings or things like that that might be a little annoying to copy over and over again. This is a great opportunity to streamline that a bit. And you can also save stuff in the promote tab too if you're the type of person who needs a reminder about certain keywords. that you need to include in your meta descriptions and things like that, this is a great opportunity to save that as well Alright, well I hope you enjoy that template shortcut idea. I'm giving it a go. I hope you try it too. Please let me know how it works out for you.

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