Blog widget

[LEZEUNE]

Yes !
I want it too !

[Jason5 (Jason)]

That’s brilliant news. I’d like the blog widget to be customisable so you can flex the format (eg show thumbnails only, or show single post plus thumbnails). It would be good to have filtering by date and topic and the possibility of marking some posts as featured. I would want posts to be able to be marked as private and public too as I have some online programmes that I have blogs embedded in and are only accessible to participants. Finally, the blog needs to have good text editing possibilities with bold, italic, different sized headings and sub headings, quotes, and highlighted text features. Different font choices would be important to match site design. For example:

Blog - Simply Human

I am currently using dropinblog which has all these features and would switch to yours if you’re able to replicate.

[Helga]

@Shannon_Young @MakingMoves @Jason5 thank you so much for your comments here!

@Jason5 your description is awesome, I guess I see what kind of widget you expect to have, many thanks! If we come up with any other questions, I’ll post them here to make sure we move in the right direction

[Claire_Robertin]

Would love to know the latest update and ETA… I subscribed to Elfsight because of the Blog widget. The description of the widget on the website is amazing and exactly what I need. With the installation instructions at the bottom of the page that describes the widget, I didn’t realize that it wasn’t ready yet. anxiously waiting

[Helga]

@Claire_Robertin happy to see you here in the community, welcome!

Ahh, I’m really sorry for having mislead you (totally didn’t mean to, promise!), but we’re really considering the Blog widget for development. I’m afraid, we’re still in the process of mapping out our plans for the entire year, so I’ll be able to share any news some time later

But thanks a lot for your interest! If you have any specific ideas or features for this widget in mind, feel free to share here

[Victoria_Hansen]

Hi Yasmine, until Elfsight can develop a blog widget have you looked at Blogger. It’s a Google product and can be embedded in other sites with iframe. It’s basic but has most blog functionality. It’s my interim.

[Helga]

@Victoria_Hansen All the more reason for us to hurry up!

I hope I’ll be able to share news on how things are progressing soon

[Gijs (Gijs Dalen Meurs)]

Would love to know as Iotherwise need to look for other solution. What is the ETA timeline please?

[Max]

Hi @Gijs

Thanks a bunch for sharing your feedback with us!

You see, the development of the Blog app is a rather complicated task that requires a significant amount of time and careful consideration of all the details. That’s why, we can’t provide any ETA for this app at the moment. I am really sorry!

We see that it’s one of the most popular apps in the Wishlist and we do realize its importance to you. This year, we have plans to actively develop new widgets, and we’ll prioritize them based on the number of votes they receive. We promise to keep you informed about any progress

[Gijs (Gijs Dalen Meurs)]

Thanks a lot for your quick response. Considering all the great apps you have such as calendar already suggested I am surprised it is complicated. It is about calendar element on the front and a richt text editor en a self given category (writer / date) filter to me.

[Max]

Hi @Gijs

Yes, I agree that certain existing apps offer more advanced features compared to the expected functionality of the Blog widget.

However, what I meant is that the development of any new app is a complex process involving multiple stages (design, implementation, testing, etc). All these stages usually take significant amount of time, that’s why it’s challenging for us to specify the timeline for now.

Anyway, we’ll keep you abreast of any changes here, so that you wouldn’t miss any important updates

[Billie_Meredith]

• Issue description:
  
  

The Elfsight Website advertises an entire blog widget, with stats on it’s use and success - it was a huge part of why I got the priced option, but when trying to use the blog it’s not available, as in not yet built. This is similar with other widgets, which they say they have available and yet when inside they’re ‘in consideration’

I’m unsure if it’s just my account that can’t access these widgets they say they have or it it’s across the board?

[Jason5 (Jason)]

It’s not just your account. The Blog was instrumental in my decision to join Elfsight over 2 years ago. Apart from numerous unsatisfactory responses from admins saying ‘we are considering it’, ‘we are prioritising it as something to consider’ and similar, we still don’t actually have one. It has seriously damaged Elfsights credibility in my eyes and I’d rather they either said ‘it’s too hard’ or showed us some progress. Very disappointing that this false marketing is still present on the site.

[Max]

Hello there @Billie_Meredith

I completely understand your feelings and deeply apologize for this situation!

Firstly, I’d like to assure you that we definitely didn’t mean to mislead you in any way. Actually, we have a special page for the unreleased apps where it’s mentioned that we’re just gathering feedback on this app:

However, I agree that this caption might not be super eye-catching, and we’ll work on making the info in this section easier to spot.

As for the Blog widget, we see that it’s gaining votes and realize how important it’s to you. This year, we have plans to actively develop new widgets, and we’ll prioritize them based on the number of votes they receive.

Rest assured, we’ll keep you informed about any progress here.

If you have any specific ideas or features for this widget in mind, feel free to share here. We’ll be happy to consider them

[Claire_Robertin]

As a note, I purchased Elfsight solely based on the advertising about the blog. It was not clear this was not released and it then appeared that it was coming very soon. It seems this will be a write off as a bad spend - unfortunately a huge amount of loss.

[Max]

Hello guys @Jason5, @Claire_Robertin

I am genuinely sorry for all the frustration caused by this!

Your words do sound absolutely reasonable and I truly understand your emotions

Indeed, the info in our New App requests pages might be not as clear as it should be. I’ve shared your feedback with our team and we are already on it, making the necessary tweaks.

Also, I’d like to assure you that we didn’t have an intention to give you false hopes or mislead you anyhow.

The thing is that we actually consider requests according to the number of votes they receive. Currently, the Blog widget is one of the top requests and it’s planned to be considered in the future updates.

At the moment, it’s challenging to name the specific timeline, but we promise to keep you informed about any changes here.

Guys, once again, thanks a million for your feedback, as it’s something that helps us moving forward and become better!

[Jason5 (Jason)]

Max … on Mar 19 you said:

“ You see, the development of the Blog app is a rather complicated task that requires a significant amount of time and careful consideration of all the details. That’s why, we can’t provide any ETA for this app at the moment. I am really sorry!”

So … given you’ve had a few years (!!) to work out the complicated task when will you be able to share a timeline. Or share the voting process or the ways in which you are eg prioritising a calculator app over the blog. The total lack of transparency and poor comms on this are super unhelpful.

[Max]

@Jason5 Yeah, it might seem a bit odd that we prioritized the Calculator over the Blog app, considering the votes they got here.

But before we had the Wishlist in the Community, there was an older Wishlist where the Calculator app got way more votes than the Blog app.

I agree that if we’d given more details, it could’ve cleared up the confusion. We’ll try to think about improving this process in the near future.

Also, I talked to the devs about the Blog widget, and they’ve confirmed that it’s going to the design stage really soon. Right now, we’re actively gathering feedback on the features you’d like to see in the app.

If you have any more ideas, feel free to share them with us. We’ll do our best to consider them when working on the widget

[NDuro]

We have been an elfsight customer since the beginning back in 2017/18 and use a lot of the widgets across our websites.

However the “blog” widget is conversations is a joke… the same “its complicated “ response has been dragging on for possible 18 months plus now.

@Jason5 can you give you give us an insight on why this is so complicated to develop ?

[Jason5 (Jason)]

Hello @NDuro - I am a client too and equally frustrated about the lack of progress on the blog app and lack of transparency on how things are chosen. And I’m now irritated that we are being asked in a totally open way ‘what features would you like’ … whatever happened to rapid prototyping and inspiring users to consider features they hadn’t considered before … elfsight … come on! Get a grip with your collaborative development process. This thread is just making me lose more and more confidence and your reputation is sinking further …