In Orchard CMS, How can I create multiple blog content types?

Question

I'm using Orchard CMS for my web site and blog. I mostly publish using Open Live Writer in HTML format. I'm happy with the existing Blog Page content type and I want to keep it. However, I also want the ability to create blog posts manually using Markdown.

I've managed to do this with other content types by creating an additional type, and in the Body part setting, setting the flavour to markdown.

I tried to take a similar approach with blog posts. First, I couldn't add the Blog Post part to my content type. I edited the Blog Post part and made it Atachable, then I was able to create my new content type: Blog Post (Markdown).

However, it doesn't work. Items created using the content type don't show up in the blog.

I'm guessing this might be something to do with the AutoRoute part but even though I've set this identically to my original Blog Post type, I'm not sure how it would get associated with the blog.

Am I on a hiding to nothing here? Is there a way to make it work?

Answer 1

There are multiple ways you can look at this, I'll give you two.

First, there's not much that is special about the blog module. You could reproduce pretty much the same thing with the list feature, which would enable you to accept more post content types. The advantage is that you'd have a nice UI that will neatly put your posts under your list/blog. I'm not sure how well Open Live Writer will work with that.

The second way would be to just manage your markdown posts separately (you don't need the blog post part by the way), and replace the default rendering of the blog with a new projection that selects both content types.