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I wrote a blog post about a certain feature(in testing) of our online product.

We finished the testing and changed a couple of things and added some improvements to this feature.

So, I was thinking to update the blog post using all the new information. (The updated information is about 10-20% of the whole blog post.)

How to properly format a post update on a company blog?

1) Should I add some disclaimer at the beginning of the post to explain the update?

2) Should I add (Updated) or (Revised) to the title?

3) Should I somehow highlight the changed sentences or the whole paragraph they are in?

If you have some examples of properly formatted blog post updates - please share, they would help a lot.

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  • I know that my question is a bit similar to another one asked here. But the difference is that I look for concrete formatting examples. And for answers to my specific questions.
    – Oksi
    Dec 12, 2017 at 13:14

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There is no universal convention for this, and thus no "proper" way to do it. But I would question is editing an existing blog post is the right way to do this at all. A blog is a "web log". That is, it is sequential in time. One post follows another. The primary organization of the material is simple time sequence. (There may be secondary organization via tag and categories.)

The logical way to provide new information on a blog, therefore, is to write a new blog post with the updated information. Writing a new post, as opposed to editing an old one, has some important consequences for how people consume your content. People who are interested in a blog subscribe to that blog, which means they get notifications every time a new blog post is issued. This is the primary way they keep up to date with your information. Editing an existing post will not generate such notifications, so far fewer people will hear about the changes if you edit an old post rather than writing a new one.

If you do write a new post, though, be sure to add a line to the beginning of the old post saying that the information has been updated and pointing to the new post. That way if someone finds the old post via search or a link they will be notified that there is a change and will be able to find it easily.

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  • I agree a lot. But the feature is quite conplex and like 100% of it's core functionality remained the same. Just several things were added to make it more efficient. So, writing a new article I would have to copy like 80% of info from the original article. Because if I don't do this, people who haven't read the first one wouln't understand what I'm talking about at all.
    – Oksi
    Dec 13, 2017 at 13:38
  • @Oksi Yes, you should describe the whole feature in the new post. The old post was the feature as it was at that point in time. The new post is the feature as it is now. This is why you put the notice on the old post to point to the new one. This is not what you would do in a documentation set, but in a blog, which is arranged temporally, this is what the nature of the medium demands.
    – user16226
    Dec 13, 2017 at 15:09
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    @Oksi You should also highlight the differences, such that the people who is already familiar with the feature will know how it now differs from what it used to be like. This could be a summary "for those already familiar with X, here are the differences" section, or use different formatting, or whichever works for your style.
    – user
    Dec 13, 2017 at 15:55
  • @MichaelKjörling you mean in the same post - just a new visually distinguished section, did I get it right?
    – Oksi
    Dec 15, 2017 at 8:53
  • @Oksi Not necessarily visually distinguished in terms of color/font/etc.; it could just be a summary that starts off with something like "if you're familiar with the previous version, this is what has been changed".
    – user
    Dec 15, 2017 at 9:43

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