This template lists all posts displaying the featured image, title, excerpt, and read more link.

The blog template will turn a WordPress page into a lists of posts from all categories.

[box type=”info”]If you just want to show a single category, then a direct link to that category is best (using the Menus manager).[/box]

If you don’t change any custom settings, the format will look exactly the same as a category archive. In that sense, the Blog Template is a bit simple: it’s just a list of posts of any and every category. If you would like to exclude certain categories from the blog page, you can exclude them by listing the category numbers on the Theme options –> Styling & Layout –> General Layout option at the bottom. For example, “3,5,12,42” will exclude those categories. It’s a bit tricky to figure out what the numbers behind the categories are, but you can see it if you hover over the category in the Posts –> Categories page in the main WP admin.

Exclude categories from the blog using a list of category numbers.

Exclude categories from the blog using a list of category numbers.

Here’s a simple Blog Layout with a wide featured image and no sidebar. It shows the featured image, the title of each post, the meta data of the post (author, post date, etc.) the excerpt and a link to read the full post.

The Blog Layout lists all of your latest posts.

The Blog Layout lists all of your latest posts.

In my current testing, it seems that the thumbnails for the blog layout are set in the same place as the Magazine Posts Grid of Canvas. See this screenshot (where I changed it to 100 x 100 pixels).

The featured image options for the Blog Layout are the same for the Posts Grid of the Magazine Layout.

The featured image options for the Blog Layout are the same for the Posts Grid of the Magazine Layout.

Here’s a shot of the new 100 x 100 thumbnails.

WOO Canvas Blog Layout with 100 x 100 pixel featured images.

WOO Canvas Blog Layout with 100 x 100 pixel featured images.

The only reason I can see for using the Blog Template is if you want a page with all of your posts independent of the category they’re in. Otherwise, you can choose to just link to that category’s archive.