Adding news to your pages - Quickstart guide
By default, your homepage will include a news widget. This will be blank until you add some news articles.
There are many built in features that let you control what news is published and how it is displayed; for example you can delay publication of a story to a future date, restrict viewing of certain articles to members only, link a story to another page (e.g. a sign up or buy tickets page), and allow users to comment on news articles.
In this guide:
Add a news article
Style your news list (using the news widget)
Add news to other pages
Add a news article
Navigate to the news admin page
Navigate to your homepage (or whichever page your news will appear on) and click on 'edit news' in the main text. Alternatively click on 'Edit myorganisation news' in the Control Panel.
Click on 'Add New Article' and complete the form:
| Field |
Explanation |
| Title |
The article title |
| Leader |
One or two-lines of introductory text to act as a 'hook' |
| Allow non-members to read |
If checked, the article will only appear in the article list for members |
| Allow comments |
If checked, a comments box is included on the article page, and any user comments appear below the article text. This is very useful to get feedback from your members.
|
| Display article |
The dates between which the article is visible on the site. Make sure this starts from today's date if you want it to be visible immediately.
If the start date is in the future, the article will automatically become live when that date is reached. |
| Display in archive |
If this is not ticked the article will automatically de-publish on the last day specified.
|
| Image |
Upload an image in format gif, jpg or png and specify a cropping style. The image will display at size 200px by 160px |
| Alt text |
If the image is essential to the understanding of the text, add an alternative description for users who cannot view images.
|
| Caption |
Add an image caption |
| Body |
Add the body of your article here. There is no word limit and you can add, text, images or rich media (flash, video) to enhance your article. |
| URL |
This will direct your article title to a specified page. Use only if you are leaving the 'body' field blank.
|
| Approval |
Leave this checked to publish straight away. To save the news article as a draft, uncheck the box until you are ready to publish. |
Saving your article will take you back to the news admin page. Your article is now showing in the news list and has been published to live. A new page is automatically created for each article you publish - to view it click 'view'.
When you have several news articles listed, you can reorder how they will display in the news list by dragging and dropping them using the handle on the left.
Now you have added some news items, navigate back to your homepage - you should see the news widget displaying the title, leader, and image for each of the articles you just added. Clicking on the title of the article takes users to the full text of the news article:
Try to write several news articles before moving on to styling your news list, as this makes it much easier to see how the list will fit on your pages.
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Style your news list
From your homepage, change to editing mode by navigating to your page in 'organisations admin', - website pages and selecting 'edit' (or by using the 'edit page' shortcut in the account panel).
To style your news list you need to edit the news widget, so click on the widgets tab in the WYSIWYG editor.
Under 'current widgets' you can see a list of all widgets available to your homepage. Click on the edit icon next to { news }. From here, you can edit the display properties of the news list widget, such as title, number of items to display, size of image, and display order. Use the preview tab to view what the layout will look like before saving (as saving publishes this layout to live).
For example, changing 'layout options' to: Title, image and leader, 2-column, small images, displays as:
For more details on styling your news pages see styling the news.
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Add a news widget to other pages
By using the news widget you can add news lists to any page on your site. You can also use combinations to style the news content in different ways, for instance you could have just news headlines on your homepage and full news including pictures and leaders on a news sub-page.
To create a news widget for use on a page use the news list widget under the widgets tab.
For instructions on to how to create and add widgets to your pages see widgets quickstart.
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