Creating News Articles

News articles are a great way to get important information and news out to your site's users and patrons. These articles can be created and edited by users with the Contributor, Editor, Moderator, or Administrator roles; however, only those with the Moderator or Administrator role can publish articles to your Stacks site. 

Considerations

Before creating new articles consider how your users/patrons will be interacting with this information. Site labels can be updated to ensure field names and other terminology matches what your users/patrons expect to see. News articles can also be filtered/grouped using the Topic and Type filter vocabulary fields, consider creating or editing these list values before creating new listings.  

Filter vocabularies and site labels are discussed in more detail in the Considerations for Creating Content article, but it should be noted that administrators can quickly access the filter vocabularies and site labels specific to just the news articles, from the tabs at the top of the news dashboard.

Creating New Articles

To create articles:

1. From the Dashboard, click News articles
2. Click +Add News Article
3. Complete the fields in the form that opens
   1. Title - add a title for the article, this will be visible to users
   2. Author - add the author of the article, note: this is a text field
   3. Language - select the language for the article
   4. Type - select the appropriate value
   5. Topic - select the appropriate value
   6. Image - select an already uploaded, or upload a new image for the article
      1. For optimal user experience see the Recommended Image Sizes article for guidance when uploading/selecting images
   7. Body - add the content of the article
   8. File Attachments - upload any relevant files as needed
   9. Update the Publishing workflow settings as needed
   10. Click Save

Settings for Articles

There are a few settings that can be configured to control the appearance list and detail views when viewing articles.

• The Listing View will be the default view users/patrons will see when navigating to the /news page of your Stacks site, where they will see a list of all published news articles
• The Details View will be the view users/patrons will see when they click on any one article to read/view the full article

1. From the Dashboard, click News articles
2. Click the Settings tab near the top of the screen,
3. Click the Listing View sub-tab
   1. Enable Listing View, when checked this enables access to the listing view for the content type
      1. If disabled, when a user attempts to load the URL for this content, they will be redirected to the homepage 
   2. Title, edit the title for the page if desired, the default value is News
   3. Description, enter a description for the page if desired, this will be visible to users/patrons
   4. Display section
      1. Expand First Group by Default, check this box to expand the items, when they are grouped
      2. Display search form, check this box to display a search bar for news articles
      3. Display A-Z Link Index, check this box to display a link on the list view when "Group by None" is selected
      4. Enable Rss Feeds, check this box to display the RSS icon at the top of the articles list
         1. When a user/patron clicks this icon, the XML for the feed will be generated
            1. Note: any filters or search terms applied will be respected when the feed when the icon is clicked
      5. Enable Add to saved list button, check this box to enable a save to list button
   5. Defaults section
      1. Default Page Limit, select the number of articles to be displayed before pagination is enforced
      2. Default Grouping, select the default value articles should be grouped by
         1. Note: users/patrons can change this when viewing the list of articles
      3. Default Sort Field, select the default value articles should be sorted by
      4. Default Sort Order, select the default order in which articles should be sorted
         1. Note: users/patrons can change this when viewing the list of articles
   6. Field Visibility section
      1. Check the box beside each field that should be made visible to users/patrons when viewing the list of articles
   7. Click Save configuration when finished
4. Click the Details View sub-tab
   1. Field Visibility section
      1. Check the box beside each field that should be made visible to users/patrons when viewing the list of articles
   2. Enable Add to saved list button, check this box to enable a save to list button
   3. Click Save configuration when finished

Making Articles Available to Users/Patrons

Once your article(s) have been created and the appropriate settings have been configured, you have multiple ways you could make these articles accessible to your users and patrons.

• Content on a Landing page
  • For more information on how to add news articles as a content block on a landing page, please see the article Adding Content to Landing Pages 
• Add as a menu link
  • You can add a link to the internal Stacks news page by adding the /news path into a menu link. For more information on how to add menu links, please see the article Creating New Menu Links
• Through other Stacks features (eg. Callouts, Sliders, etc.)
  • A link to the internal Stacks new page can also be added through some other Stacks features, such as Callouts or Sliders. In these scenarios, add the /news path the appropriate link or URL field. For more information, please refer the articles for the feature type