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 news articles consider reviewing the Labels and Filter Vocabularies associated with this feature.
Labels
Labels are the field names and labels seen when people are reading the news articles and viewing the pages associated with articles. Examples include labels such as: Author, Type, Topic, etc. These values can be changed as needed to meet your own terminology, if needed.
To update labels:
- From the Dashboard, click News articles
- Click the Labels tab near the top of the screen
- Review the labels in the Fields and Listing View tabs (on the left side of the screen) and change any values as needed
- Click Submit when finished
Filter Vocabularies
Filter Vocabularies are lists of values that can be used by your site's users and patrons to filter and group articles, in this case by Topic and Type. Ideally, you would want to add to or update the values in these lists prior to creating articles to save time from having to going back and forth later on.
To add to or update filter vocabularies:
- From the Dashboard, click News articles
- Click the Filter Vocabularies tab near the top of the screen
- Click the List Terms link to the right of the News Article Topic
- To Add new values:
- Click +Add Term
- Enter the name for the new term
- Click Save, to save the value and stay in this screen to add another OR click Save and go to list, to save this value and return to the list term view
- To Edit a value:
- Click the Edit button to the right of the value
- Update the name
- Click Save
- To Add new values:
- Click the List Terms link to the right of the News Article Type
- To Add new values:
- Click +Add Term
- Enter the name for the new term
- Click Save, to save the value and stay in this screen to add another OR click Save and go to list, to save this value and return to the list term view
- To Edit a value:
- Click the Edit button to the right of the value
- Update the name
- Click Save
- To Add new values:
Creating New Articles
To create articles:
- From the Dashboard, click News articles
- Click +Add News Article
- Complete the fields in the form that opens
- Title - add a title for the article, this will be visible to users
- Author - add the author of the article, note: this is a text field
- Language - select the language for the article
- Type - select the appropriate value
- Topic - select the appropriate value
- Image - select an already uploaded, or upload a new image for the article
- For optimal user experience see the Recommended Image Sizes article for guidance when uploading/selecting images
- Body - add the content of the article
- File Attachments - upload any relevant files as needed
- Update the Publishing workflow settings as needed
- 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
- From the Dashboard, click News articles
- Click the Settings tab near the top of the screen,
- Click the Listing View sub-tab
- Enable Listing View, when checked this enables access to the listing view for the content type
- If disabled, when a user attempts to load the URL for this content, they will be redirected to the homepage
- Title, edit the title for the page if desired, the default value is News
- Description, enter a description for the page if desired, this will be visible to users/patrons
- Display section
- Expand First Group by Default, check this box to expand the items, when they are grouped
- Display search form, check this box to display a search bar for news articles
- Display A-Z Link Index, check this box to display a link on the list view when "Group by None" is selected
- Enable Rss Feeds, check this box to display the RSS icon at the top of the articles list
- When a user/patron clicks this icon, the XML for the feed will be generated
- Note: any filters or search terms applied will be respected when the feed when the icon is clicked
- When a user/patron clicks this icon, the XML for the feed will be generated
- Enable Add to saved list button, check this box to enable a save to list button
- Defaults section
- Default Page Limit, select the number of articles to be displayed before pagination is enforced
- Default Grouping, select the default value articles should be grouped by
- Note: users/patrons can change this when viewing the list of articles
- Default Sort Field, select the default value articles should be sorted by
- Default Sort Order, select the default order in which articles should be sorted
- Note: users/patrons can change this when viewing the list of articles
- Field Visibility section
- Check the box beside each field that should be made visible to users/patrons when viewing the list of articles
- Click Save configuration when finished
- Enable Listing View, when checked this enables access to the listing view for the content type
- Click the Details View sub-tab
- Field Visibility section
- Check the box beside each field that should be made visible to users/patrons when viewing the list of articles
- Enable Add to saved list button, check this box to enable a save to list button
- Click Save configuration when finished
- Field Visibility section
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