Posting a News Story – News Front Page - Overview

From the Main Administration page, click on the News icon

You should then be presented with a screen similar to the one shown below.
The top part of the page will remain constant so you can always go back by clicking on Main.

In the centre of the page you will see a list of the current News Stories.

In this case you can see 10 most recent stories and at the bottom you will see links to two other pages of stories.
Obviously you will not have a list on your site until you start creating news stories

Each new story is given a new ID number.

If you click on the title you will go directly to the story as it is seen to the public.

Clicking on the  icon will allow you to edit the story, whilst clicking on the  will delete it.


The render-type controls the way the story is displayed. More on this a little later.

The right hand column contains the sub-menu for the News section, called News Options. The section you are currently in will have a  next to the menu item.
As you can see the screen above shows that you are in the “News Front Page” and the other options are “Create News Item”, “Categories” and “News Preferences”.

Note: that in most administration pages there is some additional help and guidance that appears in the left hand column. This column has been cropped in this guide from now on to give us a little more space

Before you can start posting stories you need to set up some “Categories” to keep your stories in some sort of order.

Back to the top

 Posting a News Story – Categories

  When you click on the “ Categories” option from the News Option Menu, you will bring up a screen similar to the one pictured here and you will note the arrow changes to red in the Options menu.

To create a new category, type in the title of your new category into the Category Name box.

If you would like to assign an image to that Category, click on “View Images” and select an icon. An icon is a little picture that sits beside your title to give your web site visitors a visual clue about what the text will be about.

This is a useful addition especially when you use the "Title only" option, to display your news items.

If there are no images on the list that you like, drop me a line and we'll upload some that you do like. 

Below the new Category box you will see a list of your existing news categories.

As you can see there are 11 categories listed on this tutorial, each with their own id, icon and title.

You can click on the  to edit an existing Category or click  to delete it.

Back to the top

 

Posting a News Story – Create News Item

 

Time to get creative and produce your first news item.
Clicking “Create News Item” on the News menu will bring up the following screen.

The first thing to do is select what Category you want the news item to go in.

This is done by clicking on the dropdown box and selecting one of  your predefined categories.

Next type in a title for your story.

Add a summary, which is very useful if you choose “Title Only” a little later.

Now you can enter your story into the box or “Body”

At the top of the body area or text box, you can see the buttons of a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get!) editor.
Those familiar with forums will recognise these but essentially these controls work just like word or other microsoft controls.

The best results come from typing directly into the box, using the editors features to format your story as you go.
You can paste from Word or similar BUT the formatting will probably not remain when you come to save.
This is because whatever you type has to be converted to html language so it can be displayed on a webpage. If you copy and paste your text out of word and paste it into wordpad or notepad (look in accessories in your computer programs) and then copy this, you will strip out all the word formatting which will make your life much easier and your text layout more predictable.

One way round this problem is to disable the WYSIWYG editor, which is dicussed in News Preferences.
This stops the online editor trying to re-format an already formatted document before it attempts to convert it to HTML..... (you really don’t want to know!) just try turning off the WYSIWYG if you have a problem, you can always turn it back on after you have done your story.

The other trick is to right click on the body which will bring up a list of all your editing and formatting options.

For those who would like to see and even edit the HTML directly, click on “HTML” at the bottom left of the editor. This will bring up a pop up screen with what your story looks like in HTML, not a pretty sight!

So much for text, what about adding a picture?

Clicking on  as indicated on the screen-shot below, will bring up the image insert/edit menu.

From here you can select the library of images from the drop down box. In the case for News Stories, the library is “Newspost Images”

The box below (called Images) will list with all the pictures saved into the Newspost library.
Selecting a picture will bring up a small version of the selected image on the right.

The method of uploading images to the library is discussed a little later.

Below you will see the Image information. The source is the web address of the selected image and the description is the file name.

Under this is “Text Flow”. This essentially sets the picture left or right of your page.

Beneath the file size box you can adjust the picture size.The size indicated is the original size of the image.
type in one of the boxes a bigger number if you want the image bigger or more likely, a smaller number if you want to make it smaller. If you only change the number in either the height or the width boxes, the other one will change automatically so that the picture doesn't become distorted.

My tip is to make newspost images about 200 wide if the image is there just to complement the story or 450 if the image is to be the centerpiece.

The next box controls the border which I usually leave at 0.

However I usually give a margin of 2 or 3 round the image.
When you are happy with the way your image looks, click on Save. Your image should now show up on your page.
You can go back and edit the image later if it’s not quite correct by right clicking on the image and selecting properties.
To be honest I find it easier to delete the image and reselect it again in the correct position.

The other important feature of any website story is to add links.

This is a pretty simple process.

Just highlight the text you want to link and then click on the  icon, as shown on the left.

This brings up a popup box.

Enter the web address you want the link to go to, remembering to include the http://

You have a choice whether link will open in the same window or by using the dropdown you can select that the link will open up a new window.  As most of your web site visitors use "popup blockers" it is best to open the link in the same window.

Ignore style for now and when happy click “Insert”

Under the big box for you to put your text and images in are a number of other headings.
Clicking on each header will open up various other options.
Most of the time you won't need these but there are some that are very important.

Under the main text area or body you will see the next section called “Extended”  Click on this and the page will expand.

This is used when you use the top text box as an introduction and you put the main story in “extended”
The visitor reads the intro and clicks on “read the rest” to bring up the main story.

Clicking on “Upload” will open up a browse box to enable you to select files and pictures on your computer and upload them into the Newspost library.

I don’t use the “Image” section very much, it attaches an image to your news item. Similar to the Category icon but bigger.

Comments can be turned on and off.
I would advise to turn these off until you are well used to the workings of your site. The site is set up with the comments turned off.

The Render Type controls how your news item will be displayed or whether you want to move it to the archived “Other News”

The activate dates are so you can determine if you want the story to appear and disappear on a specific day.

The date stamp is used to modify the creation date if required.

Ticking the boxes in visibility effects who can see your news item.
This is a very powerful control allowing you to post news or articles for specific groups of people only.
The other groups won't even know it exists.

Sticky just ensures that this item appears above the rest.

When happy click “Post news to database”

Once this has been done the news item will appear on the FrontPage list as described earlier.
You can click on the title to see what it looks like and then go back and edit the layout as required.

Back to the top

Posting a News Story – Preferences

 

When you click on the “ Preferences” option from the News Option Menu, you will bring up a screen similar to the one pictured here.

To be honest, until you’re up to speed with posting news stories, I’d leave the Preferences as they are.

However once your up and running, dive in and have a go.

It’s mostly self evident but there are few items that you might to change.

There is a facility for your members to post their news to the site.
For this to be activated you need to select who can submit-news by selecting the class of member in the drop down box.

To help in writing a story there is a “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) editor.
This can be great or it can be a pain depending on what you are used to using.

My advice is to try posting with it on and if you have problems getting to look right, click the box to remove the tick and try with the editor tuned off. You won’t damage or lose anything so give it a try.

Depending on whether you have a fixed theme or expanding theme the other item that I find useful is to limit the automatic sizing of images in a news post. In this case to 450px .
With a fixed theme, if you post an image in a news story without a size restriction you run the risk of the page getting all out of shape.

Back to the top