Creating/Modifying Website News Articles

Transcription

1 Creating/Modifying Website News Articles Creating a New Staff News Article 1. Login to the ArSHA Administrator section of the website: a. Enter your Username and Password. Passwords are case sensitive, usernames are not. 2. Immediately after logging in, you will find a list of buttons in a column on the left side of the window. Click on the "New Article" button. Note, after clicking this button it may take 5-10 seconds for the new page to load fully (so please be patient!). 1

2 3. Overview of the page for creating news articles: Here's a brief overview of the page and the important parts: a. Title (red box): Type a brief descriptive Title for your article. b. Section (blue box) & Category (pink box). Think of "Sections" as you would the sections of a newspaper. Typically, newspapers have different sections that address different topic areas, such as sports, entertainment, etc. The same is true of ArSHA's website, with there being four different sections (see below). Each section will also have one or more sub-sections, called Categories. i. For the Section drop-down, select one of the following: Students For student only content. Member and Professional The most used Section, especially for items you want to appear on the front page of the website. If you want to have some content appear on the front page as teaser content, you will want to use this Section. Public For content that you want to appear in the "Consumer" section of the website. Member Only On the front end of the website we have a dropdown menu for member only content (such as Case's corner, etc). For content that you want to appear only in this member only area, use this Section. ii. For the Category (pink box) drop-down: Each Section has different Categories. Select the Category that you feel best matches the content for your article. 2

3 c. What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) HTML Editor (green box above): These are the buttons that you use to apply style/formatting to your text (you must use these buttons for formatting if you are used to using keyboard shortcuts they will not work!). If you are familiar with Microsoft Word, most of these buttons will be self-explanatory. If in doubt, you can hover your mouse over any given button and a little pop-up description will appear. Here are a few that you may not be familiar with: i. - Templates: See more on templates later in this document. ii. - Insert Link: see more on inserting links later in this document. iii. - The Size drop-down allows you to change the font text size. While you are probably familiar with using a font size feature when editing a Word document, you should avoid using this feature when creating an article for the website; this is because we want the appearance of the website to remain consistent and professional. However, when you copy/paste text that was copied from another program, the font size may occasionally change. You can use this feature to correct this should it happen. Note: the font appearance that you see when creating/editing an article will be different from the published article. This is because the website uses an overruling style to standardize text appearance. iv. - Remove Formatting: When you copy/paste text from a Microsoft application, such as Word or Outlook, the pasted text may contain formatting that will make your article look like it is formatted differently from other articles on the website. Since consistency of appearance is important on the site, you can use this button to remove all of the Microsoft formatting. To use this feature, highlight all of the text in the text box, and then click the "Remove Formatting" button. After doing this you will need to reformat the text using the website's formatting feature/buttons. 3

4 4. Using the built in templates (used for inserting pictures into news articles) - a. When you click on the Template icon, a pop up will appear that shows the available templates. The Template that you will use the most will be the top selection: "Image and Title." Click on Image and Title to insert this template into your news article. b. After inserting the Image and Title template, the text area of the HTML editor will look like the image below. Note the following: i. Type the title here: insert a brief header title for your article ii. Type the text here: this is where you enter the story for your article iii. Image box (red box below): this is where you will paste an image for your story (see next page). 4

5 d. Inserting an image into your article. i. Locate the image you want to copy/paste into the article. You will need to be careful that the image is sized correctly for your article. ii. Paste your image into the story by right clicking on the image box and selecting Paste. e. Modifying the Pasted Image Once the image has been pasted into the story, you can modify its properties (such as size) by right-clicking on the picture and selecting "Image Properties." The various modifications to the properties are listed below (next page). 5

6 i. Changing Image Size: In the image properties window, the first tab has parameters for layout and size. To change the image size, do the following: Width: Enter the desired width (in pixels) Height: Enter the desired height (in pixels) Note the small blue lock below (red box below). The lock controls the image ratio. When locked it maintains the image ratio, so that when you change the size of an image, by changing either its Width or Height, the image does not look stretched or squashed. ii. Changing Image Alignment: under the "Align" drop down, select where you want the image to appear in the story. Left or Right will be the typical alignments. HSpace (blue box below): Horizontal Space is used to increase padding to the left/right of the image. This is helpful if it appears that the text of the article seems too close to the image. 6

7 iii. Making An Image Clickable With A Hyperlink Images can be made into a hyperlink, so that when someone clicks on it they go to a different page on the website, or even a completely different website. This is handy when you use an image of a map that you want to be linked to a map website, such as (which may be helpful for people that need to get directions from their location to another location, such as for a meeting, conference, etc). To do this o Open the Image Properties and click on the "Link" tab o Enter the web address into the URL box o For "Target" select "New Window (_blank)" o Click on the "OK" button 7

8 5. Publishing Your Story On the right-hand side of the window are the publishing parameters for the story. The only tab that you will need to enter information into is the "Publishing" tab. Here are the main things that you will want to do with this tab: f. Published: If not checked, your story will not appear on the website. Unchecking this box is actually helpful if you are working on a story and want to save your changes without having the story appear on the website until you are done. g. Access Level: The default settings for each of the website Sections will be the primary means of controlling access. Consequently, you can just leave the Access Level set to Public. h. Start Publishing: Set the date and time (in military time) that you want the story to start publishing. This is helpful for creating a number of news stories that will publish on future dates. i. Finish Publishing: Set the date and time that you want the story to stop publishing. 6. Save Your Work: Click on the "Save" or "Apply" buttons to save/publish your article. 8

9 7. Additional Hints: a. Publishing a Long Story: If you have a long story to publish, you can split the story into two sections, with the top section appearing first with a "Read more " link to the rest of the story. To do, this 1. Put the first part of the story in the top text box labeled "Intro Text: (required)." 2. Put the rest of the story (that will be viewed when clicking on "Read more ") in the bottom text box labeled "Main Text: (optional)." 9

10 b. Creating "Teaser" Content: Do this if you want to create an article that has a lead-in portion that everyone can read, with a "Read more " part that only members can read. 1. Put the first part of the story in the top text box labeled "Intro Text: (required)." This will be your teaser content. 2. Put the rest of the story (that will be viewed when clicking on "Read more ") in the bottom text box labeled "Main Text: (optional)." 3. Now we'll make the second part of the story be viewable only to members that are logged in to the website. We do this by putting special markers at the beginning and end of the article. a. At the beginning of the second text box, before the article content, we need to insert: {member} b. At the end of the news article we need to insert: {/member} 4. The final step is to create a message that guests will see when they click on the "Read more " link. At the very bottom of the second text box, labeled Main Text: (optional), copy and paste the text below. Note the special "guest" markers that make this text viewable only to those individuals that are not logged into the website. After pasting the text, you may need to make it bold, italicized and red. {guest} Only ArSHA members have access to the rest of this premium content. If you are a member, please login to view the rest of this article. If you are not a member, we encourage you to join ArSHA in order to have access to the latest information impacting Arizona's AUD/SLP community!{/guest} 10

11 a. Modifying a News Article The interface for modifying an article is the same as the interface that you use when creating an article. Here's how you find and open the article for modification from the Administrator part of the website: 1. Immediately after logging into the administrator section of the website, click on the "Manage Content" button. This button is a shortcut to the Content Items Manager for all of the website articles. 2. In the Content Items Manager you can edit, publish/un-publish & "Trash" existing news articles (you can also create new articles here by clicking on the "New" button). To edit an existing article, click on the name of the article, or click in the check box next to the article name and click on the "Edit" button. To publish/un-publish an article, click in the check box next to the article name and click on either the "Publish" or "Unpublish" buttons. If your having trouble locating an article, but you know part of the title for the story, you can type 1-2 keywords into the "Filter" box (red box below), then click on your keyboards "Enter" or "Return" key to filter the list of articles. 11

12 Modifying an article from the front end of the website: If you want to edit an article that is currently published, you can login to the front end of the website to do so. If you just need to make a quick edit to an article, this is probably the fastest/easiest way to make the edit. 1. Login to the front end of the website at: 2. Locate the article, and click the edit icon that looks like pencil and paper Edit the article just like you would from the administrator section of the website. 4. Saving your work: Important: when editing an article from the front end of the website, make certain that you click on the Save (computer diskette icon), Apply (blue check mark), or Cancel (red X) buttons to exit the HTML Editor. Not doing this will result in the loss of all your changes/edits. 12