A key thing to consider with news is competing with your users attention / time. When you add News Items you have to consider its' "newsworthiness". Will your website target audience consider it of interest? If so, how do you manage to draw their attention, whilst the News item is still in the time slot they might consider as "News"?
In general, people do not go to an organisation's website to search for News. However, whilst at your website, a User may decide to register for News to be broadcast to them. So your News Articles must broadcast through the methods they have subscribed with, such as;
- Email - directly to their email account
- RSS - directly to their RSS News Reader (often part of the email client program)
- Social channels - directly to news feed on Walls, Twitter feeds etc
- Hard Copy - posted Newsletters
- SMS Text - directly to mobiles
- Video feed - through video channel subscriptions
News Items serve a second purpose on the Front of a website - they show the visitor that "Things are going on" with your organisation. But for all the effort of creating the News article, the important thing is to feed / broadcast it to your subcribers and as much of your target audience as possible.
News Atoms and News Items are built to work together to manage and display news through a website. Firstly, the "News Item" is a core object type, configured in modeller as Multi-lingual, Versionable, Strict Moderation object type. Secondly, the News Atom is added to a web page Template, to configure what aspects of the News Article are displayed and how they are displayed. The News Atom is provided within a default presentation, with Heading, published date, Image and Article, in that order, using default styles.
A second feature of News is "Syndication" - sharing. This is capability is also provided in XPOR, with News Channels. News Items added to News Channels are automatically shared with news reader programs that have registered with that News Channel
RSS Feeds and News Channels
If a web page is defined as a News Article, and configured with a news channel, it will automatically appear in a users News Feed, if they have registered to your news feed (RSS News Channel).
RSS feeds enable publishers to syndicate (share) data (such as news articles) automatically. The news articles are compiled into a standard XML file format ensuring compatibility with many different machines/programs. RSS feeds also benefit users who want to receive timely updates from favourite websites or to gather data from many sites.
With XPOR you can easily create a news channel (RSS Feed) such that any items added to that channel will be added to the standard XML document, for registered RSS Reader programmes to collect.
Creating News Articles
Creating a News article is achieved by adding a News Channel folder and then simply adding the News Article into that channel folder. It is important to note that articles will render in the news channel in order of object ID - so the highest (most recent) ID will be displayed first.
Creating a News article is achieved by adding a News Channel folder and then simply adding the News Article into that channel folder.
Creating a News listing web page
So now you have created a News Article, you need to let your website users access the article to read it. In other words you need a web page, with an Atom on it that is focussed on your News Articles Channel. Working with an existing template, we will add a new web page, swap out one of the Atoms for a News Atom and then configure it to list out News Articles.
Opening a News Article
From the list of news articles, your users will want to click through to read the full details of the article.