Posting News Articles

Applies to: News Pro 1.0 - News Manager

Introduction

This article discusses the process for adding news content using News Pro in a "Text" based news category that will display news content in your web site.

Late Breaking News

Adding news content to the late breaking category omits the need for your to specify a publish date as this value is automatically assigned by News Pro when you add it to the web site. DO NOT enter a publish date as it will be discarded for news content assigned to this category.

Text News (Non-Late Breaking Categories)

All other news content added that is not assigned to the system category of, "Late Breaking", must have a publish date assigned to it. Keep in mind, for it to be viewable on your web site, it must be assigned a day of the week that is active in the News Pro settings page. The settings page can be accessed by clicking the notepad icon above the News Pro navigation.

For example, if you publish your paper on Wednesday and Saturday, then the settings on your web site should be Wednesday and Saturday. As a result, when you go to publish your news content on your web site using News Pro, assign it on the Wednesday or Saturday it will be released. In doing so, you have added content to the site that will not be available until that date and has allowed you to "pre-publish" the content and let the server make it accessible at the correct date.

If you assign news content a date that is not in keeping with the days of the week set as a Publish Date in your settings, it will not be displayed on your web site. Each time a user comes to your site, News Pro finds the last day you told it to publish news content and displays that content. For example, if you pre-publish your content on your web site for Wednesday, the Tuesday before, visitors who come to your site on that same Tuesday will be presented with the content of the last day of the week you told it to publish. In our example, it would display Saturday's content. The following day, Wednesday, your pre-published content will be available at 12:00am! Keep in mind also that these same rules apply for PDF content publish dates. 

Selecting A Category (Required)

Select a news category for the text article. Only "active" news categories are listed in the menu to prevent accidental posting to an in-active category. Note: if the "Late Breaking" category is selected, the following menu for the, "Publish Date" field is automatically disabled. This is because the Late Breaking category posts the actual time you place the article in the system; hence the name and purpose of the category.

Select A Publish Date (Required)

If you are not posting a Late Breaking news article, you will be able to select the Publish Date of the article. Two options are available to you: 1) you can back publish an article for the previous edition and 2) you can pre-publish your content. The purpose of pre-publishing is to have your content already in the system so that your users will have it on and after the date it is posted.

Enter An Author

Since News Pro allows for a multi-user environment, you can have your writers publish their news articles directly from their desktop computer, if they have internet access. This helps spread the work load of maintaining the web site over many people, hence making the task more manageable. News Pro remembers the last author for each computer and automatically enters their name. WARNING: this could cause an error if someone uses another computer that has posted a news article. In this case, you would need to delete the auto entry and type the correct name.

Enter A Story Title (Required)

The story title is the same as that as you would use in your print edition that briefly describes the story. On your home page, this text is displayed (as seen in the following example). It is also displayed at the top of the page when the full article is displayed. Note: display on the home page is discussed in more detailed later in this article.

Enter the Article Summary

This is where you will summarize the story for your readers. It will provider greater detail and encourage them to read the article in more depth. Do NOT leave this entry blank as it is used to populated content on your summary pages. In most cases, you can just copy and paste the first few sentences of your article to provide a quick summary.

Enter The News Story

Since News Pro is probably the online edition of your printed version, you should just be able to copy-and-paste your story text in the provided textarea. Depending on how you organize your text, you may wish to add extra line breaks to make reading the story on a computer screen more easy. This can be done by checking the, "Add extra line breaks" checkbox to make this task automated.

Upload Options - Images, Captions and Display

If you have an image associated with your story, you can upload it. WARNING: depending on your internet connection and image size, you might need to compress/resize the image. For the best results, compress the image resolution to a web friendly 72 dpi. Be sure also that the file is less than 1 MB is size. This will ensure that your server does reject the file upload. You can also add a special caption under the image if you want to describe the photo in more detail; this will appear directly under the image.

You do not need to specially size your image to fit a specific dimension, as News Pro will automatically create three versions of the image itself. One will be a thumbnail size that will be displayed on the home page, if you select home page display. The second will be the full size of the image that appears with the complete text of the article. The third will be a zoom version that will let users see it in a large view.

Once upload is complete, you will receive a confirmation with the news title, publish date and story. If you attempted to upload an image and received an error, your image upload failed. You will need to reduce your file size and try again.

At the bottom of the form, you will also find a check box labeled, "Display on Home Page". Check this option if you want the article to display on the home page of the web site. Note: News Pro will summarize each article on your home page. This means it will only display the text you enter in the Article Summary.