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News/Press Release Items CMS Guide

News/Press Release items are used for news stories. They are items that have a 'Press Release Date' and that can be automatically listed on the site's news listing pages. Important news items can appear on the front page of the SOAS site.

Who can create News/Press Release items?

  • Any CMS user can create news items in their own community.
  • SuperUsers can publish their news items without having to submit them for approval.
  • The Comms Office staff can place links to any news stories on the home page of the SOAS site.

Step-by-step Guide

  1. Log into the CMS
  2. Check the Community you are in is the correct one
  3. Navigate to the folder you want to add the News item to
  4. Right click (control click on a Mac) and select 'New Item > News/Press Release'
  5. Fill in the fields as follows
    • System Title: (required, doesn't show on the published page) This should start with the date in reverse format (yyyymmdd), then the title of the item and finally the department code
      (eg 20110203 - SOAS Wins African Award - AFR)
    • Page Title: This is the title of the news item, it should be in proper case
    • META Title: This is important for search engines, it will get automatically filled in if you don't provide a META title.
    • META Description: This is important for search engines, you should provide a basic description of the information on the page, it can be any size but it is suggested that it should be less than 155 characters.
    • Press Release Date: (required) This date will show on the page, note this isn't the date that the web page will be published out.
    • Summary: This should be a short description of the content of the page, this gets shown on the listing pages and home page, it doesn't get displayed on the page itself.
    • Body: This is the main content of the news item page. Make sure you follow the style guide.
    • For Further Information Contact: This can be used for contact information, it automatically adds a "For further information, contact" heading
    • Source: If the story if from another source you can add it here (eg The Guardian)
    • URL of External News Story: If it is an external news story add the full URL of the web page if you wish to link to it. Make sure you include the http:// at the beginning.
    • Relates to OU: This determines which news listing pages the story will appear on. Tick as many boxes as are appropriate. 
    • Type: Not really used any more. You can select the type of news story it is.
    • Request to go on Home Page: Tick this box if you wish to ask the Comms Office to put the story on the SOAS home page.
    • Remove from General News: This box is ticked by default, untick the box if you want it to be shown on the main SOAS news listing. 
    • Is Featured?: If it is a major news story you can make it featured by ticking this box.
    • META Keywords: These used to be important for search engines but they are no longer used by them. The keywords field is only useful for internal searching within the CMS.
    • Start Date: (Required) This is automatically populated with the date the item was created. If you wish to publish the news story at a later date then you can set the date here. Click on the calendar button and choose the date.
    • Expiration Date: If you wish the news story to be removed from the site on a certain day then you can do that here. Click on the calendar button and choose the date.
    • Page Type: Only one option P-News
    • Site Section: Choose the area of the site the news item belongs to.
  6. Click Insert to save the item.
  7. If you wish to add any information to the right bar of the page you can add it (after the page has been saved for the first time) by clicking on the Edit All button at the bottom of the page. There are three Related Content slots you can add content to:
    • Image Slot: You can add a pre-existing image to this slot. The image has to have a thumbnail of 56x56pixels and a larger image that is 186 pixels wide.
    • soasPressReleaseFile: If there is a PDF file of a press release to accompany the news story it can be slotted in here.
    • Right Bar: You can slot Brief content items in here, these can contain links, text and images.
  8. To insert an item into a slot first click on the text of the title of the slot (eg Image Slot), this will bring up the usual search options (Sites, Folders, Search), find the relevant item and select 'Open'
  9. After you have slotted in the items you need close the slot window by clicking on the 'Close' button.
  10. Click 'Update' on the News item to save any changes and 'Close' to close the window.
  11. Before sending the item for Approval (or before publishing it) right click on the item you have just created and select 'SOAS Preview > D - Default Page' this will allow you to preview the page.
  12. If you are happy with the look of the page right click on the item and select 'Workflow > Submit for Webteam Approval', if you are a SuperUser select 'Workflow > Publish'
  13. The news item will publish out after the next publishing run and will appear automatically on the selected listing pages too.