Announcements
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Contents |
Introduction
You can quickly and easily publish Announcements, News Stories, Press Releases, Calendar Events or even Employment Advertisements using Announcements. When announcements are created and added to your web page, your customers will see the announcement title and a release date on your site.
Benefits of Announcements
Announcements allow you to quickly and easily maintain a list of newsworthy events that helps you keep your site fresh and communicate important messages with your customers. When Announcements are viewed by a web site visitor, a record is made of the action. This means that you can now accurately track what events and news stories are being viewed, how often and so forth.
Creating new announcement and adding it to various elements
To create Announcements go to Modules -> Announcements, and follow these steps:
- Click Create a new Announcement
- Enter Announcement Details (Details tab)
- Role responsible (show more options link) will notify the selected role if the item has an expiry date
- Author the Announcement Content (Editor)
- Classify the Announcement if it is required. ('Classify this Announcement' link)
- Add the Announcement to a Secure Zone if it is required. ('Make Announcement secure' link)
- Add the Announcement to an RSS Channel if it is required. (Add to an RSS Channel link)
- Preview the Announcement if desired (Preview in new browser link)
- View the Announcement Usage
- View the Audit Log for your announcements
Classifying announcements
Announcements may be assigned to one or more categories. When you classify items in categories you make it easy to publish them on web pages, by allowing you to group related items together. Here is how classification works:
Imagine you are a financial advisory business which has a wide range of content relating to educating individuals on Tax matters as well as Superannuation matters.
You can assign the tax related documents, FAQs and announcements under the tax category and the superannuation related items under the superannuation category. Assign a classification under the classifications tab, by moving your desired classifications from left to right.
By classifying items you can publish groups of them at once on any web page. As
you add more items related to superannuation they will automatically appear on
your website without any further editing of web pages required.
Note: You can manage your category list and create new categories that are relevant
to your business. This is done under Admin -> Manage Categories.
Making Announcements Secure
All these items may be added to one or more Secure Zones. By adding an item to a Secure Zone, you restrict access to it to members of the Secure Zone. Website Visitors will not be able to access the item via a link or by their web site search.
To add items to a Secure Zone, go to Website -> Secure Zones -> select the zone you want to add items to and click on Make Content Secure. Then simply select items on the left and click the arrow in the middle to put the items in the square on the right. This will automatically make these items secure.
Note: When a secure item is selected only visitors currently logged in to the secure zones will be able to view the details of the item.
Inserting Announcements
Announcements can be inserted on a page via the Add Announcement to a web page and then using 1-Click Insert drop down when viewing or editing the item itself. 1-Click Insert will give you the option to insert just one item, all items within a category or all of the items.
Alternatively you can insert items on a page via the Module manager in the WYSIWYG editor or using Triangle. Again, you are able to choose to only insert one item, all items within a category or all of the items.
Adding Announcements to RSS channel
You can syndicate all of these items and share them with the world by adding them to an RSS channel. By adding an item to an RSS channel, subscribers to that channel will be able to see and be able to read the item you just added, almost instantly.
To add items to RSS channel, go to Website -> RSS channels -> select RSS channel you want to add items to and click Add items to RSS Channel.
Then you simply need to use the arrows to move the items from left to right to make them secure.
Customizing Announcements
When you display Announcements on a web page you can customize the entire layout to suit your needs. This type of content use two templates that you can use to customize their appearance. These layouts are generally customized up-front and require no further maintenance.
All customization of these layouts can be done under Admin -> More Customization Options, then Announcement.
You can equally use Triangle to customize these layouts.
The List Layout
The List template defines how a group of Announcements are displayed on a web page. For instance if you have a number of Announcement you may want to create a web page and display all of the Announcements on it. The list template controls how the list of Announcement are displayed together on a web page.
You may move each tag to the position you desire, and add new tags via the tag manager or tag list.
The Details Layout
Details layout defines how the details of an Announcement that is displayed after it has been selected. In this instance once a customer chooses one of the Announcements it is loaded and displayed exactly how you have setup your Details template.
The appearance of these types of content is entirely customizable. Layout, style sheets, colors and the information that is displayed is controlled and positioned as you want it, via the use of tags and the tag list.
Advanced Topics and Techniques
After adding the Announcement module to a web page, you can make changes to it to slightly alter its behavior. Normally the module would look like:
{module_announcement,filter,id,noTemplate,effect,targetFrame,reserved,reserved,reserved,reserved,sort}
- filter system generated (do not change)
- id system generated (do not change)
- noTemplate if you want to force the item not to use a site-level template when displayed pass in true, otherwise leave empty
- effect Enter ajax if you want to take advantage of the latest web technologies for a better customer experience
- targetFrame - the frame in which to open the item in upon the click
- reserved - these parameters will be enabled in a future release
- sort - if you leave this parameter blank, by default announcements will be sorted from the latest to the oldest where the latest is displayed first
- alphabetical - will sort announcements alphabetically
- datereverse - will sort announcements in the reverse order, that is from the oldest to the latest
e.g.
{module_announcement,filter,id,,ajax}
