News Module
There are two aspects of the News Module to consider. First is the interface at news.princeton.edu which allows a user to create new articles and edit existing articles. The second aspect is the News Archive, News Summary, and News Spotlight components within the Roxen page editor interface.
The News Module is not an “installable” module that you can request for your site. Instead, follow the steps below.
Step 1: Request a News Collection
If you already have news on your site, skip to step #3. If you don't yet have news on your site, email punews@princeton.edu with your department name and list of usernames whom you would like to have access to create and edit your news articles. We will set up a news collection and inform you of your Department Code (short name) that you will need when configuring the components.
Step 2: Place Roxen News Components On Your Site
There are three News Module components for Roxen CMS: News Archive, News Summary, and News Spotlight. Only the News Archive component is required, but many sites use all three.
These components are customizable, in combination with the news.princeton.edu interface.
For example, a common setup is to have a list of headlines on the home page, a news page with a list of recent article blurbs, and the required news archive page. See below for the steps to create this.
Step 3: Add a New Article
To add a new article, log into news.princeton.edu with your Princeton username and password. If you are unable to log into the system, contact punews@princeton.edu.
After you log in, click on "Login to Admin Interface" again.
Select your department. (If you are a member of only one news collection, then you can skip this step as you will automatically be directed to your department's Overview page.)
From here, click on "Add new article" to create a new article, or select "Articles" in the navigation to view the articles for your department.
Article Fields
Below is a description for each field offered in the article form.
| Title | The headline of your article |
| Story | The content of your article. You can place images here to show up in your content. |
| Excerpt | The excerpt optionally in the News Summary and News Spotlight components. |
| Categories | Categories are used to group your posts into related themes. For example, many sites use the "Spotlight" category to pull only posts which are tagged as "Spotlight" onto the homepage. For help in setting up a category plan or with discovering your current setup, contact punews@princeton.edu. |
| Featured Image URL | This image appears in the News Summary and News Spotlight components. This image will not appear on the content page for your article. |
| Featured Image Caption | The caption for the Featured Image |
| Featured Video URL | Under development |
| Featured Video Closed Caption URL | Under development |
| Featured Video Title | Under development |
| Publish Status | The state of the article in the editing process. Articles with a status of "Published" will appear on your Roxen site. All others will not. |
| Visibility | |
| Author | The author of the article. Defaults to the person logged into the application. |
| Keywords | Keywords work in the same way as Categories, except that Keywords are custom. Each department can define its own set of keywords |
| Publish Date | Defaults to today. If you would like a story to be published in the future, you can set a future date. |
| Expiration Date | If you would like the article to be removed from the News Summary and News Spotlight components, then set an expiration date. Otherwise, leave this field blank. All published and visible articles will remain on your site in the News Archive component. |
| Priority | The sort order of all articles which meet the criteria outlined in the News Spotlight or News Summary components. |
| Location | Deprecated. Meant to be an AP style location line. Use the Story field instead. |
| News Source |
If you want to link to an external page instead of creating the story through news.princeton.edu, place the name of the news source here. |
| News URL | If you want to link to an external page instead of creating the story through news.princeton.edu, place the link to the article here. |
News Spotlight Options
You must set the "DOM ID" in the configuration options for the News Spotlight component. It can just be something simple like "spotlight" if you like.
If you choose the "Side-by-side" variant, you must set an image width and a container width. Otherwise, the text will appear below the image, disappearing outside the slider area. You should also set height values for those unless you are using the Auto Height option (not recommended).
Some of the themes may add extra borders or margins to images and borders to links inside the spotlight area. You should add rules to your custom.css to override these.
Example Component Setup in Roxen CMS
This example takes you through a basic setup of the News Module components.
- For your main News page, create a blank Insite Editor page at /dept-root/news/
- Insert a News Summary component
- You can leave the default settings for most items, including the “Show/Hide” options.
- Fill in the Path to News Archive. For this example, /dept-root/news/archive/
- Fill in the Department Code. If you do not know the Department Code (short name) for your news collection, please contact punews@princeton.edu
- You might want to increase the Limit from its default of 10 articles
Next set up the News Archive page as a subpage of News. The News Archive page does double duty and dynamically serves as the individual article display page.
- Create a blank Insite Editor page at /dept-root/news/archive/
Use the same path that you previously used in the “Path to News Archive” field. - Insert a News Archive component
- Fill in the Department Code
- For now, just leave the default “Show/Hide” options
- Choose a “Start Date” that is the first of the month for your oldest article
- Leave “End Date” blank
Optionally, you can edit the navigation menus of each page to create a link from the News page to the News Archive page and vice-versa.
For the last step, create a list of news headlines on the home page.
- Open your home page in the Insite Editor
- Insert another instance of the News Summary Component
- Add a Title
- Fill in the same Path to News Archive – /dept-root/news/archive/
- Fill in the Department Code
- Hide everything.
- The “Link to view the remaining articles” would be /dept-root/news/
- You will likely have to add custom CSS so that the list of headlines fits in with the look of your home page.
It is up to you whether you want a link to the News page in the primary navigation, or if you just want to rely on the News Summary's “View all” link.
Improvements or Bugs
If you have an improvement to suggest, or have found a bug, please report it to us. Check the existing tickets before creating a new one by looking at "View Tickets" and choosing "Active Tickets.".
