News items contain information about past or current University of Waterloo events, people, or places. News items appear in the 'News' Section of the site and (optionally) on the homepage. News listings pages are configured not to show news items older than one year.
Create a News item
There are two steps to creating a News item. First, the News item page information is added as follows:
From the administration bar, select Workbench, and then select My Dashboard.
Under Content types, select Add next to News item.
In the Title field, enter the title of the News item.
The Date field will default to today's date and can be changed if required.
Insert an optional Hero image. A hero image is a full-width image at the top of the page that must be large and high-definition.
Under Media settings select Image from the Type of media: drop-down menu.
Under Hero image, select Add media.
Add an image or select an image previously uploaded to your site. To add an image:
Select Browse/Choose File in the Add file block and choose an image from your files.
Enter the mandatory Name (it will default to the original file name) and Alternative text (guidelines can be found on the Brand page) field.
Optionally, a caption to be displayed with the image in the Caption field can be entered.
Select Save.
If not already selected, select the image by checking its box from the image gallery.
Select Insert selected.
Note: If the selected image doesn't meet the specifications and isn't clear, it is recommended that a Full-width image or Banner image be added in the Layout builder in the next step of the News item creation process.
Insert an optional Listing page image. This image is used on the news listing pages.
Add a summary of the News item in the mandatory Summary field. This is just a brief summary, you will enter the full content of the News item when configuring the Layout of the News item.
Select the Audience from the Taxonomies block. Multiple audiences can be selected. The Audience selected will be visible on the News item and listing page.
News items can be tagged with keywords using the News tag(s) field. These tags will display in the News item tags section of the expanded published news item page. Clicking on a specific tag will bring the user to a list of all News items sharing that tag.
NOTE: Tags are case-sensitive. For example, "Celebration" and "celebration" would register as two separate tags.
In the Meta tag information for social media sharing/search/etc. block, the Description of content field is mandatory for the page to be published. Enter a brief description of the news item's content, no more than one or two sentences.
The Associated image is the image used as a thumbnail in social networks and other services. If no image is provided, the University of Waterloo logo will be used.
Advanced configuration options provide more detailed meta tag options for social media.
Select Menu settings (found near the top of the right of the page) to Place in site hierarchy if you would like the News item to appear in the main navigation menu. Choosing this option will prompt more fields to add the Menu link title, Description, Parent link and Weight.
Configure the URL alias. The Web page automatically generates a URL based on the page Title and its place in the site hierarchy. It is best practice to select Generate automatic URL alias for uniformity across your site. To create a custom alias, unselect Generate automatic URL alias. Do not add a trailing backslash (/) to the alias. Replace any spaces with a dash (-). When entering a custom URL make sure it is still reflective of the content that it will be displaying.
Under Promotion options, select Promoted to front page to promote the news item to the front page and select Sticky at top of lists to make the news item stay at the top of lists. News item pages default to be promoted to the home page of the website.
Choose the revision state from the Save as: drop-down menu.
Select Save.
Note: To change any of the above information, select the Edit tab of the page.
The next step in creating a News item is to configure the Layout of the page and add content. After selecting Save when creating a new News item, the Layout builder will automatically appear.
Always refer to the University of Waterloo Writing Style Guide and Brand guidelines for guidance on style, formatting and grammar.
Select revision state from the Change to: drop-down menu. It is a good practice to always check the revision state because it will default to the last state chosen.
From the Layout builder, configure the layout of the News item page by choosing sections (columns), types of content blocks, and adding the News item content in the content blocks. Please refer to What are Sections and What are Blocks for more information.
When the News item is ready to be published, select Published From the Change to: drop-down menu.
Select Save Layout.