Create a News item
1. Navigate to the MX5 tab of the website administration. Rollover the MX5 tab on the left of the blue bar and click News in the pop-up window. The News Administration page will appear as shown below.
2. Click on Add. A new popup windows will open as shown below.
This page is used to define the General Details of the news item
Title is the name that will be displayed in the list of news stories. Use "Title Case" and not "Sentence case" and especially not "ALL CAPS" (that's shouting). This field is compulsory and is limited to 50 characters.
Source is the name of the author of the article, and the name of the photographer. eg. "Report by Joe Bloggs and Photos by Mary Bloggs". Enter these details here and not in the Body Content section.
Content Template defines how this new items will be shown. Leave the default setting of "2 Columns (Secondary Nav on Left)". Changing this setting will cause an error when the news story is displayed on the website. The error is fixed by changing the setting back to the default.
News Category controls where the new news item will be displayed across the web site. For a report on a Chapter run, check the name of the Chapter in the News Category. For a general news item about the MX-5, check "MX-5" in the News Category. For news highlighting the release of the latest track day results, check "Motorsport" in the News Category. etc. Multiple categories can be selected by holding the control key while clicking each category name. Additional categories can be added by request to the Website Coordinator. This is a compulsory field and you cannot proceed to the next page without selecting a category.
Publish Date is the date from which this new item will appear on the site. Leave this with the current date and time, which is the default, so that the news item will appear immediately.
3. Click Next to continue to the News Body page
Teaser Image is selected either by choosing an image from the media library by clicking "Select", or by uploading from your computer to the website by clicking "Create". The teaser image is displayed in News Listings and at the top of the News Story. A teaser image is optional but it does make the News page look more appealing and is encouraged. For support on uploading images, click here.
Instead of a Teaser Image, you may display a video at the top of a News Story. Video URL is the address of the YouTube video. This is of the form http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVvvTPaCfNc (note that you need to remove the "s" from "https" in the YouTube link). Just paste it into the Video URL box and the YouTube video will appear at the top of the News item. If Images are also added, small preview icons of the images will be displayed below the video.
The Teaser Text is displayed in the Latest News pod on the Main Homepage and on each Chapter Homepage. This information is also used in the weekly email newsletter. The Teaser Text field is compulsory and should not be any more than one or two brief sentences designed to entice readers into finding out more (limited to 350 characters).
Body Content is where you add the main text of the news story. You can paste in content copied from plain text (eg from Notepad), or from a Word document, webpage or email. However, do not paste directly unless you absolutely want every bit of horrible code that comes with it! You need to click the "Paste as Plain Text" icon first, then paste (control-V). This will remove all the unnecessary html code that is attached to Word documents, webpages or emails. If you fail to do this, the page can become unstable and formatting will not work correctly.
The Media Library section allows you to use uploaded images and documents in the Body Content. You can create new items directly, or select it from the Image and Document Library. Once added, the related content will be available for use in the Body Content when you click on the "Insert/Edit Link" icon or the "Insert/Edit Image" icon. Please do not upload any more than six photos per news story. If you wish to share more photos, please upload to Flickr and include a link to the album at the end of the News item.
4. Once the story has been drafted, click the Complete button. Now click on Preview to make sure you're happy with the page. Once it's finished, click Publish and then Change Status.
