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Jquery code on a computer screen

News Article

Create

  1. Log in to Sitefinity
  2. Select Content > News
  3. Click the Create a news item button
  4. Enter the appropriate information into each field (see below)
  5. Click the Save as Draft button to save your progress
  6. To allow others to proof the article, click the blue Preview link at the top (center); copy and send that URL for others.
  7. When you are ready to make the article live, click the three dots icon and select Publish and Sync to make the article live immediately. Note: Published articles are automatically synced to www every hour, so only publish articles that are ready to be live.

Fields

  • Title - used for the title of the news article; appears in the hero image; used as the basis of the URL when originally entered
  • Content - content of the news article
    • When creating or copying content, be sure to use the Sitefinity "Page or content" linking to link to other pages or news articles on the site rather than just using a URL. This will tie the link to the internal tracking so if the page moves, gets renamed, etc., the link will automatically update.
    • There is no need to link the www.cedarville.edu at the end of the news article.
  • Summary - summary of the news article; used on featured news and news cards
  • Categories - used to associated news article with academic programs, departments, etc.
    • Clicking Show all categories with present a searchable tree list for selecting items; the Departments and Programs lists would be the most used ones.
  • Tags - used to mark the article as a homepage feature or promo
    • Tag with Homepage Feature to show on the homepage
    • Tag with Promo to promote on other pages (e.g. academic programs)
  • Author -
  • URL - adjust if necessary
  • Social media fields - adjust if necessary
  • Article Image - the normal "H" image; click the + icon to select and/or upload (see Image section below)
    • 1920x515
    • This is used for the article hero, featured news views, and the social share image
  • Article Image Cropped - the normal "C" image; click the + icon to select and/or upload (see Image section below)
    • 938x528
    • This is used for news cards
  • Article Date - the date of the article
    • The year from the article date is used in the URL path
  • Old Url - old Sitecore paths; ignore for new articles

Homepage/Spotlight

  • Use tags to promote individual articles to the homepage or spotlight items
  • To later "unfeature", create a new version without that tag and set it for a future publish date when you want to unpromote/unfeature the article

Add Widgets

Image:

  • NOTE: Make sure the image is of the proper dimensions and appropriate filename and file size (< 150K) before uploading to Sitefinity
  • Click the image icon in the Rich Text Editor (RTE)
  • Click the Upload an image from your computer button or drag an image over the grey drop icon
  • Select your image and click the Open button
  • Click the pencil for Store uploaded image to
  • Type in the article year (e.g. 2020) and select the resulting folder (should say "Under Campus News > News")
    • Be sure to put the image in the proper year to help keep the image library organized.
  • Enter alt text that describes the image. Do not skip this step.
  • Click the Use this image button

Pull Quote: 

[ PQ]pull quote content --author name[/PQ]
(note: remove space before PQ if copying from this example)

Optional parameters (coming soon):

  • AuthorAlign - Set to right or left. Defaults to right.
  • QuoteText - Set to upper or mixed. Defaults to upper.

Ensemble Video:

[ ENSEMBLE videoid=""]
(note: remove space before ENSEMBLE if copying from this example)

  • videoid is the short ID found in the blue info icon in Ensemble.

Optional parameters:

  • ShowTitle - If true, shows the video title as set in Ensemble. Defaults to false.
  • ShowDescription  - If true, shows the video description as set in Ensemble. Defaults to false. 
  • DescriptionAboveVideo - If true (and ShowDescription is true), shows the Ensemble video description above the video; if false, shows it below the video. Defaults to true.
  • ThumbnailWidth - Width of the thumbnail image. Defaults to 350.

YouTube (coming soon):

[ YOUTUBE videoid=""]
(note: remove space before YOUTUBE if copying from this example)

  • videoid is the YouTube video ID

Troubleshooting

Database Error when trying to save

This often happens when the Summary field has too much text in it, likely from just duplicating whatever was entered into the Content field. Set the Summary text to something of a more reasonable length and try saving again.

Drop a Content > News card widget on another page

  • Drop in a Section as it uses the 4 column with equal-height classes
  • Change the List Template to “News Card List”
  • Use filtering to select them by category, or manually select if you need to.
  • If filtering, you’ll probably want to limit them