News

Adding / editing a news story

  1. From the LiveWhale interface, click the Stories tab.
  2. Click Add a New Story to add a new story item or locate and click the news story to edit
  3. Fill out the form with the relevant information for your news story. A headline, summary, and story date are required. See configuration options below.
  4. Click the Save this story button when you are finished

Attaching an image to a news story

  1. From the LiveWhale interface, click the “News” tab.
  2. Locate and click the news story to edit.
  3. Under the section labeled “Images” you may attach images to this news story. Images are taken from your group’s image library.
  4. Choose an existing image from your image library, by clicking “Select from your image library”. This will open an interface allowing you to search for and select images to attach to this news story. Enter your search terms in the text field labeled “Find images by keyword” and the resulting images will display. You may restrict results by date using the drop-down menu.
  5. Images shared from other groups will be labeled with a globe icon. If you want to filter out images shared from other groups, uncheck the box labeled “Include shared images”.
  6. Select or deselect images by clicking on them in this list. Selected images will appear in the box on the right side where you may enter an optional caption. When done, click “Done making changes”.
  7. If you want to upload a new image to attach to this news story, click “Add images from your computer”. Select the images you wish to upload. When they have finished uploading, you will have the opportunity to enter a title and keywords for each image. When done, click “Add images to library”. Newly uploaded images will be added to the image library and attached to this news story.
  8. If you want to attach an existing gallery to this story, click “Use an existing gallery”. Enter your search terms in the text field labeled “Find galleries by keyword” and the resulting galleries will display. Click on the gallery you wish to use and select “Select this gallery”.

Note: Once an image has been attached, you can customize the thumbnail that will be used by this story. To do so, navigate to the image that you wish to create the thumbnail from, then click the “Use this image for this story’s thumbnail” button. Select the portion of the image you want to generate the thumbnail from and click “Use This Thumbnail”.

Restoring an earlier revision of a news story

  1. From the LiveWhale interface, click the Stories tab.
  2. Find the news story to edit and click it.
  3. Find and click the link labeled Restore an earlier version above the status menu near the upper corner of your screen. \
  4. Choose the revision you want to restore by selecting its date and time from the drop-down menu labeled Choose a revision… then click the Load revision button.
  5. The content from the chosen revision will be loaded into the fields on this page.
  6. Click the Save this story button to save your changes.

Deleting a news story

You can delete a news story from the back-end news listing:

  1. From the LiveWhale interface, click the “News” tab.
  2. Find the story (or stories) to delete in the list and check the box next to it.
  3. Choose “Delete” from the drop-down menu, and click “Go”.

Or you may delete the item from the news edit screen:

  1. From the news manager, find the story to delete and click it.
  2. Click the “Delete” link on the right side of the screen.
  3. You will be prompted to confirm this action.

Note: Deleted news stories will remain in the trash where they can be easily restored (up to one year, depending on your configuration).

Managing archived news

Archived news are stories that are no longer current and should only be accessible through a past news archive on your web site.

  1. From the LiveWhale interface, click the “News” tab.
  2. Click the “Archive” link beneath the tab bar.
  3. The manage archived news screen will list all archived news in your group. It contains many of the same management features as the manage news page.
  4. Use checkboxes to select archived stories and use drop-down menu to perform bulk actions. Actions include: delete, remove tags, remove balloons, move to archive, add star, remove star, share, unshare, set status, and add tag.
  5. Click on the Status drop-down to update the status of an archived story by selecting Live or Hidden
  6. Click the preview link to view the archived story
  7. A list of tags will appear beside the title. Clicking a tag will tell the archive manager to only show stories with that tag.

You can show related content using the related_to argument in your widget template.

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<widget type="news">
<arg id="header">Related News</arg>
<arg id="related_to">true</arg>
<arg id="max">2</arg>
</widget>

Prior to LiveWhale 1.6.1, the related_to argument would fall back on items with the same tag if no “Related content” items were specified in the editor. Since then, we’ve removed that functionality as it was pulling in confusingly unrelated stories. Instead, if you want to search for related news yourself you can use:

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<widget type="news">
<arg id="header">Related News</arg>
<arg id="search"><xphp var="details_tags_clean"/></arg>
<arg id="max">2</arg>
</widget>

Importing news from a feed

News imported from a feed is copied into your group and behaves like any other news story in the system.

  1. From the LiveWhale interface, click the News tab.
  2. Click the Import From Feed link beneath the tab bar.
  3. To list news in a feed, enter the feed url in the text field labeled Enter a feed url and click the Go button.
  4. If feeds have been recently entered, they will appear in a box labeled Recent Feeds which can be clicked on for a shortcut to list news from that feed.
  5. If a valid feed is entered, the feed’s contents will be listed with their linked headline, date, and summary.
  6. Check off the news items you wish to import. Select Link to stories from the With checked items… drop-down menu and then click the Go button.
  7. The stories you selected will be imported. Use the select all link to select all items in the list.

Configuration Options

Option Description
Headline Required: Enter a headline
Star If this content is especially important you can flag it as important, click the star in the section labeled “Star content” in order to highlight it.
Share Content By default this content will be shareable. Click the globe labeled “Share content” to un-highlight it to make the content not shared.
Status Scroll back up and find the status menu at the top righthand corner of the screen. Choose the status for this event. “Live” will publish the event immediately. “Hidden” will hide it from the web site until you are ready to publish it.
Archive Flag a story as archived or give it an expiration date. If the story is not archived, select “not archived”. If it should be placed in the archive, select “archived”. Specify an expiration date to be archived automatically by selecting “set to expire on…” and choose an expiration date and time.
Restore from earlier version If you are editing an existing story, you will also see a “Restore from earlier version” link above the status menu. Clicking this will allow you to select an earlier revision of the news story, by date, and restore the content from that revision.
Summary Required: enter a brief summary describing the story. This will also appear in the meta description tag when viewing a news story’s details.
Story Body Enter your full body article into this section.
Plot this story on a map If your story has a location, you may plot it on a map. If your LiveWhale installation already has preset locations, you may begin typing into the space provided and locations will be suggested to you. If you cannot find an appropriate location, you may click “add a new Place”. When adding a new place, you must provide a title and address.
Suggest this story… Suggest this content to other groups by selecting those groups under the section called “Suggest this item to the following groups”.
Tags Tags help sort and classify news so that it can be directed to the proper location on your web site. You can click in the field labeled “Tag this story” and type a keyword; tags will be suggested to you. If you are unsure what tags are available in your group, click “Show all tags” to display them all and select the relevant ones.
Story date Required: Under the section labeled “Story date”, enter the date of the news story. By default, the date is auto-populated with the current date.
Images Attach images to your news story. Images are taken from your group’s image library. To choose an existing image from your image library, click “Select from your image library”. If you want to upload a new image to attach to this news story, click “Add images from your computer”. Newly uploaded images will be added to the image library and attached to this news story. Alternatively, you may attach an existing gallery to this story by clicking “Use an existing gallery”.
Related content Under the section labeled “Related content”, use the search box provided to attach any relevant related content to this news story.
Contact Info Specify any relevant contact info for this news story. If default contact info is specified for your group, this info will be suggested by default. If you enter an e-mail address but do not make it a “mailto” link, this will be done automatically for you.