User Manual

Creating News Item

To create news entry, click on the "News" tab and select "Create News Item" link available at the top.

This leads you to the entry creation page.

There are two parts of news item: title and body.

Normally title is a short description of news and it is mandatory. Try to use a descriptive title and avoid titles which do not tell anything in itself. For example, instead of "Important Info" use "System will be down this Friday".

Body text is a detailed description of your news item. In some cases it may be skipped completely (e.g. if you don't want to give explanation why the system will be down this Friday) but usually you want to enter more information here. Body text may be formatted using various control buttons available above.

Press "Save" button to save news item as a draft. Draft items are not shown to your users. You may edit or publish this item later.

Press "Save&Publish" button to save news item and immediately publish it. It is still possible to edit published items later.

If you do not want to save news item, press "Cancel" button or click any tab on the top of the page.

Modifying News Item

To modify news item, select "News" tab on the top of the page. All saved news items are listed.

It is possible to modify all types of news items: drafts, publishted items and hidden items.

You should modify published news items carefully because of 2 reasons. First, all modifications are immediately visible to your users when you save them. Second, it might be incorrect to change information user has already seen. Apart from correction of typos, you should make your changes clearly visible to your users. Add the word "updated" to the title (e.g. "System will be down this Friday (updated)"). Try to leave existing body text intact and add additional paragraph starting "Updated (21/12/2008): ...".

To proceed to the modification page, click the title of the news item or "Edit" link on the right side.

Modification page varies depending on the status of the news item. If news item is still a draft, you get additional part to schedule publishing and additional button "Save&Publish". For published and hidden items these parts are not available.

Press "Save" button to save news item.

If you are modifying a draft news item, press "Save&Publish" button to save news item and immediately publish it. It is still possible to edit published items later.

If you do not want to save news item, press "Cancel" button or click any tab on the top of the page.

Drafts, Published and Hidden Items

Each news item in NewsInjector has one of the following states:

  • draft
  • published item
  • hidden item

Drafts are not visible to your users. They are a work-in-progress. You may:

  • Edit and save them as many times as necessary.
  • Publish them at any time by pressing "Publish" link when you view the listing of news items or by pressing "Save&Publish" button when you modify a draft.
  • Schedule draft items to be published at the specific date.
  • Delete them without being published at all.

Published items are visible to your users. You may modify them, change display order or hide them.

Hidden items are old news items which are no longer relevant to your users. Before deleting news items permanently, you must hide them. This is a precaution so news items are not deleted accidentally. If required, hidden items may be shown again by pressing "Show" link when you view the listing of news items.

Common news item workflow is following: Draft is created and edited until it is ready to be seen by users. It is published manually or scheduled for a specific date. New published item is visible to the user as the very first item and slowly moves down when new items are published. Old news items which are no longer relevant are hidden. When editor is sure that the old hidden item is not useful anymore, he/she removes item permanently.