Entering New Content into the CMS

Entering New Content

In this tutorial, you will learn how to post new content to the web site. Let’s begin with an example where you want to post a link to a news article. For this example, you will be entering a link to an article that appeared in the Nov 2, 2008 San Jose Mercury News:

Article URL:

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_10883172?source=most_emailed

To being, log in to the CMS and click on the publish tab. This will bring up blank document entry form.

First, you need to enter a Title and Summary for the new entry. For this example, I will just use the title of linked article for the Title, and part of its article text for the summary:

In addition to a title and summary, you may want to add a small image, or “thumbnail”, to display next to the tile. In order to do this, you first need to create a small image and upload it to the site. The easiest way to do this is by using a screen capture program such as FastStone Capture. Capture the area of the screen you want, size it to be no larger than 100x100 pixels, and then save it to your local hard drive. You should name your image in a way that includes part of the entry title and the current date. In this example, I named my file: “historic_day_110208.gif”

Once you have created and saved the image to your local hard disk, you can then upload it to the CMS by clicking on the “Upload File” link, which is under the submit button. This will bring up a form where you enter the file you want upload and specify the directory where you would like it to go. You should choose “Resources” as the directory:

Clicking on the upload button will transfer the image to the server. Once the file is uploaded, a form will be displayed which will ask where you would like the image placed in your document. You should choose “URL Only” and select “Thumbnail image,” then click “Place Image and Close Window.”

Once you have uploaded the image and placed it, the image file name will be listed in the “Thumbnail Image” field on the document entry form:

Choosing the Correct Content Categories

When you post an entry to the site, its Category will determine where the content is displayed. We want this entry to appear under “Community News,” so we select this from the “Categories” tab.

You also need to enter the Site Area for your entry. This defines in what section of the site the full entry will be displayed when you click on it. For example, you might want an entry to be listed on the home page, but when it is clicked on, have it open up in the Resources area of the site. In this case, we want the article to be displayed in the News area, so we select this:

When you post a new entry to the site, its Status will be set to “Draft.” You can view your entry in the Preview area of the site, but it will not yet be available on the public site.

Once you have viewed your new entry and have verified that it has been entered correctly, you can click on the “Edit” link to edit the document, go to the Options > Status area, and set the Status to “Open.”

When you save your changes by clicking on the “Update” button, your entry will then be viewable on the public site. For this example, it will now appear in the Global Liberation News section of the site:

Publication Dates

When you add a new document into the CMS, it will automatically set the publication date field to the current date. Most of content areas on the site are sorted by date, so this means that your new entry will appear at the top of the list. If you want your entry to appear further down the list, or if you are entering an entry for an older date, then you should set the publication date field appropriately:

Note that you also have an option of setting an expiration date for your entry, after which it will no longer be displayed.