News

A “News” page/section is a blog, where you can post articles for other to read. You can classify your articles in 'groups', and optionally allow your site's users and visitors to leave comments.
You use the News Editor to create, edit, delete and manage your postings, and the comments your users and visitors have left.
The News Editor has 3 main buttons - “Add Post”, “Add Group” and “Settings” - as well as 2 sub-section - “Modify/Delete Post” and “Modify/Delete Group”.

typical news article

a typical news page, listing articles the visitor can click on to read in detail

Add Post Button

Click this button to add a new article to the blog. Having clicked the button, your options will be:

  • Title: the headline of the article.
  • Group: if you have defined groups to categorise your articles, select to which group this article belongs – see “Add Group Button” below.
  • Commenting: if “Disabled”, users and visitors are not allowed to leave comments about this article. Select “Private” to allow only registered users to leave comments, or “Public” to also allow comments from anonymous site visitors. Visitor comments can be moderated (edited and deleted) – see the “Modify/Delete Post” section below.
  • Active: if “Yes”, then the article is listed and appears in the news page. If “No”, then the article is not included in the list – useful for removing an article from the news page without having to delete it.
  • Short: a 'lead-in' or 'teaser' for your article – a couple of lines of text that should entice the reader to read more.
  • Long: your actual article.
  • Save/Cancel Buttons: after entering all information as needed, click “Save” to save the article, or “Cancel” to return to the News Editor without saving your changes. 
If you use a WYSIWYG Editor, then you will be able to format the “Short” and “Long” fields, using lists, tables and images, to enhance the presentation of your articles. WB ships with only one editor, but you can visit the Add-Ons Repository for alternatives. 

Add Group Button

“Groups” are categories that you can use to classify your news articles. You can associate a picture with a group, and the group picture may be displayed in all articles belonging to that group. You can also 'deactivate' – ie., hide – a group, thereby hiding all articles that belong to that group from the article list.          

Click the “Add Group” button to create a new group. This will give you the following options:

  • Title: the name of the group/category.
  • Image: an optional image, from your hard drive, to be associated with the group – click the “Browse...” button to select it. Please note, that the group image may be resized, depending on your settings – see the “Resize Image To” option in the “Settings Button” section below.
  • Active: if “Yes”, then the articles belonging to this group will be listed and will appear in the news page. If “No”, then the articles are not included in the list – useful for removing a group of articles from the news page without having to delete them.
  • Save/Cancel Buttons: after entering all information as needed, click “Save” to save the article, or “Cancel” to return to the News Editor without saving your changes.  

Settings Button

Clicking this button takes you to the “Settings” page of your blog, where you can specify several preferences that control the way your blog functions, as well as its layout structure.

The fields that control the layout structure of your blog use a mixture of html, css and WB markup code are shown below:

  • Header, Post Loop & Footer: together, they build the main article list
  • Post Header & Post Footer: used in the article page, respective before and after the article's content
  • Comments Header, Comments Loop & Comments Footer: together, they build the comments list that may appear after the article, in the article page – when users/visitors have left comments.
  • Comments Page: a heading for the comment submission page – the page users/visitors are taken to, when they click the “Add Comment” link below an article.
If you know html and css, after studying the default content of these layout structure fields, you should be able to change them, if needed, to achieve a totally different structure and look for your news section or page.

Other options and preferences available here are:

  • Posts Per Page: if “Unlimited” is selected, all your articles – regardless how many you may have – will be listed in one, single, long list. You may, if needed, select a maximum number of articles per page here, and WB will automatically divide and paginate the list for you.
  • Commenting: select here the default comment setting for all new articles. Options are:
    • Disabled: comments are not allowed.
    • Private: the “Add Comment” link is only displayed once a user has logged in – only registered users will be allowed to leave comments. 
    • Public: the “Add Comment” link is always displayed, and everyone – including anonymous visitors – will be allowed to leave comments.
      Changing this setting only affects future articles – it will not change the Commenting setting in existing articles!
  • Captcha Verification: if “Enabled”, the comment page will contain a captcha field, useful in preventing non-human visitors – such as spammers' automated bots - from spamming your blog.
    captcha verification
    a typical captcha verification field
     
  • Resize Image To: you can use this setting to specify a maximum size for images for article groups. If set to anything other than “None”, the image will be scaled down, if needed, to fit within the selected square size – specified in pixels.
    Changing this setting here only affects future images that you select for groups – it will not rezise existing images!
  • Save/Cancel Buttons: after entering all information as needed, click “Save” to save the new settings, or click “Cancel” - to return to the News Editor without saving your changes. 
To resize existing group images:
1) select here the new image size you wish the group to have
2) delete the image from the group
3) re-import the image for the group, and save.

Modify/Delete Post

Use the list in this section manage existing news articles, and the comments attached to an article.To reorder the articles, use their “up” and “down” icons. To delete an article, click on its “delete” icon.

 

respectively, the “up”, “down” and “delete” icons

To edit an existing article, or to manage user/visitor comments about an article, click on the article's title, or on its “Modify” icon – you will then enter the article editing page.
the article title is displayed next to the Modify icon

The controls for editing the article are exactly the same as those used for creating it – see Admin->Pages->Modify Page->News->Add Post.
At the very bottom of the article editing page, you will see a sub-section title “Modify/Delete Comment”. This contains a list of comments left by visitors. You can click on a comment title to view it, or click on its “delete” icon to delete it.  

Modify/Delete Group

Use the list in this section manage article groups. To reorder the groups, use their “up” and “down” icons. To delete group, click on its “delete” icon. 

 

respectively, the “up”, “down” and “delete” icons

To edit an existing group, click on its title, or on its “Modify” icon – you will then enter the group editing page.

edit group icon
The article title is displayed next to the Modify title

The controls for editing the group are almost the same as those used for creating it – see Admin->Pages->Modify Page->News->Add Group. The main difference being, that if the group already has an image assigned to it, you will be able to view it, delete it, and reassign a new one, if needed.

editing control icon
choosing whether to view or delete an existing group image