The Newsfeed tool lets you share long-form updates and communications with your community members. When you add the tool, you add your first article and can continue adding more as necessary. The articles are listed in the tool tab on the project page; for email communications, please use the Newsletter function.
Add a Newsfeed to Your Project
To add the Newsfeed tool to your project:
Go to your project page and select Add a tool.
From the Tools list, select News feed; you'll find it under the All or Mixed environment tabs.
Add a title and select Create. The title you add here is the title of your news article.
Use the text editor in the Details tab to write the body content of the article, including any videos, links, or images.
Check the Truncate description box to show only part of the article's content on the project page. Participants can select Continue reading to view the full text.
Click to upload a supporting image, if desired, to appear as a thumbnail next to the content. The supporting image should be 200 px x 150 px for the best resolution.
Switch to the Settings tab to change the tool’s settings.
Save when you're finished.
You can change the tool name by selecting the pen icon next to the tool in the tool tab. You can also Edit the Details and Settings or Preview your article. Select Preview on the project page to see all news articles in the tool tab.
Your tool will be in Draft until you use the drop-down to Publish them. You can also use the Schedule button to schedule when you want to publish the article.
Select Add an article in the tool tab to add more news articles. You can drag and drop the articles to reorder them in the list.
After publishing, you can use the same drop-down menu to Unpublish or Archive it. Once you Archive it, participants can still view the article but cannot submit comments. You can only Delete a news article if no one has commented; the number of Entries indicates comments.
News Article Settings
The settings you choose here are only applicable to the current news article; for each article, you can choose:
Allow unverified participation: Enable this setting to allow unregistered participants to engage with an email and screen name.
Allow comments: Allow participants to comment on news articles you post. If this is disallowed, participants can still read the article, just not post any comments. Admins can see how many comments an article has in the back-end.
Show published date: Enable this to show the date the news article was published. You can also use the custom date field to decide what publish date to show.
Categories: Tag your articles with news categories for participants to filter your article list. If you use the News Categories widget, the categories will automatically be listed in the widget.
Title Link: Use this field to add a link to another project page or an external webpage. When participants select the article's title, they will be taken to the linked page.
Permalink: Select Edit to change the article’s permalink. By default, this will be the title of the article.
