What will I learn to do?
A news item will look like this when you’re done.
For an online magazine, there may be times when you want to produce a very short, simple article. In SPIP, this is called a news item.
News items can be posted quickly and prominently, to give your audience the latest news.
In this lesson, you will learn how to create and edit a news item. You will also learn how to use the optional field for a special link to a web site or another article on your SPIP site.
Some sites are not designed by the webmaster to use news items. An administrator can decide to disable news items, and they will not be visible as an option.
What’s different in working with a news item?
Working with news items is much the same as working with regular articles.
However, there are a few important differences you should know:
There are fewer fields to complete: title, section, and the text.
News items can only be attached to sections at the top level of the site – not to subsections.
You can attach an image to a news item – but you cannot attach other types of files such as documents or sound.
A news item does not have an author.
When you create a news item, you will see an optional field to add a special, prominent link to other sites or articles.
Why would I publish a news item instead of an article?
Many of the articles in an online magazine will take several days to go through the process of writing, editing, commenting and publishing. But in some cases, you will want to quickly produce and publish short articles, especially for breaking news.
You also might use short items to alert your audience to news on other sites.
The format of the hyperlink to other sites or articles is also particularly useful if your site features a review of some online coverage, or for a follow-up of ongoing events: you can link your news items to a previous article that you are updating.
First, watch the steps
You are logged in and you are at the Launch pad:
Click on “Write a new news item”
A news item page loads:
Type the title
Choose the section for the news item on the drop-down menu
Remember that a news item can only go in a main section, not a sub-section.
Type or copy-and-paste the text of the news item
Click “Save”
When a news item is saved, its status is automatically “Submitted”. Return to Launch pad, and you’ll see the news item.
Create a news item
How do I edit or delete a news item?
You can edit a news item just as you would an article. Go to the article page and click “Modify this news item”.
Once a news item is submitted for validation, it cannot be deleted by the editor who wrote it.
However, if there is a serious problem, you could modify the news item and manually delete all the text of the item.
