Add a News Item

Learn how to add a news item to your website using news and alerts in the i:Create Content Management System (i:Create). Once you've added a news item, find out how to edit the content. Follow this same process to create alert banners.

To add a news item to your website:

  1. Open news and alerts in i:Create (in some websites, this folder may be labeled as “News”)
  2. Navigate to the toolbar at the top of the files list and select “Add”
  3. Complete the necessary fields from the “Create New Page” pop-up box
  4. Click “Save changes”

A dialogue box will appear to ask you “Do you want to edit the new page?” Click “Edit the new page” if you would like to edit the news or alert item. Select “Cancel” to return to the news or alerts item later.

Video training: Creating News articles and Alert Banners

Create new page details

When adding a news or alert item, you need to complete the following fillable fields. Many of these fields have automatic verification tools, which will warn you if you are attempting to enter a value that already exists within your website structure, such as a repeated file name or page title. If you receive a warning, edit the flagged field until i:Create accepts the new value.

Select the vertical that will contain your new file. By default, this will be set as “News.”

Select a template. Make sure you select a news or alert template. If you select a non-news template, the news options will not be available. Select the “Alert” template if you are creating an alert banner.

Assign your news item to a workflow by selecting it from the dropdown. Note that if
your website does not have workflows set up, this field will not appear. Learn how to set up a workflow for your website.

Enter a name for the news item. The name will be the default headline for your news item, so consider carefully.

Select the category or categories for the news item. This determines if the page will be a news or alert item and specifies what social media feeds the item will send to.

Check this box to feature the news item. If you add a news feed to a page in your website, this will force the news item to appear at the top of the feed. You can also set an expiry date, after which the feature status will cancel automatically.

This field will allow you to select an image from your website resources. This image will appear on Facebook timelines if a member of the public shares your web page. The optimum size for this image is 1200 x 630, the minimum size is 600 x 315. If you do not select an image, your web page will use the default image for your website, which is usually a generic logo or similar graphic. Learn how to upload an image to your website.

Enter the file name, if necessary. In most cases, this will auto-fill from the Page Name. It can contain only letters (case is not relevant), numbers, dashes and underscores. Because of these limitations, you may see some slight differences from the Page Name.

This will allow you to add custom tags created in the Page Tagging module to your news item. This should help members of the public find relevant news articles more easily.

This is a page description meta-tag. It has a 254-character limit. The description should be a brief explanation of the content found in the news item. The page description will appear in search engine results.

This area allows you to add meta data keywords to your news item to help search engines find your content.

This memo area gives you a space to keep notes on the web page. These notes are for internal use only and will not be visible to the public.

Publishing options

There are a few options to publish a page to make sure your messages reach your website visitors at the most appropriate times. News and alerts also gives the option to send email notifications to your subscribers so visitors can stay up-to-date.