Whereas articles are used for informal news on your website, news releases are used for formal news releases that are submitted by your department.
How to Create a News Release
Go to My Workbench and select “Create Content.” Then, select the News Release content type.
1. Select the Editorial Section, which is typically your department's name so that it can appear on the homepage. If you want the release to appear on a certain page, type that page into the Page Reference field. View additional information about setting the correct Editorial Section and Page Reference.
Title (Initial Caps) & Short Title (required)
2. Add the title of the News Release in the Title field. This title, along with a summary of a release, will appear in any list view’s news items. A title should be in Initial Caps (not ALL CAPS).
If the title is too long, it will get cut off in the list view; therefore, add a shortened version of the title in the Short Title field to ensure that the title is not cut off.
Tag Line (required)
3. Add a short summary tagline into the Tagline field. A Tagline should be in a sentence structure - Capitalize the first letter of the first word and use subject, verb structure, ending the sentence with a period. The tagline should elaborate on the information provided in the title, and should be no more than 56 characters including spaces.
(Publish) Date and Unpublish Date (required)
4. Add the date of the news item’s publication/release to the Release Date field. All news items are organized by release date. An unpublish date is required. Best practice is to set this date for two years after the release date, unless the release content is in regard to an upcoming event. In that case, set the unpublish date for two months after the event. (Calendar events should be set to unpublish two months from the end of the event.)
5. News Releases can link to outside sources, such as PDFs, news articles on other department sites or even outside websites (where appropriate). This means that when the title of a release is viewed in a list with other news items, clicking on the title will take users to this other source rather than to the body of the news release.
If your news release should link to another source, put the URL of this source in the External News Link Field. If not, leave this field blank. If it links to a PDF or another page on the city website, remember to only include everything after the "/" in the URL. For example, if you want to link to "http://austintexas.gov/drupalhelp" you would put only "drupalhelp" in the link box.
6. If you have a specific contact for this News Release, enter this contact into the Contact field. This field auto-populates as you are typing in a name.
You are also able to add a phone number and email address. Only City of Austin emails are accepted. To provide a link to a city email address, you only need to type in the person's name. So, if linking to "firstname.lastname at austintexas.gov," you would type "firstnamelastname" in the email box. Don't forget to leave out the period between the two names!
7. If you would like an image to go with the news release, you can add it by clicking Choose File under Promo Image. This image will also be used as the teaser (the image that shows when a release is promoted to the home page or other section), and is required if you want to promote the release. You can also add the photo in the editor in the body text below. To learn more about how to add images in the editor, view how to add an image.
8. If your news release does not link to an external source, it will need body text. Enter this text into the Body section. Do not include the dateline or "###" from the bottom of your news release on the site. If copying and pasting content from an email tool like MailChimp, be sure to double check your hyperlinks. View more information about the body editor.
Scheduling Content for Automatic Publishing / Unpublishing
You can see an option titled “Scheduling Options” in the bar menu to the right. Clicking on this allows you to add a date and time for the release to publish and unpublish.
An unpublish date is required. Best practice is to set this date for two years after the release date, unless the release content is in regard to an upcoming event. In that case, set the unpublish date for two months after the event.
Saving & Moderating Content
Once you’ve completed your news release, click Save at the bottom. You will then be able to send it through workflow to be published on the site.