Creating and Scheduling Stories

Use the Add New Article screen to write a new story. You can access this by clicking New Story on the Administration block, which shows up whenever you're logged into your site as an administrator. You can also visit the Administration menu, where you'll find a New Story icon.

Start by providing a title. Be descriptive; titles like "Hey, this is cool" don't really draw readers in. Think newspaper headlines: "Thousands Cheer for New Apple Pie Recipe" or something really catchy.

Next, select the topic and then a category. You can think of categories as sort of subtopics; to add, edit, or delete a category, just click the appropriate links to the right of the Category drop-down list. Categories aren't related to a single topic; all of the topics on your site share the same categories.

Let's say you have the following topics: Desserts, Entrees, Appetizers, and Sides. Now suppose you create the following categories: News, Recipes, Meal Plans, Tips, and the default, Articles. Now suppose you post a new apple pie recipe: That's in the Desserts topic, in the Recipes category. What about a news article on new heirloom apples? News topic, Articles category. Not every topic-category combination will make sense (Entrée News?), but you don't have to use them.

When readers view an article, they'll be able to cross-link to a list of other articles in the same category or topic, so categories and topics really just provide a way of organizing articles according to two separate lists. That way, readers can quickly get a list of Recipes, or read everything you've written about Entrees.

Your next option is whether this story will appear in the home page (assuming you've set up the News module, or a copy of it, to be in the home page). You can also choose to activate or deactivate comments for the story, although for comments to be active, the sitewide preference must also be enabled.

For Story Text, enter a short lead-in paragraph, which appears under the story's headline. The Extended Text box should contain the remainder of your story. Finally, you have the option to program the story, meaning you can keep it in reserve and have it automatically appear on a specified date at a specified time. When you're all done, you can preview your story to see what it will look like, and then go ahead and post it for all to see.