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Setting up a News page

Configure properties, load an HTML News page into CourseMill, and set the News URL.

Global administrators can set the News side-tab to display to their users. This allows users to open a News page to view information about announcements and upcoming events.

Set up the News page

  1. Make sure your users see the News page by configuring the HideNews property. Set this property to No. You can optionally force users to land on the News page when they log in. To do so, set the property ForceNews to Yes and the property LandingPage to News. For details about configuring properties, see Viewing and editing system properties.
  2. Create an HTML News page. Use an authoring tool such as Lectora and publish to HTML.
  3. Load your News page into CourseMill:
    1. Create a new course, for example Layout1.
    2. Make this course inactive.
    3. Load your HTML file into the course using Add Content Item. If you are loading several files, make sure you have them zipped up into one file. When loading the file, be sure to check Unpack Zip File. For details about adding content, see Adding a content item.
    4. Click the icon to see how your HTML page displays.
    5. Determine the URL this course/content will use. This URL is a bit complicated and can be created by concatenating the following values:
      1. Course HTTP Dir – This can be found by going to Course, clicking View/Edit Details, and opening the Details tab. This field is part 1 of the URL you will need. It will look something like this: http://<your site>/courses/<xxx>/course/Layout1
      2. Web address of the course content – This can be found by going to Course, clicking Content, and opening the Content Item Details (yellow pencil icon). This field is part 2 of the URL you will need. It can look something like this: sca/Layout1/
      3. The launch file name for the starting HTML page. It may be something like index.html.
      The end result of this concatenation will look something like this: http://<your site>/shared/<xxx>/course/Layout1/sca/Layout1/index.html
  4. Decide whether this News page is for a specific organization or a general News page for all organizations:
    • If it is a general News page for all organizations, go to Admin Tasks > Manage Properties and search for the property news. Change the managed property NewsURL to the URL you just created in step 3e. The value in the NewsURL field is the default used on any organization that contains a blank News URL in the organization record.
    • If it is a News page for a specific organization, go to Manage Orgs > Community tab and key in the URL of your specific News page in the News URL field. If you key in a URL here, the students in your organization will see this URL as their News page instead of the default set up in the managed property.

Tip: To test your News page, it is always a good idea to clear your cache and log in as a student to see the News page.

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