News itemsIn practice almost all news comes in the form of emails, and these will come in to news@portalname.com. The news item is added to the news database from the control area. If a picture is available, a picture can be uploaded as part of this process.
Listing formatsThe home page can include a list of the most recent news items. This will generally be the first part of each headline (say the first 50 characters) with a link to the full story. The news can also be listed, most recent first with pagination every (say) 10 items. It can also be searched from the home page by keyword. In both cases, result is a listing of the headlines with a link to the full story.  Press releases from companies on the guide When a news item is added, the support person can identify a company on the database as the company originating the story. This allows us to offer the following as a (possibly) chargeable extra to such companies: - A listing of news stories in their guide entry. These are valuable because major sales and product announcements add credibility to their offering.
- Links from the home page or search go to a news item page that is part of the companies guide entry rather than a generic news entry. This means that there are links to other information about the company and its products. If a logo has been uploaded the page will be branded with the company's logo.
Archiving news There is no news archive as such; news is presented most recent first, so older items naturally go to the end of any listing. At some point, technical staff can remove very old items.  NewsletterA newsletter can be created at any time from the last few days of press releases. The newsletter can be edited before it is sent - see picture. When it is sent the members who have asked to receive the newsletter will get the list of new items with the headline, a link to the full story and the first few characters of the story. |
