Anything you want it to be

Do you have any idea how powerful this news system really is? Of course you don't. If you did, you wouldn't be reading this, you'd be out there using it.

How about I give you some hints about using it?

Well, here are a few places that use it heavily. Catnews, my.morat.net, Back to the old skool, and Catnews

Prime Use. News

Let's look at the first, most obvious, use of the system. It lets you enter news, edit news, have multiple people submit news, gives the news a standard formatting, and maintins an archive of 'old news' for you. A decent example of this is the WoF clan news page.

You saw how to set that up in the main help system documentation, hopefully. (Read it, if not.)

Expanding to multiple topics.

Now, one of the things that isn't mentioned much is the ability for feeds to include multiple topics. As well as this being a good way to visually distinguish types of posts (maybe a clan news feed could announce new recruits with a consistent different title) but it also allows you to have personalised filters. Maybe you want to see all the CS and flf news, but (heresy!) don't want to hear about TFC. Perhaps the other way around? These options are open to you, along with many more. Go and personalise your my.morat.net for the ultimate example of this.

Let's expand a bit more. Some bits of news are too long to get included in a page with all the rest - they deserve a page of their own. And they need a permanent URL, so that other people can easily link to them and say 'read this' - this is what columns are for.

Columns - not just for ranting

You could put ANYTHING in a column. All it is, really, is a news topic, with a single author, and a static URL for every entry. Back to the old skool makes very heavy use of columns - all of their reviews are a column.

As if that wasn't enough - it is possible to make an automatic list of all the newest columns - each linked by their author, date, title or whatever you like. You can even have a precis view of the columns, with the first few paragraphs visible - like a search engine report.

(The template for that is NOWHERE in the documentation - and is as follows:

News - <#date format="D j M h:i:s Y">
<BR><#body limit="200">
<BR> - <#articleURLstart><#title><#articleURLend>

So now you know )

You simply add all the columns you want linked into a feed, and then give that feed a template that uses the <#articleURLstart> tag, and the options become almost limitless.

Putting a lot into a little

Here's another, simpler, example of an advanced use of the news system - Catnews has no fewer than six feeds on the main page - plus the editorials and tips have associated columns, and there are a couple of extra feeds on other pages.

Most of that stuff doens't need to be a feed - but it may as well be. It makes everything easier to edit, and you never need to upload any new html pages. Just click links and use the news system to add new features.

Big ass warning - nifty trick ahead

Php-programmers only:

Here's something else nifty that you won't find in the help docs - customised 'next' and 'prev' buttons - eventually the template will let you set them, but until then:

<!-- Archive php <?php
print ( " --" ); print (">\n");
$prevPageNumber = $__MORAT_newsFeedId[8] - 1;
$nextPageNumber = $__MORAT_newsFeedId[8] + 1;
if ( $prevPageNumber < 0 )
$prevPageNumber = 0;
if ( $prevPageNumber < 0 )
$prevPageNumber = 1;
if ( $__MORAT_newsFeedId[8] > 0 )
print ( "<CENTER>\n<A HREF=\"?__MORAT_newsFeedId[8]=$prevPageNumber\"><<<Younger News</A>\n" );
print ( "<A HREF=\"?__MORAT_newsFeedId[8]=$nextPageNumber\">Older News>>>></A>\n");
if ( $__MORAT_newsFeedId[8] > 0 )
print ( "</CENTER>\n" );
print ( "<" ); print ( "!-"); print ("- End news php " );
?> -->

The '8' is because that happens to be the number my main feed got - you will want a different number. The only problem with this is that it can't recognise the very last post. You could get around that by having the last page over-ride this code, and thus not run this code, but that's probably not worth the effort. Just make sure search engines know not to go past the (say) 50th page of the archives.

Ok, sorry - that probably went over most of your heads.

Summing up...

Basically the news system can be used ANYWHERE where you have a number of 'things' on your page, all alike.

It automatcially keeps track of the author, and the date - but there's nothing forcing you to display those.

You can put ANYTHING inside of a news post - including HTML. You can do a lot of nifty things with this (simplest example, you could have a news post which, when displayed, commented out another part of the page) but you do have to be careful, or you can break stuff.

And a pile of ideas

You can expose certain newsposts to the outside world, by putting them into appropriate topics (Announcements) or feeds (global clan news, my.morat.net)

You could have 'importance' levels of news - perhaps a 'most important' site announcement topic, which is included into ALL of your feeds, so it would appear everywhere on your site. (Announcements is good for this)

You can give out different levels of access (so some people get to edit stuff, others don't)

Members who are logged in should get to see 'more' news in some sense. So you can have two topics 'normal' and 'members' - and then two feeds 'normal' which only has the normal topic in, and 'all' which has both - that way the members don't have to loko at both pages.

How about an 'admins only' topic - it doesn't get put into a feed at all, and is only visible if you go to 'edit your news articles' in the news system - this way you can let the people who edit your site know things that the riff raff don't want to be bothered with, without having to set up a passworded area yourself.

Get to it!

Woah, this got long, didn't it - I blame the code samples. The MORAT news system may seem a little daunting at first, but when you understand what it is (articles go into topics, topics go into feeds, feeds go onto webpages by going through templates) then you'll soon realise that it has almost limitless possibility.

Good luck, and I'll award a prize to the most innovative use of the news system. And no, a big organised list of links doesn't count. Jumppad already did that.