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      Create an Article Page
      • 12 Jan 2024
      • 9 Minutes to read
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      Contents

      Create an Article Page

      • Updated on 12 Jan 2024
      • 9 Minutes to read
      • Contributors
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      Article summary

      An article is a basic content type for publishing text interspersed with graphics and videos.

      To create a new article, log into your ViewLift TOOLS account. From the top main menu, click CONTENT. Under the Content section, click on ARTICLES from the secondary menu, and click on the + ADD ARTICLE key.

      This will bring up the following dialog box. To import articles using an RSS feed, click the RSS button, to manually create an article, click Create Article.

      Ingest articles via RSS

      You can import content from an RSS feed destination of any website, blog, or social media platform. If the RSS feed requires a username and password, you will need to remove the authentication in order to ingest it. 

      The XML parser in the CMS will read the file and parse the individual metadata objects in the XML into article objects. You can import articles into the CMS library once or on a recurring basis if the RSS feed is updated often.

      1. To add articles via RSS, from the Articles tab, click Add Article > RSS.
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      2. In the "Enter a RSS feed URL" field, add the absolute URL of the RSS feed you want to connect to. If you only want to import the content from the feed once, select "One Time" in the next drop-down menu. If you wish the ingest to be recurring, choose Recurring from that drop-down, and then choose the frequency of recurring ping in the "Enter Mins" field.
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      3. If you want the articles you import from an RSS feed to be added to the platform as drafts, leave the Auto Publish checkbox unchecked. If you want all RSS-ingested articles to be published immediately, select Auto Publish.

      Once you have set all of these feed values, click OK.

      Create an article manually

      To create an article manually on demand, when you get to the ADD ARTICLE step, click on the Create Article key.

      This opens up a blank article template page:

      Main

      FieldDescription
      HeadlineRemove the auto-generated numeric identifier. Editorialize this field using upper and lower case style rules.
      Permalink

      The PERMALINK should have the following guidelines:

      • no spaces or special characters, with the exception of underscore (_) or dash (-). We suggest dashes as a best practice.
      • all alpha characters should be lower-case
      • Best practices suggest that you remove the numeric identifier auto-generated by the creation of the article from this field.
      • No white spaces should exist before or after the permalink
      • a slash character (/) must always be the first character in a permalink
      • Provide an SEO-friendly permalink (URL for the article). Try and stick to around 59 characters.
      AuthorThe AUTHOR field is customer-facing as articles should get either proper name or staff attribution.
      Categories

      Categories are a way to organize and present your content in a higher-level, genre-centric way. You can use categories to drive what content surfaces in a carousel or a tray. You can also add a SEE ALL function at the end of a tray to bring a user to a generated landing page of all articles associated with that category. This requires a few settings on the tray level, after the category exists. To choose from an existing category, click inside the category box and left-click on the category you wish to add, once you have used your up/down arrows to highlight it in blue. 

      You can choose from existing, or add new categories to an article. There is no limit to how many categories you add. To add a new category, type the term into the category box and hit Enter.  

      To use a pre-existing category, click inside the category box, type the first letter, and choose from the option that appears in the drop-down. 

      To remove a category, click the x in the lower-left corner of that category term.

      Tags

      You can choose from existing, or add new tags to an article. There is no limit to how many tags you add. Think of these as subjective, drilled-down detail elements to help users find your articles with site search and organize your content. You can also use tags to drive what content surfaces in a tray or carousel. To choose from an existing tag, click inside the tag box and left-click on the tag you wish to add; once you have used your up/down arrows tighlight it in blue.

      To add a new tag, click inside the tag box, and start typing the name of your new tag. We suggest you use upper and lower case style rules for this. Once you finish typing the tag name, left-click on the text highlighted in blue. Now there is a new tag added to your article and added to the tag set of your platform.

      You can remove a tag by clicking the x in the lower-left corner of that tag.

      LeadCompose the first lead-in sentence for the article.
      DescriptionWrite a longer summary of the article.
      Content ModelAttach the subscription model for the article. 
      Published DateThe date on which the article was first published.
      Updated DateThe date on which the article was last updated.
      Archived DateArticle archived date (if applicable).

      Uploading images

      Upload images for your articles here. Once you publish an article, you can curate it on the desired trays in the Template Builder and publish the TB page. The images will then appear on those trays and in search results in the frontend.

      The minimum required image for any article is a 16:9 aspect radio and the suggested dimensions are 1920 pixels x 1080 pixels in size. But you can add a thumbnail of each aspect ratio (i.e. 16:9, 32:9, 1:1, etc.) from the respective image modules in the MANAGE IMAGES section. The images that you upload should be cut to the proper dimensions. The Viewlift TOOLS platform will not crop your images for you. This goes for image assets across the platform.

      Other image aspect ratios and their use cases:

      • 32:9 OTT: If you wish to use our 32:9 Carousel, each article must have a 32:9 image set within the Manage Images module.
      • 1:1 Square: If your service includes audio-only content (such as podcasts or music, for iOS/Android-only presentation), your audio-only content should have an image associated.

      More on imagery guidance:
      Asset Image Management and Specs

      BODY COPY

      The meat and potatoes of your article live inside the Body Copy module. Left-click on it to expand the section to display a WYSIWYG text editor. You can write and format text as you would in a word processor such as Microsoft Word. 

      From adding images, code snippets, Twitter cards, syntax highlights, custom fonts, photo galleries, and iframe, the editor can handle it all.

      Text tools and description

      Text tool icons (from left to right)Description
      Image file uploaderUpload one or more images at a time from your local directory, or you can paste images from your local clipboard. This means that you can copy images from the web or from your computer's hard drive and paste them into the text editor.
      Find and replace
      To find text in a text editor:
      1. Type the text you want to find in the "Find in text" field. 
      2. Click "Find".
      3. The editor will highlight the search result in the body copy.
      To find and replace text in a text editor:
      1. Type the text you want to find in the "Find in text" field. 
      2. Type the text you want to replace it with in the "Replace with..." field.
      3. Click "Replace" or "Replace all".
      Options
      • By default, the find operation searches for whole words. 
      • Use the "Match case" option to find/replace a word in a specific letter case.
      Select AllSelects all text and image objects displayed in the text editor.

      Bold      		Bolds the selected text.
      ItalicsItalicizes text to give particular emphasis to a word or phrase.
      Strikethrough textRenders text with a strikethrough, or a line through it.
      Underline textUnderlines the selected character/word/phrase.
      Angle brackets
      To enclose single-line code or markup, tags and other elements.
      Subscript and SuperscriptCreate subscript and superscript text. Click the Tx option to undo a subscript and superscript operation.
      IndentationControl the indentation of text. Use the right indent to move the text to the right side of the screen. Use the left indent to unident a selected block of content.
      Undo / RedoUndo or redo an action.
      Font sizeClick on the drop-down icon to view a predefined font size list. 
      Font typeChoose from a set of predefined fonts.
      Text backgroundChange the background color of the selected text.
      Text highlighterHighlights the selected text (slightly larger (perhaps by 0.5 pixel) than the Text background highlighter.
      Paragraph alignmentAlign paragraphs to left, right and center and justify.
      Insert linkAdd a hyperlink by highlighting a word/phrase and clicking the Link icon.
      Insert imageReference the image URL you want to add from the web.
      Insert commentPlaces a block of text in italics like a comment from someone and a vertical line on the left for effect.
      Insert videoPaste a video URL from the web. Embedding is not supported.
      Insert codeblockPaste your code into the editor, then place the cursor on the code text, and click . The text will change into a codeblock, then choose the correct programming language.
      Insert HTML snippetUse HTML snippet to embed Twitter, YouTube, or other social content in your article.
      - Go to the social media platform where the content is hosted and copy the embed code.
      - Paste the embed code into your article.
      Insert symbolsInsert special characters and symbols.
      Insert line separatorAdd a line separator.
      Insert page breakInsert a page break.

      CONTENT AVAILABILITY DATES

      Add a countdown timer for an article page. Specify the start for which you want the article to go live (the end date is optional). The time zone is the time zone in which you want to make the content available on your site. Select the Show in Advance box to display a countdown timer to the set Start date and time.

      SEO

      Please follow best practices here: VL SEO Best Practices.

      VERSION HISTORY

      Review any edits/changes to the article page here. The data will display the user account, time, and date as well as the status of the editing or publishing activity. If you wish to revert to an earlier version of the page editing, click on the gear icon for the chosen version and then click on the REVERT option.

      PUBLISH ARTICLE

      The fields with a red asterisk (*) are required to publish an article. Even though the body copy is the most important part of the article, the minimum required fields are title, permalink, author, description, and images. When you're happy, click PUBLISH to publish immediately or use the scheduler option to publish at a later date and time. 

      CURATE ARTICLE

      You can manage the curation and placement of articles, from AppCMS > Edit Template Builder >  Pages. The Live Preview tray and the VL HighlightTray are the typical modules to add articles into a tray on a page, for example, the Home Page (or any other page). The other trays you can use are VL LandscapeTray, VL Vertical Tray.

      Open the module settings and provide a title. You can populate articles on an Article tray by setting the Content Selection mode to Manually Curate or Programmatically Generate. 

      Manually curate: Search and manually stack the stories in the order you want them.
      Programmatically Generate: Programmatically generate articles based on tags/ categories.

      In the Thumbnail Type, choose the image aspect ratio to define the proper height and width of the thumbnail on the tray (the available options are 16:9, 3:4, 32:9, etc). 

      To allow sharing articles, select the Enable Sharing flag.

      Once you have curated the article, click Publish to publish the page in Template Builder.
      The changes may take approximately 5-10 minutes to fully reflect on the website due to caching mechanisms in place. Try loading the page from a private browsing window or a different browser, or clear your cookies and cache for immediate verification.

      ARTICLE TEMPLATE PAGE

      The layout for an article page is predefined in the VL Article Detail is the template module. You can customize the Article Template Page from Template Pages > Article Page.

      FAQs

      Q. How can I display/hide publish and update time stamps?

      While you can't directly adjust timestamps within the Article editor, you can easily manage their visibility from the VL Article Detail Module. Find this module on the Article Page within Template Pages to toggle timestamps on or off.

      Q. Is it possible to have two Article template pages?

      Yes, but only can be one set as the default.

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