News Item Form Content Managed Webpage Area Login

Please ensure that you have read and understand the following topic links before reading on.

The News Item Form area allows logged in users who are assigned to a content managed web site to have the ability to create a new News/Blog Item and save it to a designated News/Blog Group. Additionally they can modify existing items to update its content.

Using this area it allows users to post information up onto a content managed webpage, that could then be displayed to other users, or not at all.

The area displays a form with the heading, body, and spare fields that the user can set against a news/blog item. Once the user has submitted the form a news/blog item will be created, and it will be assigned to either the news/blog group defined in the area's setting, or based on the news/blog group ID that is set in the web page's URL that the area is displayed within.

After the news/blog item has been created an Email will be sent out to notify an administrator user that the item has been posted. This allows administrators to view the details of the new item, then optionally moderate and inactivate the item through the Administration Centre's News/Blogs interface if it is deemed unacceptable.

If the area is loaded on web page that contains the News/Blog item ID in the URL, and the user created the news/blog item, then the area will display and prefill the form fields with the values previously set for the news/blog item. This then allows users to modify the item and save its details upon posting the form again.

When the news/blog item's heading, body and spare fields are uploaded, the characters in the fields will be HTML escaped. This ensures that if the item is displayed on a web page that other users can see, that the posting user cannot inject malicious code into the web page and do nasty things like steal peoples data, or cause the web page to not display as it should.

The area contains the following formats:

News/Blog Item Post Form

This format displays once within the area if a news/blog group is assigned to the area, or a news/blog group ID exists in the URL. Additionally the group must be allowed to have users upload items to it. This format contains hooks that allow users to set the news/blog item heading, body, and/or spare field. If a field is omitted from the format, then the field will be set empty once the item has been created.

Layout of Formats:

Below are the following settings that can be configured through the area's editor when modifying the area in the Web Page Editor, within the Administration Centre.

In order for the the area to display news/blog item data the following configurations are required to be set up:

• In order for the news/blog item to be posted against a news/blog group, the group must have the setting "Users Can Create News/Blog Items" set to Yes. This setting is available within the News/Blogs interface under the Marketing menu in the Administration Centre.
• The Email address that the administrator notifications are sent to once an item has been posted is configured within the Administration Centre, under Online Store, in Organisation Settings page, in the setting labelled "Feedback and Enquiries Email".

• Link this area with the News/Blog Group Item Listing area to allow users to navigate from news/blog groups to a form where they can add an item to the group. This allows community based forums, or discussions to take place on content managed web pages, which help boost traffic, benefits search engine optimisation, and so on.
• Be careful to make sure that users can only post news/blog items to news/blog groups that they are allowed to, otherwise you could have users posting sensitive items infront of other users who should not be able to communicate.