Creating an Announcement

  • Navigate to the proper folder - /news/announcements/YEAR/
  • This is an important step – stories posted in any other folder will not post properly to your announcements feed, or may show up on different site instead of your own.
  • Click “New”, and choose “Create a News Story”
  • You will be presented with a lengthy form to fill out. It’s important to know that you do not have to fill out the majority of this form for an announcement! Refer to the directions below for the areas that you do and do not have to fill out. See the image below for a visual guide to what parts do not need to be filled out.
  • News Type: Select Announcement from the dropdown
  • Page Title – this is your story headline. Only the first word should be capitalized, unless the title includes a proper name (see the Skidmore news page for examples of proper titles)
  • Description – the short blurb/intro of the announcement, what people see before they click to read more.
  • External URL – only used when linking to an external URL, such as a story on the Saratogian or Times Union, etc. If you fill in this field, you do not need to fill in the story text!!
  • Story Text – here you will enter the body of your announcement.
  • You can copy/paste from Word, but you will have to use the “Remove Formatting” button (eraser, next to the “Bold” icon) to remove background code. To do so, highlight all of your text and then click the “Remove Formatting” button.
  • You will then need to double check your formatting (italics, bullets, bold, etc.)
  • You can add links by highlighting the text to be a link, and clicking the link button
  • Images cannot be used in Announcements.
  • Post date – the date of creation, in long form (January 12, 2018)
  • Additional Tags – since you are creating announcements for your department only, you will not be using any of the checkboxes created for general purpose. You will only be typing into the Additional Tags box.
  • This field must begin with a comma!
  • Do not copy/paste into this field. Errors are introduced by the differences between commas in different fonts, etc. Always type into this field.
  • fac/staff announcements, tag, tag, tag
  • New page filename – this will become the URL for the story, so it should be very short.
  • start with the date, then 2-4 keywords separated by hyphens
  • 0410-keyword-keyword-keyword.pcf
  • NO CAPITALS OR SPACES! The system will reject your story and you will have to begin again!!!
  • do not erase the .pcf part, that is a required file type (like .docx, or .pdf)
  • New page access – leave at inherit
  • Click Create. You will be taken to a page to preview the text of your announcement.
  • Click Publish.