How to Add and edit items

How to Add a New Item

Both authors and editors will add new content items to your slice. This is the most basic and important task of publishing content to your site using ActionApps.

Note: Your item edit window will likely look different from what you see in this guide, as some of the fields may have been removed by your slice administrator.

To add a new item

• Log into ActionApps using the URL,username, and password that your slice administrator provided.
• After you successfully log in, you will see the Active folder of the Item Manager.
• Click Add Item in the top navigation bar. This will open the editing window. Depending on how your slice administrator configures this view, you may see many fields, or only a few. Even if you see many fields on this page, you can generally leave many blank and still publish an item.
• Complete all required fields marked with an asterisk (*). You must enter information in these fields before you can publish content items. Fields that are not marked with an asterisk are optional.
• Click Insert to add a record for the item to the database.

The Add Item page File:Image

The next section explains how to add information to some of the most common fields you will see. If you have any questions about what fields you need to complete, ask your slice administrator.

Common New Item Fields

The exact fields you will use to enter information for your new content items will depend on how your administrator sets up your organization's slice. Below the text box for each field you may see Help text that provides useful instructions.

Common fields include:

• Headline. The title or headline of the content item. This is almost always a required field.
• Summary. A short abstract of the content item. This is almost always a required field.
• Formatting.Radio buttons allow you to include HTML code with your text or just enter plain text with no HTML code. This field affects the format of content placed in the News or Full Text field.
• Fulltext. The complete text of the content item, in either HTML or plain text.
• External Link. The URL of the content, if it comes from an outside source. If you write a URL in this field, when your site reader clicks on the link on the index page to read the full text of the item, he will be taken to the web address here.
• External News. A checkbox that indicates the content is from an outside source.

Note: External News and Fulltext are mutually exclusive. If you check this field, ActionApps will link to the External Link URL and will ignore any text in the Fulltext field.

• Highlight. Checkbox used to create a selection of the most important content items in a slice, e.g., top news stories of the month, or content item relevant to a specific issue.
• Author. Creator of the content item.
• Source. Where the content item came from.
• Source URL. External Web address of the source of the content item.
• Category. Thematic group to which an item belongs. Select the category in which your item belongs from the list. You can choose only from the categories enabled for your slice by the slice administrator.
• Publish Date. Date an item is published on a site.
• Expiry Date. Date an item disappears from the slice index. However it remains archived and will appear in a search result.
• Status Code. Indicates whether an item is approved, held, deleted, etc. This sets the folder in which the item initially appears.
• Editor's notes. Notes from the editor that appear with an item. These will not be displayed on the Website but will be shown to those who use your item in their slice.

You may see many other fields that request other types of information. If the field is not clear, contact your slice administrator.

Formatting a Content Item with HTML

If you include the full text of the content item, you can use HTML code tags to format it. This feature gives authors and editors more control over the appearance of the item, which allows them to include italic or bold text, for example.

If the Formatting switch is set to HTML tags, the text will be displayed formatted. If it is set to Plain text, ActionApps will publish the tags in your web page itself!.

Note: It is not enough to save your '''.'''doc file in HTML format in Microsoft Word or another word-processing software, then copy and paste it from your screen as it appears in Word. To make HTML formatting work, you must include the HTML code tags -- such as and , and -- in the Full text field.

If you save your .doc as an HTML file, you can then open it in a text editor and copy and paste the content in the Full text field. Note that in this case you must remove the HTML heading and paste onlywhat is between the <body> and </body> tags.

'Tip! Don't include paragraph tags (

….

) around the text of the first 'paragraph of text in “Article body text". It creates an additional paragraph break on your page, leaving an overly big space between the title and the body text.

Setting the Language Encoding

ActionApps allow you to select the language of a content item. This allows the database to recognize and correctly process particular characters in a language, e.g. n in Spanish.

You should set the language in the Language field, then set the appropriate encoding table in the Encoding field. If you do not set both, the characters may not be display properly.

If you have any questions about what to select in these fields, contract your slice administrator.

Publishing an Image with an Item

If your slice administrator allows you to do so, you can publish one or more images with your content item. If you have an image to be published, enter the image URL and dimensions (in pixels) in the appropriate fields.

How to Edit an Existing Item

As an author or editor, you may need to change or update an existing item, modify an item's expiry date, improve its appearance, or correct spelling errors. An editor may want to modify the text or settings of items written by authors, or change the headline or summary for a 'fed' article. It is easy to edit a content item in ActionApps.

If you are an author, you can modify only items that you added or published. If you are an editor, you can edit any item in your slice.

To edit an item:

1. Select the item you want to edit in the appropriate folder. To do this, either click Edit, which appears before its title, or click the title name. The method you use will depend on how the slice administrator sets up ActionApps.
2. You will see the same editor window that appears when you add new items. Many of the fields will already contain the information previously entered.
3. Make the changes to either the text, formatting, or other settings.
4. When you have finished your edits, click the Update button.

Note: If you make changes to an existing item, the “last modified by" field will be automatically updated to reflect the last person to make changes.