Getting Started with Posts 5: Make a new post

This article is part of a series about getting started with Posts. If you haven’t read Understanding Posts vocabulary or Get started with Posts, you may want to begin there.

Before you make a new post, first navigate to the board you want the post to appear on. If you’re a site admin, you can find Posts on the Composer menu under “Modules.” Click on “Boards” to find the list of folders and navigate to the board.

A non-admin user will find a link to “Boards” under their portal menu. 

To get started, select the “+ Post” button from the three-dot Action Menu, or click the green “+ New Post” button on the board dashboard.

Title

Begin by entering a title for the post. A title is required before the post can be saved.

URL

Each post has a unique, customizable “slug” to allow links directly to it. This defaults to the name of the post, with hyphens instead of spaces. If a post by the same name exists on the board, it will be necessary to rename the slug before publishing the post.

This is where you can get a direct link URL to this post (provided a default post page is set for this board). After you have saved the post, click on the link icon to copy the full URL. For more information about setting a default post page, see Create a default post page.

Content

Select whether this will be a written post, or a post that simply links out to a page or article on another site (called an “external redirect”).

For written posts, use the text area to write the content of the post, add images, and style the text.

For external redirects, select that option and enter the address of the destination site in the “External Redirect URL” field. Select the "Open in New Window/Tab" checkbox to have the link open in its own window when clicked on. 

Once the content is established, use the controls on the right-hand side of the screen to adjust its settings.

Dates

At the top of the settings side of the screen, there are three different fields for dates to be chosen: Start, Featured Until, and Expire.

Start

The “Start” date sets when the post will become visible on the website. Posts are not visible to end users before they reach their Start date.

Featured Until

The “Featured Until” date is optional. If you enter a date here, the post will be marked as “Featured” from the Start date up to when the Featured Until date is reached.

Composer Post elements can be configured to display “Featured” posts on site pages. Any post with a “Featured Until” date set will appear in any corresponding “Featured” Post elements during the selected timeframe.

Expire

Similarly, the “Expire” date controls when a post will be archived and removed from site pages. Unlike archived posts in News Manager, expired posts cannot be displayed in a Composer element. An expired post is invisible to end users, but still remains accessible on the back end in Posts and can be re-published if desired.

Summary

Summary

Use the text area in the “Summary” section to write a short description of the post content. This content can be displayed separately from the body content in Composer Post elements.

Plain-text summary

The “Plain-text Summary” field can accept text-only descriptions that accompany the post in RSS feed readers and email alerts. This is automatically derived from the content entered in the Summary field, but it can be edited separately.

The Plain-text summary of a post is shown to users who subscribe to a board via its RSS feed. For more about Posts subscriptions, see Subscribe to post updates.

Category & Tags

Use the Category & Tags controls to select which Categories this post will belong to, and which tags will be applied to it. For a more detailed breakdown of best practices for categories and tags, refer to Categories and tags explained.

Categories

Categories are specific to each board and are meant to broadly define the types of posts that board will contain. Users can filter by categories using a Post Tools element; however, categories cannot be used as a Content Filter in the Composer Post element.

To manage categories for a board, click on the “Manage Categories” button in the Categories & Tags section of the post screen or the “+ Categories” link on the board's three-dot Action Menu. Type the name of your category in the text field at the top of the dialogue box and click the green “+ Add Category” link to add a new category. Existing categories will be displayed in a list underneath. Make any changes to the title in the field, or click the trashcan icon next to the category to remove it. Categories always appear in alphabetical order.

Once categories have been defined, they appear as buttons in the Categories & Tags box. Toggle these buttons to add the post to one or more categories.

Tags

Tags are meant to describe specific details of individual posts. Unlike categories, tags are consistent across boards and can be used to filter the content displayed in a Composer Post element. (Users can also filter by tags using a Post Tools element.)

To add an existing tag to a post, begin typing into the text field. Suggestions for existing tags will pop up underneath the field; click on a suggested tag to apply it. To create a new tag, type the name of the tag into the text field and click the green “+” icon. To remove a tag from a post, click the “X” icon next to the tag.

Thumbnail & Resources

This section controls the images or other resources that are associated with the post. Composer Post elements can be configured to display thumbnails and linked to a Resource element to display resources associated with a particular post.

Select a thumbnail image from File Manager or Resources using the Thumbnail controls (optional).

When you select a thumbnail, you can also add alternate text to the image. Use this field to add a short description of the image contents. The fact that alt text is present will help boost your site's SEO rankings. In addition, describing images is considered a very thoughtful and polite way to interact with visually impaired site users. For more information about using alt text, refer to the article Add alt text to images.

Click on "Attach Resources" to build a collection of one or more resources to go along with your post. Once you have selected all the resources, click "Back to Post" to return to the post-editing screen. The number of resources attached will be specified under the "Attach Resources" button. Click the button again to review and edit them.

Comments

Use the checkbox to activate comments on this post. If comments are turned on, you can choose to require that readers be logged into the site in order to leave a comment, and also force comments to be moderated manually by the post author or an admin.

Comments for a post can be displayed in a Post “Single” element or a pop-up, provided the “Comments” checkbox is also enabled on the Composer element.

To view and moderate comments, navigate to the post in the module and click the comment icon on the bottom toolbar. For more information on comments, see Comment on posts.

Additional settings

Role/group display

Use the Additional Settings controls to target this post to a selected role or group.

Selecting a role or group will hide this post from any user who does not belong to the selected role or group. Targeted posts will appear on any Composer Post element displaying the corresponding board, and Role/Group Display settings will apply as long as a group member is logged in. Bear in mind, though, that targeted posts are not private and will still be visible to any user who’s not logged into the site! For additional information on this feature, see the article Post visibility.

 

Toolbar buttons

On the bottom toolbar, there are several icons that allow you to move a post to a different board, delete a post, preview a post, and either view the status of the post, or save/publish/update it.

To preview your post, first ensure that the default post page for the board has been set. To find out more about setting up a default post page, refer to Edit board settings.

For more information about publishing a post, see Publish a post.

Next steps

Now that you have content set up within Posts, it’s time to display it in Composer. For that, the next article in our series is called Build a Posts page. It will discuss in detail how to use and combine the Post element, the Board element, and the Post Tools element into useful pages. After that, you can move on to setting up specific types of pages, such as blogs, course catalogs and using Posts for teachers.

Getting Started with Posts 6: Publish a post