The Dynamic HomePage news function is a powerful tool for managing the authoring, collection and display of news summaries for internal and external news items. Internal news summaries can be scheduled with start and end dates. External news summaries can be received via Google News, on specified subject(s), from certain publication(s), taken from particular geographic location(s).
The Output control determines whether the output of news to users' browsers is turned on or off. Click the OK button if you change this setting.
News output can be pre-formatted into a table which can be positioned as a single entity in the stylesheet, or it can be user-defined with values selected via the "Define format" link. Click the OK button if you change this setting.
Table: titles of news articles are output to HTML in a table, with a graphical link button. This links to an intermediate page which displays the full summary-article obtained from Google, and links to article source. If you want to use this function effectively a template will need to be designed and integrated into the program by the authors.
User-defined: allows output to be configured according to settings on the linked Define format page, and formatted in a variety of ways by a stylesheet.
This allows you to control how many items of internal and external news are output to the Home Page. For example, if your stylesheet allows space for five news items, you may want to specify that the first two are taken from the library of internal news summaries, and the latter three are taken from imported library of external news articles. This ratio may be regularly updated depending on how many internal news stories are current. Click the OK button if you change these settings.
External news is seeded from Google News, which provides English language news from many sources. Specifying the search criteria is as simple as visiting http://news.google.com or one of its country sites, entering and refining the search criteria until you are happy with the results, and then paste the Google URL from your web browser's address/location bar into the input box in this section.
Up to 100 news items will be stored locally (see notes below). It is advisable to make sure your search criteria return a substantial number of results, otherwise you could find a dip in the number of hits for your criteria will leave your site short of news. Click the OK button if you change the URL.
Important Notes:
External news is parsed periodically from Google News, based on a schedule (crontab list) set in your server's configuration files. When the external news URL is changed, you will see the new articles the next time the parsing program runs. Your server administrator may be able to run this program immediately for you.
The news function will read the first page of results from the search URL you enter. Google's default setting is to display 10 results per page. If you visit the Google Preferences page you can specify up to 100 results per page. (These preferences will only 'stick' in your browser if cookies are enabled.) Another way to receive 100 results is to add the qualifier &num=100 to the end of your news URL.
Google shows its results in a variety of formats - for example with pictures and without. Typically not all of the results will be read by the news function.
The Submit a news article link takes you to a form from which an article summary for an internal news item can be submitted.
The Internal News table shows details of all past and current internal news article summaries. Click here for an explanation of the columns.
Title: the headline of the internal news article. (The text extract and the link URL are not shown in this table.)
Posting Date: the date from which the news article will be available for publication on the Home Page (set by the person submitting the article)
Expiration Date: the date at which the news article will be stop being displayed.
Source: The specified name of the source of the news article (by default, the username of the account which submitted the article.
Public: (y/n) Whether the news article is in the list which can be selected for publication to your Home Page. This would provide a quick way of pulling an article after a fault was discovered, to give time for correction.
Action:
Update: allows you to view and alter the full article summary of a given news article.
Delete: deletes the summary news article.
The External News table shows details of all the current library of news articles parsed from Google. Click here for an explanation of the columns.
Title: the headline of the news article. (The text extract and the link URL are not shown in this table.)
Posting Date: the date the news article was published, according to Google News. Google News specifies publication as x minutes ago, x hours ago or x days ago. These are converted into dates by the Dynamic HomePage application.
Expiration Date: the date at which the news article will be stop being displayed. By default this is two days after retrieval, but could be set to longer by the developers if a longer time is requested during the application's installation. In practice the expiration date is usually academic: external news articles will be deleted after scheduled replacements have been successfully received from Google; but in the event of a prolonged difficulty in parsing news from Google, it will give some time to find a solution.
Source: The name (and often location) of the news source.
Public: (y/n) Whether the news article is in the list which can be selected for publication to your Home Page. In practice this setting only lasts until Google News is next successfully parsed, but if you find some inappropriate content appearing on your Home Page it would provide a quick way of blocking it while the news URL was changed.
Action:
Update: allows you to view and alter the full article summary of a given news article. This only lasts until the next time Google news is successfully parsed (after which all current news will be replaced), but in the event of a prolonged Google News-parsing outage, the expiration date can be extended to make sure the Home Page isn't left short of news.
Delete: deletes the summary news article. But again, this only lasts until the next time Google News is successfully parsed.
These technical details are intended for web designers when setting up a stylesheet.
The sample HTML output below shows how the news section is output. The first illustration shows output in the Table format. The second illustration shows one way of configuration of output in the User-defined format. If customised output is required for your home page implementation, please contact the developers.
In the output Home Page, the myQuickLinks function is contained between the comments <!--Quick links--> and <!--Quick links end-->, containing a main DIV block with class and id="quicklinks" incorporating the title and a nested DIV block with class-quicklinks_text containing all of the QuickLinks.
As with all information derived from other web sites, the format of the remote pages can change, and this may break the mechanism for reading the news. However several mechanisms have been put in place to ensure continuity in the news service. Dynamic HomePage news will only be removed from the local database table after new news has been successfully parsed. Although this news is set to expire after two days, an admin user can extend the period of currency. If an e-mail address is provided prior to installation, an e-mail alert can be set up of any failure to update the news table in order that remedial action can be taken. The developers immediately create updates to the reading mechanism in this event, and are able to apply these for a small administration charge. For a fixed price annual support fee the alert messages can be sent directly to the developers who will apply appropriate patches and product upgrades.
<!--News part-->
<div class="news" id="news">
<table class="newstable" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td class="newscol_1"></td>
<td class="newscol_2"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="news_header"><span class="h2">The news section ...</span></td>
<td colspan="2" class="news_viewlink"> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="oddrow">
<td class="news_headline" colspan="2">
<a class="news_external" href="http://mysite.com/readingnews.php?id=341152">Headline One</a></font>
</td>
<td class="news_button">
<a href="http://mysite.com/readingnews.php?id=341152" title="Read This Story"><div class="news_img"></DIV></a>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="evenrow">
<td class="news_headline" colspan="2">
<a class="news_external" href="http://mysite.com/readingnews.php?id=341160">Headline Two</a></font>
</td>
<td class="news_button">
<a href="http://mysite.com/readingnews.php?id=341160" title="Read This Story"><div class="news_img"></DIV></a>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="3" class="rowspacer"> </td>
</tr>
</table>
</DIV>
<!--News end-->
<!--News part-->
<DIV class="news" id="news">
<DIV class="news_header">The news section ...</DIV>
<DIV class="userdef_news" id="userdef_news_1">
<DIV class="udnews_title" id="udnews_title_1">
<a href=http://Article1.com/news_source.htm target=_href>Article One Headline</a></DIV>
<DIV class="udnews_content" id="udnews_content_1">Article One Summary</DIV>
<DIV class="udnews_source" id="udnews_source_1">Article One Source</DIV>
<DIV class="udnews_date" id="udnews_date_1">2004-04-29</DIV>
</DIV>
<DIV class="userdef_news" id="userdef_news_2">
<DIV class="udnews_title" id="udnews_title_2">
<a href=http://Article2.com/news_source.htm target=_href>Article Two Headline</a></DIV>
<DIV class="udnews_content" id="udnews_content_2">Article Two Summary</DIV>
<DIV class="udnews_source" id="udnews_source_2">Article Two Source</DIV>
<DIV class="udnews_date" id="udnews_date_2">2004-04-28</DIV>
</DIV>
</DIV>
<!--News end-->
The stylesheet is individual to each implementation. The code below is just an illustration of how it may be implemented.
#news {
border: 1px #999 solid;
background-color: #ffc;
padding: 2px;
position: absolute;
right: 285px;
top: 117px;
z-index: 1;
}
.newstable {
width: 367px;
margin: 0px;
}
.newscol_1 {
width: 160px;
}
.newscol_2 {
width: 150px;
}
.newscol_3 {
width: 35px;
}
.news_viewlink {
text-align: right;
color: #f00;
}
.news_img {
width: 35px;
height: 33px;
background-image: url(../images/news/snews.gif);
}
.oddrow {
background-color: #ccc;
height: 35px;
}
.evenrow {
background-color: #ffc;
height: 35px;
}
.rowspacer {
line-height: 3px;
font-size: 3px;
}
#newsfooter {
display: none;
text-align: center;
}
The stylesheet is individual to each implementation. The code below is just an illustration of how it may be implemented.
h1, h2, .h2, .news_header, h3, h4 {
font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
}
h2, .h2, .news_header {
font-size: 140%;
color:#000;
margin:10px 0px 4px 0px;
padding: 5px 3px;
background: #fc3;
background-image: url(../images/gradient1.gif);
background-position: top;
background-repeat: repeat-x;
font-weight: 400;
}
h2, .h2, .news_header.coltop {
margin:2px 0px 4px 0px;
}
#news {
z-index: 20;
background-color:#FFF;
}
.userdef_news {
margin: 2px 1px;
padding: 2px 1px;
border-bottom: 1px #c60 solid;
text-align:left;
}
.udnews_title {
font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: 140%;
margin-bottom: 3px;
}
.udnews_content {
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-weight: normal;
font-size: 100%;
margin-bottom: 2px;
}
a.udnews_content {
color: #333;
}
.udnews_source {
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-weight: bold;
font-style: italic;
font-size: 80%;
margin-left: 2px;
color: #000;
}
.udnews_date {
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-weight: bold;
font-style: italic;
font-size: 80%;
margin-left: 2px;
color: #000;
}
.oddrow {
background-color: #CCC;
height: 35px;
}
.evenrow {
background-color: #FFF;
height: 35px;
}
.rowspacer {
line-height: 3px;
font-size: 3px;
}
#newsfooter {
display: none;
text-align: center;
}