The announcements module allows a user with site admin access to quickly add content briefs in a list form. This module provides a simple interface to input a headline, summary and link (if desired). This is intended to be a quick method to add information to a site without having to access the CMS. This tutorial will demonstrate how to use the user control parameters for two different types of announcements: 1) We will demonstrate how to add a user control to add your own announcements and 2) we will demonstrate how to add user control parameters that will update with announcements from IAAP headquarters automatically, with no interaction with the site or CMS at all. First, here is what the announcement input interface looks like:  As you can see, the form allows you to quickly add list items without having to access the back end of the site. To bring up the input fields, you simply click the "add" link in the upper right corner of the module (this link is only visible to site admins). After you input the information, the headline, summary and link will display below (the edit and delete links will also only show for site admins). Let's take a look at the user control parameters to add this to our site. To add the basic announcements module, you will use this code (use highlighted portions only): User Control path or field: ws:Announcements User Control Parameters: NumberToShow="10" HideIfNoData="False" ShowAllAnnouncements="False" ShowAnnouncementsWithNoType="False" ShowAuthor="False" ShowPublishDate="False" As with other user controls, you can adjust the True/False parameters to affect how the announcements will display. For example, if you want to display the publish date for each list item, you can change ShowPublishDate to True instead of False. One parameter you likely will not want to change is the ShowAllAnnouncements parameter. If you set that to True, you will display every announcement from every IAAP web community site, and it will be very difficult to determine which site those announcements came from. Adding headquarters announcements to your site: User Control path or field: ws:Announcements User Control Parameters: NumberToShow="5" HideIfNoData="False" ShowAllAnnouncements="False" ItemKey="67d6bd30-cdcb-4bab-89dd-5553637b7ff0" By using the ItemKey code above, you're telling the announcements module to only pull content from the headquarters site. In this case, you will not have the option to add content to the list, but it will be updated automatically. You can also manipulate the number of items, the date and other parameters. For more information on using User Controls, please look at the Recent Blogs and eGroup Messages tutorials. |
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Advanced > User Controls >
Announcements |