1: Weblog/Noticeboard improvements (and a few others)
Posted by Joe Oldak on 10/05/23 17:05

Hi all,

If you're a Weblog or Noticeboard app user there are some nice improvements now live!

The changes are intended to make these apps more suitable for showing news articles on your site. (Well, any sort of pages really!)

What's Changed?

  1. Posts can now have a subtitle and highlight image, which are displayed prominently at the top of the posting.
  2. Removed the 'Title URL' which was a weird hangover from old-style blogging. (existing posts that have a Title URL will still work, but new posts can't set one)
  3. Posts now have nice SEO friendly URLs which include the title, so should do well in search engines. (the old URL still works so nobody will get a 404)
  4. Removed the dated/irrelevant/broken bookmarklet and ping urls settings.

Is that all?

No indeed not! There's now a brand new shiny Latest Posts includelet!

As the name suggests, this is for showing a list of the latest posts from your Noticeboard/Weblog on the homepage of your site (or indeed any page).

You can choose to show posts in a panel or a grid. In grid mode you can specify how many columns.

The includelet shows the Image, Title, and Subtitle (and can optionally show the content too), and you can choose how many items to show.

That's all very well, but what about the "few others" you mentioned?

Sure, since you asked so nicely:

  1. There's now a grid mode in the Upcoming Events includelet too, and an option to not show the 'more events' link if you don't want it.
  2. Added a Help Text setting for Survey questions.
  3. Background Image and Slider includelets use higher res images on large screens. (max 2000px wide)
  4. Tweaked the layout of thumbnails (i.e., grid items).
  5. Added 'last modified' dates to the sitemap.xml files so that Google finds updated content even more quickly.

Enjoy!

Joe

2: Re: Weblog/Noticeboard improvements (and a few others) (response to 1)
Posted by JoMaye on 11/05/23 14:03

Sorry Joe, that link isn't working and I can't see it on the test site. Am I being dopey?

Thanks,

Jo

3: Re: Weblog/Noticeboard improvements (and a few others) (response to 2)
Posted by Joe Oldak on 11/05/23 14:47

I've now taken the link out of the earlier post (since I couldn't convince the forums to link directly to the test site, it always wanted to link to the live site!)

So - if you go to the test site version of your site then look at any weblog/noticeboard apps on there you'll see that they now have Image and Subtitle for posts, and also that the Latest Posts includelet is available to you on CMS pages.

Thanks

Joe

4: Re: Weblog/Noticeboard improvements (and a few others) (response to 1)
Posted by Joe Oldak on 16/05/23 10:47

These updates to the Weblog and Noticeboard are now live.

So you can now set subtitle/image on posts, posts will have new SEO friendly URLs, you can use the new Latest Posts includelet, and the grid mode in the Upcoming Events includelet.

Thanks

Joe

5: Re: Weblog/Noticeboard improvements (and a few others) (response to 4)
Posted by JoMaye on 12/06/23 10:56

I'm loving the subtitle on the posts!

Would it be useful to anyone else other than us to have a byline? We use our noticeboard to share news from other organisations as well as our own news. I then use these stories in a monthly email newsletter in mailchimp, linking back to the website.

I put at the start of the news story who it is from so it looks a bit like this:

Headline

Subtitle

From another organisation

Remaining news story.

It's fine but I wonder if in the future there might be the option to have a byline above the subtitle or the option to use the subtitle in the latest posts includelet but not the post itself. Or does someone have an idea on how I could do it better?

Here's our front page where I love the subtitle: https://www.kingstoncarers.org.uk/

And here's our news page where I love it less: https://e-voice.org.uk/kcn/news/

Also, once we've been on the news page our web address doesn't appear as kingstoncarers.org.uk/whateverpage

I'd love to see some pages of where people are using pictures on the noticeboard too!

 

6: Re: Weblog/Noticeboard improvements (and a few others) (response to 5)
Posted by Joe Oldak on 12/06/23 11:43

Looks good!

An option to not show the subtitle in the Weblog app listings and individual post pages would be possible. Would this be set per-post or just as a setting for the whole app?

We could add some sort of byline but not sure how this would work in general - might be a bit confusing for people using it in a simpler way without the Latest Posts includelet? Also it'd be good to try to make things more consistent over time - so standardising on title/subtitle in different apps could be a better plan!

Regarding the URL switching to the e-voice version sometimes - I suspect this could be a throwback to when you used the RSS feed includelet on your homepage, as this links to the e-voice version of pages rather than the custom URL. I can't actually spot any links on your homepage that go to the e-voice URL so it may just be something in your browser cache?

Note that if a non-admin users goes to the e-voice version of your URL they'll automatically be redirected to the kingstoncarers URL, so it won't be a problem for most people. Just that you don't get redirected because you're an admin!

Finally, in terms of examples, hopefully site owners can nominate themselves here! :-)

Thanks

Joe

 

7: Re: Weblog/Noticeboard improvements (and a few others) (response to 6)
Posted by JoMaye on 12/06/23 13:44

I think I would like to choose whether or not to show the subtitle on the post page on a post by post basis. And having that option would totally negate any need for a byline for us as I'd just put the byline in the content followed by the news story where I could retype the subtitle if I wanted to.

I hope I'm being constructive rather than demanding! And of course if it's not a feature that anyone else wants, it's good as it is :)