Campsite: EditingArticles

Editing Articles

The appearance of the "Edit article" page depends on the article type you are working on. Below, the default "News Article" type is shown. At the top left are the Actions and Status drop-down menus.

Actions menu

The Actions menu contains short-cuts to commonly used functions:

Unlock: When you begin editing an article, you automatically "lock" it to prevent conflicting edits from other users on the server. Using the Unlock option means that other authorized users can edit the article again
Delete: Removes the article permanently from the Campsite server
Duplicate: Copies the article to any publication, issue, or section on the same Campsite server
Translate: Creates a new copy of the article for translation into another language
Move: Moves the article to another publication, issue or section on the same Campsite server

Status menu

The status drop-down menu indicates the copy flow state of the article. There are three states that the article can be in:

New: The article is still being written. Once the contributors are ready for the article to be seen by the editor, they should change the status to "Submitted"
Submitted: The article is under review by the editor or editors. Once the editors decide that the article is ready for the public to see, the status should be changed to "Published", or scheduled for publication at a later date and time
Published: The article is now viewable by the public on the publication's website

Language menu

If multiple languages have been configured for the publication, a drop-down menu will enable fast switching between translated versions of the article. If not, the language of the article will be displayed here.

Edit/View buttons

There may be times when you want to view articles rather than edit them. In this case, clicking the "View" button speeds up the page display process. It also enables you to view an article when it is locked by another user on the server.

The editing area

Below the Actions and Status drop-down menus is the editing area for the article. It begins with three buttons; Preview, Save All, and Save and Close. Preview opens a pop-up window showing how the article will appear to the reader once it is published. Save All saves the fields in the edit area without closing the page, whereas Save and Close both saves the page and closes it, unlocking the page for other authorized users to edit further.

Edit article

The "News article" type has the following fields:

Name: The title of the article
Author: This drop-down menu enables you to credit multiple contributors, including Author or Writer, Photographer, Editor, and Columnist. Type the contributor name in the box to the right. Click the green plus sign icon to include additional contributors
Created by: the name of the Campsite user who created this article. You cannot change this field
Reads: A number indicating the popularity of this particular article. An article which has not yet been published will display N/A here
Type: Refers to the "article type", i.e. the format of the article. You cannot change this field once it has been assigned
Number: The article's unique identification number
Link to public page: If the article is published, this link displays the URL that the readers will see
Creation date: Since this field can order the way your articles are displayed to readers, you can change this date if you choose
Publish date: If displayed as N/A, this article hasn't been published yet
Show article on front page: Check this box if you want the article to be displayed on your publication's homepage
Show article on section page: Check this box if you would like the article to be displayed on the relevant section page
Visible to non-subscribers: Check this box if you want to make the article visible to readers who have not yet subscribed
Comments: Enable readers to make comments on the article, if you wish. Your templates must be designed to allow this feature. The drop-down box can have one of three values: enabled, locked, or disabled. "Locked" means that no one can post comments, but any existing comments are still shown
Keywords: words that describe your article to search engines
Deck: a sub-heading or article teaser
SMS: a short version of the article, suitable for sending via a text message gateway to phones which support the Short Message Service. The length of an SMS text message depends on the alphabet used, from a maximum of 70 characters in Chinese or Cyrillic alphabets, up to a maximum of 160 characters in the Latin alphabet
Body: the main section of the article

Other article types may contain different fields. Whenever you edit any of the fields, you will need to click either the Save All button at the top and bottom of the edit area, or any of the Save buttons to the left of individual fields. If the text content of a field has not been updated since the last save of the article, the individual button displays the label Saved.

Save buttons

Note that date fields have a fixed syntax of YYYY-MM-DD (four year digits, two month digits and two day digits, in that order). If you enter dates in any other format, you may get incorrect results.

The sidebar

To the right side of the edit area is a vertical bar containing further options for the new article. Click the link to the right of the green cross icon to open a pop-up window for the relevant action. Click the white cross in a red square icon to remove an item or event that was previously attached to the article.

Saved: Displays the last time the article was saved
Publish Schedule: Schedule the article to be published or unpublished at a certain date and time
Comments: Displays how many comments have been made on the article, and enables you to toggle whether the comments are shown at the bottom of the Edit Article page
Images: You can attach images to your article which can be included directly into an article body field, or used in the template
Files: You can attach any kind of file you wish to the article. The article template must be set up to display these files if users are to have access to them
Topics: Select from a list of topics and subtopics defined by your Campsite administrator by clicking on the Edit link. Topics allow you to set attributes for the article, which may be used to display the article in a certain way
Audioclips: If this feature has been enabled, you can attach audio files from a Campcaster broadcast automation server to Campsite articles. Audio clips can be reordered by dragging and dropping, then clicking the save icon
Polls: add a specific reader voting poll to a specific article

Previewing the article

While you are editing the article, you can see what it will look like when it is live on the web site by clicking the Preview button. The layout that readers will see when they visit your web site is controlled by the templates which your system administrator has installed. To be able to preview article and publication layouts, make sure you have configured the issue in question with the appropriate front page and article templates.

At the bottom of the preview window, you can see information from Campsite's template parser. If any problems occur while generating the web pages, the parser will display error messages. These should help you to identify any problems in the template structure, which you should report to your system administrator or template designer. Once you're finished with the preview window, click the icon in the upper corner of the window bar to close it, in the normal way.

Preview errors

EDIT

Campsite 3.4