| Introduction of the Multi-Media News Module | Managing the Multi-Media News Module | Front-End Templates | Back-End Administration |
Introduction of the Multi-Media News Module
The Module, referred to as the MM_News module, is a standard TurnKey (TK) Module similar to the standard TK News Module but with added functionality to provide for multi-media items such as Audio or Video clips to be included in the news content as well as the original content options.
Unlike the standard news module it has the option of having various templates for MM News presentation, allowing the designer to let varying combinations of content be available in different parts of the website. Administratively the MM News Module is again similar to the standard News Module with the addition of selection tools to choose the MM items needed for presentation in the various templates created for the site.
Managing the Multi-Media New Module
The Multi-Media News Module is basically managed the same way as the ordinary News Module (click here to see how to manage the ordinary News Module).
As with the standard News Module the main content for the News Item is a standard TK content page, as such a page would be use the site's templates and have the relevant appearance. Additionally site's designer can create other templates to show MM News content in other areas of the site, such as the site's Home Page or a News Page, and these templates can include multi-media content.
Front-End Templates
The default installation includes as defaults a template suitable for use on a Home Page and a template suitable for a News Page listing. These templates can be copied and adapted for other templates with no limit for the number of templates that can be used.
The following items are available for use in the MM News templates, with indication of what is used in which default template:
- Story Name (Home Page, News Listing, News Page, Content)
- Short Headline (News Listing)
- Long Headline (News headlines)
- Short Summary (Home Page)
- Synopsis (News Page)
- Story (News "More" Page, the full story content)
- Image One (Home Page)
- Image Two (News Listing)
- Audio item One (Home Page)
- Audio item Two (News Listing)
- Video item One (Home Page)
- Video item Two (News Listing)
Back-End Administration
The administration of the Multi-media news Module is based on the same style as the standard News Module so as to be as similar as possible for ease of use. The module is labeled "News MultiMedia" in the TurnKey Administrator.
There are two main administrative areas, defining the categories the News Items are placed in and creating the actual News Items themselves.
Categories
Categories can be created, edited and deleted in the Category section of the Multimedia News Administrator. The category name can be any text but if it desired to match MM categories with Photo Gallery Categories in order to, say, allow the linking of sets of Photo Gallery images with a news item then the names of the categories must match in both administrators, News MultiMedia and Photo Gallery.
Items
Multi-media News Items are more complex than their equivalent standard news Items in that there are selectors for the multi-media items as well as the standard text items.
On entry to the Items area in the administrator the existing items are presented, with edit/delete options, and an "Add Item" function. Adding or editing an existing item will present the editing window with 5 text entry areas to cover the Names, headline and synopsis text and a set of "edit content" buttons, one for editing the full story content, as per the standard news Item, and six for selecting the multimedia content.
Choosing multi-media selector pops up a selector window that allows selection of the wanted content. If one of the image selector buttons was pressed then the pop-up window displays all of the available images in the site, firstly the standard images then all of the Photo Gallery Images. The standard images are listed by name but as the Photo Gallery images are in fact sets of images of various sizes the window displays the image name and also the various sizes available, as defined in the Photo Gallery. Clicking on any image name, or its related size, will attach that image to its Multi-media Object and so will be presented according that object's use in the page templates.
Choosing one of the four audio/video buttons will again pop up the selector window but it will now present all of the multi-media objects available. Selecting an item will again attach that item to its object in the News templates. Note that as multi-media objects are becoming more complex in their presentation there is no longer any differentiation between objects, all of the objects are shown for selection and any can be chosen.
back to top
| 
