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Feature Guides

Articles

Articles are one of the most commonly used content types. While similar to a page, they are much more simplified
and only allow a Rich Text module for content. However, they offer specific features such as the ability to add authors, subheadlines, and can track updates to the article. For example, each one of these feature guides is written as an article so feel free to look around and see what can be done with articles in different feature guides.

Article Features

Authors

One of the most prominent features of Articles is the ability to add authors to each article. As shown above, this feature guide is written by BYU Sites and was created in October 2020. With this feature, users are able to click on the author's link and explore other articles that they have written. Brightspot will automatically link all articles written by the same author together.

Authors in the Brightspot articles

Employee authors are also very useful if there is a Professor or full-time employee that has written articles, it can link them to both their profile and articles that they have written.

Rich Text Content

While articles are limited to a Rich Text module and are created for such purposes, the Rich Text content type is very versatile in adapting to specific needs. While having all the basic features of a word document editor, you can also add images, videos, and even other modules from around the site. To read more about the details of the Rich Text module content type click here.

Updates

As such articles, if you need to change your article with significant updates or a story is changing quickly there is an Update & Correction option. Using one of these options will allow you to add notes at the top that will update your reader with updates to a story. You may set the date of these updates/corrections to either be automatically done once it is published or you may manually enter a date and time.

Advanced: Article Importer

(Note: Currently, there is a glitch where only Macs can upload CSV files to Brightspot.)

Brightspot has added a feature where, if articles were created outside of Brightspot and they need to be imported into Brightspot, they can do so using a CSV template that can be filled out and then imported into Brightspot.

Please keep in mind that when using the article importer, all steps need to be done exactly as instructed, or else you may end up with articles that are not formatted as you had hoped or have missing information.

Article Importer

To create a new Article Importer do the following steps:

1. Click on the searchbar.
2. On the bottom left under Create, in the dropdown menu, select, Article CSV Importer.
3. Finally, click New.

The importer will pull up. To download the template needed for this, click on the blue hyperlink called "Download CSV Template".

Article CSV Importer Screen with all the options

CSV Template

The photo below is a screenshot of all the template columns, we will go through each of these and explain what they mean.

Article Template options

Headline: Required: This is the title of your article.

Sub Headline: Optional: A subheadline briefly describing or summarizing the article.

Slug: Required: The identifier for the article. For example, if I was importing an article titled "The Best of BYU". The slug would be "the-best-of-BYU" or something along those lines.

Author Title: Optional: The title of the author.

Body: Required: The body of your article includes words, images, and any other content you might have. This will need to be converted into HTML code.

SEO Title: Optional: A title for search engine optimization

SEO Description: Optional: A description for search engine optimization

SEO Keyword: Optional: Keywords for search engine optimization

Tags: Optional: While tags are optional they are very helpful for organizing the articles when in Brightspot. Tags can be separated by commas.

URL: Required: The URL for the article, which is usually just the title rewritten, similar to the slug, just add-on forward slashes. For example "Why OIT is the Best Place to Work" would be "/why-OIT-is-the-best-place-to-work/"

Update Date: Required: The date it was posted.

Uploading the CSV File

Once the CSV file is populated with the required information needed, you may upload the file to Brightspot so it can be automatically ingested. The options available in the CSV importer are the following:

Ingest HTML Images: If your body contains images, it is best to turn this on, as the images that are connected with your article will also automatically be ingested into Brightspot as well. This will allow for a smooth transition in making sure the layout is similar to the old site.

Sections: You may choose to have all articles that are ingested be associated with a specific section on the site.

Tags: Similar to sections, tags allow you to have tags associated with all articles being imported. However, if you have tags already attached to the articles, you will want this off and to make sure that the tags are already in Brightspot BEFORE uploading the CSV.

Once your options are set and the file is uploaded you can click on Import in the top right. Once the checkmark appears, view the log at the bottom of the screen to verify that everything imported correctly.

Questions & Answers

data-content-type="article"
Q&A

How To Use Content on Multiple Sites

October 17, 2022 03:58 PM
Note: For this to work, you will need to be an admin of multiple sites. You CANNOT do this unless you have access to all of the sites that you would like these Tags to be on.
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data-content-type="article"
Q&A

How do I manually set the publish date for an article?

April 22, 2022 12:43 PM
To manually set up a publish date, click on the three dots on the top right. Click on Tools. Scroll down and choose a new publish date and click on save.
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data-content-type="article"
Q&A

How do I import articles using a .csv file import?

October 12, 2020 05:41 PM
On the dashboard, go to the search bar. In the bottom left, under “create”, find the “articles CSV importer” and hit “new”. There is a CSV template you will need to download on this page. Fill in the CSV file and reupload there.
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