Article is 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 and subheadlines and can track updates to the article.
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. 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 can be added using the settings shown in the screenshot below.
Employee authors are also very useful if there is a Professor or full-time employee who has written articles, this feature can link the professors or employees to both their faculty 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, images, videos, and even other modules from around the site can be added. Read more about the Rich Text module content type on the Rich Text feature guide.
Updates & Corrections
This setting allows editors to show viewers when the article updates or the story changes. Clicking on the "Add" button pulls two options: Updates and Corrections. Both allow the publish date to change automatically as the content of the article changes. The date will only change when the rich text content is updated. There is also an option to set a manual revision date. Multiple update and correction dates can be added to one article to reflect the changes the article went through.
Note: another way to manually set an article's publish date is through advanced edits.
- Click on the three dots on the top right when editing an article.
- Click on Tools.
- Scroll down to the "Advanced edits" section and choose a New Publish Date.
- Save.
Once saved, publish the article for changes to show.
Advanced: Article Importer
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. This feature can also be used to mass import articles in one CSV file.
Articles can be bulk uploaded from a CSV file, including full HTML. Since the files are comma-delimited, any field that may contain commas should have quote marks (") placed around the content. If uploading HTML in the body field, this means that HTML attributes may need to be surrounded in single quotes instead of double.
Please keep in mind that when using the article importer, all steps need to be done exactly as instructed, or else articles may end up missing information or being formatted weirdly.
Article Importer
To create a new Article Importer, follow the steps below:
- Click on the main search bar in the Brightspot editor.
- On the bottom left next to the Create button, in the dropdown menu, select Article CSV Importer.
- Finally, click New.
The importer will pull up. To download the template needed for the importer, click on the blue hyperlink called "Download CSV Template". Otherwise, choose the CSV file to upload.
CSV Template
The photo below is a screenshot of all the template columns, the following section will go through each of these and explain what they mean.
- Headline: Required: This is the title of the article.
- Sub Headline: Optional: A subheadline briefly describes or summarizes the article.
- Slug: Required: The identifier for the article. For example, if you were importing an article titled "The Best of BYU". The slug would be "the-best-of-BYU" or something along those lines. It's recommended to keep the slug as close to the article headline as possible for ease of identification.
- Author Title: Optional: The title of the author.
- Body: Required: The body of an article includes words, images, and any other content it 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 the article was posted.
Note: If any text fields contain commas, the field value must be wrapped in quotation marks, e.g. "event,description". Excel or Google Sheets will do this automatically when exporting to CSV.
Uploading the CSV File
Once the CSV file is populated with the required information, uploading the file to Brightspot will allow it to be automatically ingested. The options available in the CSV importer are the following:
Ingest HTML Images: If the article body contains images, it is best to turn this on, as the images that are connected with the 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 or article.
Sections: This setting allows all articles that are ingested to be associated with a specific section on the site.
Tags: Similar to sections, this allows the importer to choose what tags are to be associated with the articles being imported. However, if tags are already attached to the articles, this setting should be turned off. At the same time, the associated tags with the uploaded article are already in Brightspot before uploading the CSV.
Once the options are set and the file is uploaded, click on Import in the top right. Once the checkmark appears, view the log at the bottom of the screen to verify that everything is imported correctly.