==============
silva.app.news
==============

``silva.app.news`` is an extension to `Silva`_ 3 to allow authors to
add news articles and agenda items in Silva.

For older versions of Silva, please use an older version of
``Products.SilvaNews``.

Using Silva News
================

The first thing to do is add subjects and target audiences to the
service_news object in the Silva root in the ZMI. This object is used
only to manage those lists (subjects and target audiences), these will
function as criteria for the newsfilters (more on these later in this
document) to search on. It would be best to add as much subjects and
target audiences as currently available to the service when setting up
News, since the lists are the basis of the filtering system and one
has to dive into the ZMI to add items (therefore it requires
appropriate rights to edit stuff in the ZMI).  Managing these lists is
quite straightforward: you can add an item by filling in a string into
one of the textfields and pressing on the corresponding 'add' button,
and remove them by checking the checkbox in front of an item and
clicking the corresponding 'remove' button.

Adding a News Publication
-------------------------

Newsitems can only be added to newspublication. To add one, go to the
SMI and choose 'Silva News Publication' from the menu of addables
(upper left corner of the edit tab in folders, publications and the
Silva root). Enter an id and a title and choose 'Add and edit', you
will then be taken to the edit tab of the newspublication.  This tab
looks a lot like the edit tab of other containers (folders,
publications) in Silva, except it doesn't have a default document or
view and can not contain anything other then news items (articles and
agenda items), folders and publications (thus allowing a more
structured setup of the newspublication).You can add newsitems by
choosing a specific type from the addables menu in this tab.

Properties tab
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the properties tab of newspublication there is a checkbox called
'restrict access'. When this is checked, the folder can only be found
by news- and agendafilters in the same folder the folder is on and
each subfolder of that folder. This can be used to make the
newspublication 'private', making it available only to for example 1
department.

Adding news items
-----------------

Now authors can add newsitems. As stated before, there are two types
of newsitems: articles and agendaitems. The main differences are that
agendaitems must contain a date/time on which the event described in
them takes place, and contain a location on which the event takes
place. The start date/time is necessary to show the items in
agendaviewers, since they show the items for a particular period
(e.g. a month). Therefore agendaviewers can show only
agendaitems. Newsviewers are capable of showing both articles and
agendaitems. Other datafields required for the system to work
correctly are 'subjects' and 'target audiences', which the author can
use to classify the newsitem. These fields will later be used by the
newsfilters as criteria for routing the items to newsviewers. When
editing an article or agenda item, keep in mind that the first heading
placed in the content editor is considered to be the subheader of the
newsitem, and the first paragraph as the lead (both will show up in
the preview on the viewers).

Adding news filters
-------------------

The next thing to do to make the system work is adding one or more
news- and agendafilters. These are objects used by editors or chief-
editors to filter a stream of newsitems. The items can be filtered on
subject and target audience (so for instance a newsfilter can route
only newsitems with a specific subject or meant for a specific target
audience to the viewers) and/or individually (per newsitem). Another
feature of the filters is the ability to 'stick to the current path',
when set this makes the filters pick up items only if they're in a
subdirectory of the filter's container.

The Filters' edit tab
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The contents tab of a newsfilter shows a list of all available
newspublications (excluding the ones made private by checking the
'restrict access' checkbox that are not in the same folder or a
parentfolder of the newsfilter). To route newsitems of a
newspublication to newsviewers (more about those later) make sure the
checkbox in front of the newspublication is checked and click the
'update sources' button. All (published) newsitems that conform to the
criteria of the newsfilter will then be routed to the newsviewers that
use this filter. These criteria can be set in the 'Properties' tab of
the newsfilter: you see the lists of subjects and target audiences of
service_news again, and in newsfilters also a couple of radiobuttons
to select whether the filter should route agendaitems as well as
articles. These criteria can be used to distribute articles and
agendaitems in different ways across the Silva instance to
newsviewers.

For example: a number of different newspublications can contain both
articles and agendaitems of different subjects and targeting different
audiences, and the newsfilters filter and distribute specific items to
viewers. Please note that this means that filters must be sensibly set
up for the site to allow all newsitems to be shown somewhere: it is
very easy to set up the system in a way that articles and agendaitems
with a specific subject or target audience are filtered out by all
newsfilters, and therefore be excluded from all viewers.

The Items tab
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The 'Items' tab can be used to filter out specific items, to allow
editors and chiefeditors to disallow specific articles and agendaitems
to be routed by a filter. To filter out a specific item, uncheck the
checkbox in front of it and choose 'update'.

Now the news- and agendaviewers can be placed. The viewers are the
objects responsible for showing the articles and agendaitems to the
public. An author can place viewers where he wants news to be shown.
The viewers show a list of items routed by the filters.

The Viewer's Edit tab
---------------------

The viewers are quite easy to set up: the only tab that matters is the
first one (edit), where you can set the number of days the viewer will
look back (for newsviewers) or ahead (for agendaviewers) to get
items. In the case of newsviewers there is also a switch to choose a
number of items to be shown. Also there is a list of available
filters. All filters chosen here are used for retrieving news. When
placed, the viewers will be available to the public and show articles
and/or agendaitems, together with an archive (that allows showing
items for a particular month) and a search option.

Appending /rss to the URL of a NewsViewer will show the RSS 1.0 (RDF
compliant) view of the items in this viewer.

The RSSAggregator
-----------------

The RSSAggregator replaces the old (and now removed) RSSViewer. In the
edit screen you'll see a textbox called 'RSS feeds' where you can enter
the complete URLs for the feeds you want to have merged by this
aggregator instance.

All the other functionality is the same as for News Viewers.


Code repository
===============

You can find the code of this extension in Git:
https://github.com/silvacms/silva.app.news

.. _Silva: http://silvacms.org