Creating News

The News add-on provides the ability to create timely content. News articles can display author information, grouped into categories, and tagged.

Installing Add-ons

Add-ons like News are not included with the Drupal Kit by default. Read the Add-ons page for more information about how to add this feature to your site.

Individual News articles

Create News articles at Content > Add Content > News Article (/node/add/utnews_news).

For news stories referenced on other websites, populate the “External link field” with the URL such as https://example.edu. This will cause the News article title to follow the external link in news listings, bypassing the display of the article’s main text.

In addition to the article’s main text, articles can include:

  • author

  • publication date

  • main image

  • news categories and tags

Demonstration content of themed News article page

News listings

All published news articles display on the site’s domain URL at /news, as depicted below:

Demonstration News listing page

Populating the “External link field” will point the News article title to the external URL in news listings, bypassing the display of the article’s main text.

News listings can display in 1, 2, 3, or 4 items per row. See Control items per row (multi-item components) for more detail.

News listings configuration

Users with the permission ‘Administer news configuration’ can navigate to Configuration > News Feature (/admin/config/content/utnews) and control page display behavior.

In addition to the configuration settings located there, users with permission to access the block layout can change the titles of the sidebar categories by going to Structure > Block Layout (/admin/structure/block).

News article listing blocks

Many sites will need to display a subset of news alongside other page content. For example, a college/department site may want to list only faculty research news in the sidebar of the site’s faculty landing page. To achieve this, use News listing blocks.

Inline or site-wide listing?

Sites usually only need to display a news article listing on individual pages. To do so:

  1. Create a Flex Page.

  2. Navigate to that page’s Layout tab.

  3. Choose Add block in the region the list should appear

  4. Select Create content block > News article listing in the settings tray.

Each news article listing block can optionally show a title and has optional header and footer fields for text to appear above and below the news list.

Sometimes sites need a listing to display on multiple pages. To do this, go to Content > Blocks > Add content block > News article listing (/block/add/utnews_news_listing). Once created, this listing will be available in the “Block library” placed on existing pages. For example, page types with flexible layouts (like the Flex Page) will now show this as a placeable block in the settings tray.