Working With Mambo
Using A News Board

Mambo includes a newsboard feature with the default installation. This allows you (and if you choose, your registered users) to keep visitors updated on the latest happenings on the site, updates, and other news. The newsboard will show up on the front page of your site as content. In addition, Mambo allows you to display other news in other panels, if the template permits it. Mambo also has a built-in RSS feed generator, which lets others add your newsboard to their sites or view your news in any RSS reader. This is included on another panel which you can also turn off if you wish.

Mambo comes with a few news items installed. You can find, edit or unpublish them by going to Content -> Content by Section -> News -> News Items. This brings up the News section of the Content Items Manager. Looking at the page you would see:

• Title of the news artle. Click on the title to edit the news article content and attributes.

• Published: Red 'x' tells you that it is not published, ie. not visible on the web site, but stored in the database. A green checkmark notes that the item is published and is displayed on the web site. Clicking on this icon toggles between the two states.

• Front Page: If there's a green check mark here, this means that the item will also be displayed on the front (main) page as well as in the news section that visitors can get to when they click News in your main menu. If there's a red 'x' here, it means that the item is available for viewing on your web site via the News section from the main menu, but will not be shown on the front (main) page. Clicking on this icon toggles between the two states.

• Reorder: This let's you set the order in which the items are displayed. Click on an up or down arrow to move the article's position in the list.

• Order: This is an easier way to order your menus, using numbers. Then click on the small diskette icon next to the column title Order to save the order the articles should appear in.

• Access: This tells you who has access to the news item. You can change this by clicking on the type of access in the Access column.

• ID: The database ID number, in case you would like to link news items to other items on the site. Normally, you may not need to use this and are unable to change this value.

• Category: Usually this should be Latest News so that it will show up in your news area. However, you can add other categories as well to put your news in. Remember, any news you add will not show up in your front page unless you click on the icon in the Front Page column and make it into a green check mark. Also keep in mind that news items not in the Latest News category may not show up on this page when you look to edit or work with your News section. You would then have to go into All Content Items from the Content menu and go to that category to edit the news item. Click on the category name to make changes.

• Author: shows who wrote the article. You can click on this to change it as well. Date: The date which the article was first written. The date not be changes from this page.

Adding A New Article:

There are two ways to add a new article. If you're in the administration panel and in the news items page mentioned earlier, click on the New icon at the top. From here you can fill in the fields and parameters for creating an article. You can also add content by logging into your site. See Adding And Approving User-Submitted Content for more informaiton on how to do this.

Creating A Site News Flash

Mambo includes a special News Flash area that you can use to display the most important news in a way that visitors should take notice. Mambo has a special Newsflashes Section and Newsflahs Category set up just for this purpose. You can turn on (publish) or off (unpublish) the News Flash feature from Modules -> Site Modules. Look for the Newsflash module.

You can create a new newsflash from the Content -> All Content Items page. Click on the New icon and fill in the newsflash article as you would a normal news article. Except for the Section, choose Newsflashes and for Category, chose Newsflash. If you want the news flash to also display on the front page of your site in with the rest of your news, click on the Publishing tab on the left side area and click in the box next to Show on Frontpage.