News and Blog
In Cascade, you can have a News and Blog section in your project. Both are very similar in code, but differ in structure.
Setting Up the News and Blog
To get started, you will need to contact the web team to have them add the news and/or blog directories to your project. They will also add new assets (these appear in corresponding subdirectories when you click on the "Add Content" button). Inside each directory is an index page (homepage) and Year folders with Month folders inside. This is where you will store your news articles/blog entries.
Your News and Blog Homepage
The index page at the root of your News and/or Blog directory automatically keeps track of your content and lists is by date. If your content has an image, it will post that as a thumbnail on the left side. In the right column, it will list the title, publish data, and the summary (see below).
Creating Content
Whether a News Article or a Blog Page, to create one you simply click on the "Add Content" button and select the appropriate asset (they will be inside subfolders called "News" and "Blog" respectively). Filling either one out is similar. Once selected, you'll be presented with an edit window. Here you will add your content.
Metadata
We start by creating our file name (Page Name) and our Placement Folder. Page Name will require that you not use capital letters or spaces, so it can be easier to simply fill out the Title first (see below), then copy/paste that into the file name, and then click on the link when the error comes up to allow Cascade to "rewrite" the file name correctly.
Second, you'll want to place the new content into a folder. Ideally, it would be the month and year for when the article is to be published in order to keep better track of it. Navigate through your folder structure by clicking on the box and selecting "Browse" from the slide-out menu until you've located the Year and Month of where you want to place your content.
Next comes the Title. This is the name of your content and what gets displayed to your users. After that, you can fill out the Summary. This is optional, but if you can give a quick sentence or two about the article, it will be listed under the title back on the homepage. Next is the Publish Date. This is the day you want your article to be available for publishing. If you are writing something for a future release date, set that date in the calendar as the Publish Date. If it's for immediate release, set the date for today.
News/Blog Content
For News, the first think you'll notice is a question of whether this is an internal or external article (this is not a part of the Blog). If you are writing/creating your own news content, you would select internal and continue filling out the fields shown. If, however, you are linking to an article somewhere else on the internet, you would select external. Doing so will hide all of the previous fields and present you with a single field to add a URL.
If you choose to create your own content (Internal), then you are present with a few more fields. The first is an option to add an image. This is an image that will be place on your news page (right side). This is also the image that will be used as the thumbnail on the index page. Next is the optional Alt Text field. If your image has any information in it (as in, it is NOT purely decorational) then you will NEED to add Alt Text to allow screen readers to get that information to their users. Finally, in the editor, you get to write your content. You can use all of the editing tools normally available, such as bold, underline, images, and links.
Publishing
When you're done creating your content, simply Submit and Publish your article or blog entry, and then also publishing the index file (so that the new article will be added to it as well). If this is the first time publishing your news or blog folder, be sure to publish your ENTIRE SITE PROJECT so that the News and Blog left nav options are added to all of the pages.
Differences Between News and Blog
For the most part, the News and Blog run the same on the back end (other than the News having the ability to link to an external article). The different is in how they are displayed. The News should be looked at as a group of articles independent of each other. The articles are part of the greater site (as they contain the left nav), but should flow from the index file. The Blog, on the other hand, should be looked at as a continuation from one story to the next. This is why the Blog has the "You Might Also Like" section at the bottom that leads to the 4 previous blog entries. Which one you use or how you use it is up to you.