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Do you want to share news about your school's accomplishments, events, and important dates? Is your information scattered through e-mail messages, fliers, and notices that may or may not make it out of students' backpacks?

With Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, you can use a news site to share school announcements, accomplishments, and photos all in one place.

• Overview

• Create a news site

• Create news articles

• Set up This Week in Pictures

• Set up the RSS viewer for a news site

Depending on how your school's SharePoint site is set up, it may already have a News template. If you don't have a news site, someone with permission to create a site can create a news site for you, if publishing is enabled on your site.

If you are the owner of the site where you want to create the news site, you can create the site yourself. If you are a contributor to that site, you may need to ask a site owner or administrator to create the site for you.

A News site template makes it easy to share news by providing:

• A central place to display up-to-date information
• A choice of layouts for creating and delivering news articles
• Two Web Parts that enable efficient news delivery:
  • A This Week in Pictures Web Part, in which to display timely images
  • An RSS Viewer Web Part that can show a news feed from a different source, such as a news site or school-related site

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Create a news site

The default publishing site template comes with a News site template. Depending on how your site is set up, the news site may already be available by clicking News in the top link bar or in the Quick Launch in the left navigation.

If you need to create a news site, the process is similar to creating any site.

Before creating a news site, make sure that you are at the location on your site where you want to create the site.

1. Click View All Site Content, and then click Create on the All Site Content page.

    Tip   In most cases, you can use the Site Actions menu instead to complete this step.

2. Under Web Pages, click Sites and Workspaces.
3. In the Title and Description section, type a title for your site. The title is required.

   The title appears at the top of the Web page. It also appears in navigational elements that help users to find and open the site.

4. Type a description of the purpose of your site in the Description box. The description is optional.

   The description appears at the top of the Web page and helps users understand the purpose of your site.

5. In the Web Site Address section, type a URL for your site. The first part is provided for you.

   To avoid potential problems with updating or modifying the site, do not enter any of the following special characters as part of the Web address.

   Special characters to avoid

   Special characters to avoid
   /
   \\
   :
   *
   ?
   "
   <
   >
   |
   #
   \t
   {
   }
   %

6. In the Template Selection section, click the Publishing tab, and then select the News Site template.

    Note   If you do not see the Publishing tab on this page, publishing features may not be enabled on your site (and the parent site). See the person who owns or manages your site for more information.

To learn more about site templates, see the article Default site templates.

7. In the Permissions section, select whether you want to provide access to the same users who have access to this parent site or to a unique set of users.

   If you click Use Unique Permissions, you can set up permissions later after you finish entering information on the current page.

8. In the Navigation section, select whether you want the new subsite to be visible in the navigation of its parent site.

   You can make this site appear in the Quick Launch, the top link bar, or both. The Quick Launch displays on the side of most user-facing pages directly below the View All Site Content link. The top link bar appears as one or more hyperlinked tabs across the top of all pages.

    Note   If you do not see the Navigation section on this page, publishing features may be enabled on your site (and the parent site). To show your site in the navigation on the parent site, modify the navigation settings on the parent site (see the article Configure navigation items on the Site Navigation Settings page).

9. In the Navigation Inheritance section, specify whether you want the site to inherit its top link bar from the parent site or to have its own set of links on the top link bar.

   This setting also affects whether the News site appears as part of the breadcrumb navigation of the parent site. The breadcrumb navigation provides a set of hyperlinks that enable site users to quickly navigate up the hierarchy of sites within a site collection, such as Convention Planning. When you navigate down the site hierarchy, breadcrumb navigation appears on the page to which you have navigated. If you click No, your subsite will not contain the breadcrumb navigation of the parent site.

10. In the Site Categories section, choose whether you want this new site to be visible in the site directory of the parent site.

    You can choose from default categories, like Information Technology, Sales, and Finance. You may see new categories created by another member of your organization (see the article Add or change categories in the Site Directory).

     Note   If you do not see the Site Categories section on this page, publishing features may not be enabled on your site (and the parent site). To show your site in the site directory, modify the navigation settings on the parent site (see the article Add a link to an existing site).

11. Click Create.

    If you specified that you want the the subsite to have the same permission as its parent site, the new site is created when you click Create. If you specified unique permissions, the Set Up Groups for this Site page appears, where you can set up groups for the subsite.

12. If the Set Up Groups for this Site page appears, you need to specify whether you want to create new groups or use existing groups for visitors, members, and owners of this site. In each section, do one of the following:
    • If you click Create a new group, either accept the automatically created name for the new SharePoint group, or type a new name, and then add the people whom you want. Click the check mark icon to verify any names that you type, or click the Address Book icon to browse through your directory for more names.

      In the Visitors to this Site section, you can also add all authenticated users to the Visitors group, which provides the group members with permission to read the content on your site, by default.

    • If you click Use an existing group, select the SharePoint group that you want from the list.

      If you have several SharePoint groups, the list may be abbreviated. Click More to see the full list or Less to abbreviate the list.

13. Click OK.

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Create news articles

When you create a news article, you can choose from different layouts for your article and text.

1. On the Site Actions menu, click Create Page.
2. In the Title and Description section, type a title for your page. The title is required.

   The title appears at the top of the Web page and appears in navigational elements that help users to find and open the page.

3. Type a description of the article in the Description box. The description is optional.

   The description appears at the top of the Web page and helps users understand the purpose of your site.

4. Type the Web address for the page in the URL Name box. The first part is provided for you.

   To avoid potential problems with updating or modifying the page, do not enter any of the following special characters as part of the Web address.

   Special characters to avoid

   Special characters to avoid
   /
   \\
   :
   *
   ?
   "
   <
   >
   |
   #
   \t
   {
   }
   %

5. In the Page Layout section, select the type of article or Web page you want to create.

   

6. In the top section of the article, enter information about the article, such as publish date or byline. You can also update the title of the article if you want to change it.
7. In the main section of the article, add the text and art that youwant.
   • To insert page images, click Edit Picture, choose or upload the picture you want, and then click OK.

     You can also insert pictures as part of the main page content.

   • To update the main article content and formatting, click Edit Content.

     If you are using a page that supports ActiveX controls, you can use the formatting toolbar to format text, and insert tables, hyperlinks, and images.

     Click Check In to Share Draft to share a draft, or click Publish if you are ready to publish to the site.

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Set up This Week in Pictures

You can set up This Week in Pictures to display a thumbnail and description of the latest picture in the Image Library as well the picture date and title. Users can display all pictures in the Image Library by clicking View slide show in This Week in Pictures.

1. On the News page, click This Week in Pictures.
2. In the Image Library, to upload a single image, click Upload. To upload multiple images, click the arrow next to Upload, and then click Upload Multiple Documents.

   The most recent image that you upload will be displayed on the News page in This Week in Pictures.

3. On the Top Navigation bar, click News to return to the News page to view and publish the picture.

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Set up the RSS viewer for a news site

A site owner or page editor can display an RSS feed on the news site, showing information such as articles from a favorite news site or an educational Web site (if these external Web sites supports RSS technology). The RSS Viewer supports one feed for each Web Part.

 Note   Some feeds may not work in the RSS Viewer Web Part, depending on the authentication and other settings for your site. For more information, contact the administrator of your site.

1. On the News page, click Site Actions, and then click Edit Page.
2. In the RSS Viewer Web Part, click the arrow, and then click Modify Shared Web Part.
3. In the RSS Viewer tool pane, type the feed URL that you want in the RSS Feed URL box, and then type the number of items of the RSS feed that you want to display in the Feed Limit box.

   Usually, you can find the feed URL listed on the Web site, or obtain it when you click the RSS button on the site.

4. To display the title and description of all feeds, select the Show feed title and description check box. To display only the RSS titles, clear this check box.
5. Select any other Web Part formatting options that you want, and then click OK. To add another feed, click Apply.

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