Syndication - What is it and Why do I care?

BEFORE WE BEGIN, Let’s define Syndication

Syndication is pretty complex, but here is an easy way to think about it: there is something that is already created that you want to display in another spot, usually as a way to advertise or share it.

Syndication has three very basic parts to it:

• What to share

• Where to share it

• How to get it shareable

What to Share - This is called Syndicatable Content. This is any Event, Announcement, News article, or Story on our website.

Where to share it  - By using Flex Content Items on a different page, we can display a small list of select Syndicatable Content. This small list usually displays each item in what we call a Teaser. Teasers typically consist of a title, image and other brief information like a date or location.

How to get it shareable - By using certain settings on the Syndicatable Content, like tags or display theme, we can get the item to easily appear in another spot. 

Like I said, Syndication is pretty complex. I won’t get into it any more here, but to learn more about syndication and see examples, please watch our Syndication video

ANNOUNCEMENTS AS TEASERS

When we think of pages, we think of all the content on that page. This is the full display of the page. 

But there is another way to display that content around the site, which is called a Teaser Display.  You see these displays anytime you see listing pages on our site. 

These Announcement Teaser Displays usually have a title and some other bit of information that may act as a link to the full display of the page. 

These teasers are seen in the Announcements Listing Page, as well as the Announcement 4up Flex Content Item added to a page.  Flex Content Items used to display Syndicated Content are basically small display lists made up of Teaser Displays.

Let’s see what Announcements Listing pages look like. 

To find the Announcement Listing Page, you can use either:

•  the menu Inside Bryn Mawr > The Latest > Announcements 

• or you can visit the URL https://brynmawr.edu/inside/latest/announcements to view all the announcements.  

These announcements are all displayed as Teasers on this listing page.

If we follow the link of the announcement, we will see its full display page, or we will follow the link to something like a pdf or different URL for a registration or page with other information. This is all the info you put in when you submit an Announcement on our website. 

For this particular announcement, we have something called Tags displaying on the bottom.

https://www.brynmawr.edu/inside/latest/announcements/wednesday-wyndham-restaurant-7 

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND TAGS

If you are logged in when you submit your announcement, you can select a tag to associate to your announcement.  

This Tag helps the Announcement to Be Shareable. 

This means that this announcement can show up in other places on the website. 

For instance, if we click this tag link "Dining Services"

The link will bring us to an Announcement Tag Listing Page for Dining Services Announcements. 

The title of the page has the Tag in it, and you can see that the URL has some extra stuff at the end to help us know this page is only displaying Announcements with this Tag. 

Here, we can also see the Teaser for the Announcement we were looking at moments ago in this listing page. 

To learn more about syndication and see examples, please watch our Syndication video.

Let’s see what an Announcement 4up looks like

There are many examples of this Flex Content Item called Announcement 4up on our website. It can be placed on any of the following types of pages: Basic Page, News, Office/Services, or Story. Though usually, they are used primarily on a Basic Page. Unlike the other three syndicatable CTs, display of Announcements does not vary between themes.

This example is on our All Content Basic Page -   https://www.brynmawr.edu/inside/offices-services/library-information-technology-services/projects-partnerships/web-services/drupal-guides/basic-page-style-guide 

What’s this Theme thing?

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND THEMES

Most folks won’t need to worry about the Display theme, but I wanted to touch on it in case you are one of the folks that needs to know.

In brief, each Announcement, News, Event or Story has a Main Theme, or main place, that they “live”, like in the Inside theme, or the GSAS theme, for instance. 

Then, they also have places they can “visit” such as, any theme besides where they live. This is called a Display Theme. 

If an Announcement doesn’t have a Display theme that matches the Main theme of the page you are putting an Announcement 4up on, then that particular Announcement Teaser won’t show in the Announcement 4up list. 

To learn more about syndication and see examples, please watch our Syndication video.

How do I make an announcement show up where I want?

When you submit an event as an authenticated (or logged in) user you have the ability to set a few extra fields, like tags and display theme.  

If you are unsure how you want to set those extra fields in order to use your announcement in an Announcement 4up, the Communications team can help.  

Even if you do set these fields, the Communications team may reach out for clarity or may reset one of the fields to something that seems to make better sense given the context of the announcement you are advertising.

The important fields that help determine where you can advertise your Announcement using an Announcement 4up Flexible Content Item are:

1. Tags [ auth only ]

2. Display Theme

If you can't find a relevant Tag or need an Announcement to have a specific Tag, please contact Communications - communications@brynmawr.edu.

By using the Announcements 4-Up Flexible Content Items in a Basic Page, you can bring your Announcements into a Basic Page by either referencing a tag you associated with the Announcement or via manual selection.

How to add an Announcement 4up to your page

As with any Flexible Content Item, you can add an Announcement 4up to a basic page.  The Announcement 4up can be added to any of the following types of pages: Basic Page, Event, News, Office/Services, or Story.

This Flexible Content Item allows you to curate a listing of up to four (4) Announcements either by tag or by manually selecting the ones you know you want to advertise in this list.  

These Announcements display in a styled list of (up to) four teasers.  

To create this listing, you have a Heading and Intro field, along with selecting Announcements by tag or manual selection.

Announcement 4-up

This Flexible Content Item is a way to syndicate Announcements based on a tag or manual selection so that they can appear on your page. There is a place for a heading and an intro so people know what these announcements are about.

If you click on the Tag Selection dropdown you will see all the tags you could select.  Selecting a tag here will display the latest four announcements associated with that tag. If there are less than four announcements associated with that tag, less than four will display. If there are no announcements associated with that tag the Announcement 4-Up Flexible Content Item will not display at all.

A Note on Tags:  For News, Events, Announcements, and Story it is worth noting that using the tag approach will keep content fresh by updating the the latest 3/4 items. Manually selecting items will require manual upkeep to keep content fresh as these will not update on their own.

The other option would be to manually select specific announcements. For this you would Open the Manual Selection area and click open the Select Announcement Items pill button

This will open a pop-up window that will allow you to search for and select the item you want

Simply click the box next to the item you want, scroll down and click the “Embed” button.

You can select up to four items total. You can click open the Select Announcement Items pill button as many times as you need to search and find the item you need.

You are able to rearrange the items by simply hovering over the title so you see the crosshairs and then dragging and dropping them to reorder.

This is how it will display on the page:

Display Rules

These are the Display Rules the code follows for either a tag or a manual display method. 

TAG ONLY

If you use TAG ONLY to display Announcements in your Announcement 4up, the following rules apply:

1. Items will ONLY show on a Basic Page when the Announcement’s Display Theme matches the Basic Page’s Main Theme.

2. Items will ONLY show on a Basic Page if the Announcement’s Tag matches the Tag you selected in your Flex Content Item.

3. The Announcement 4up pulls the latest pieces of content by descending date order.

4. If Items exist for that TAG, but are unpublished, they will NOT show

5. If NO Items have that selected TAG the ENTIRE Flex Item will NOT show

TAG ONLY EXAMPLE: 

MANUAL ONLY

If you use MANUAL ONLY to display Announcements in an Announcement 4up, the following rules apply:

1. Items will show on ANY themed Basic Page despite the Announcement’s Display Theme settings.

2. The time-based rule for display is ignored by the system, therefore, use of MANUAL Selection renders the Announcement 4up static and evergreen but not dynamic.   Manually selecting Announcements will require manual upkeep to keep content fresh as these will not update on their own. This content can quickly grow stale unless you continually EDIT the Announcement 4up.

MANUAL ONLY EXAMPLE: 

More Button

When using these Flex Content Items, you will get a black CTA (Call to Action) button that usually says something like “More News” or “More Events” and will direct folks to the main listing page for those type of items (News or Events, etc)

There are, generally speaking, multiple methods to link to More content for those flex content items, 

• Tags - When you use Tags to pull in some content the More Button  take you to a tagged listing page of those type of items (News articles or Events, or Announcements, etc).

• Manual - If you ONLY Manually select items, your More Button will take you to the main listing page for that type of item, this listing page will match the Main theme that the Basic Page your Flex Item More Button is on.

• Custom CTA - There is also the ability to Customize the CTA so you could make people go to a Department’s page, or to a Registration Page, for example. 

When to ask for help

ANNOUNCEMENTS UNPUBLISHED DEFAULT

All Announcements are saved/submitted as unpublished. Communications reviews all Announcements. Once it confirms all content is correct, Communications will publish it. If they find any content that is in need of clarification, they will reach out to you.

ANNOUNCEMENTS ARE UNEDITABLE

Only Communications team members are able to edit an Announcement once it is published. If you find your announcement is in need of editing, you will need to reach out to Communications for correction at communications@brynmawr.edu. 

REQUESTING TAGS AND/OR DISPLAY THEMES FOR YOUR ANNOUNCEMENT

• If, after you receive your confirmation email, you realize you didn’t set any tags or display themes, You should email Communications with that confirmation email receipt and explain that you need their help setting tags and display themes for an announcement.

• If, upon selecting announcements for your Announcement 4up, you discover that the announcement is not displaying on your page please reach out to Communications at communications@brynmawr.edu to ask for help in getting that announcement to display on your page, either by tag or display theme. 

• If Tags and Display Themes are confusing, please reach out to Communications to ask for help at communications@brynmawr.edu.

• If you add an Announcement 4up and set your tags and the Announcement you are expecting isn’t in the list of teasers on your page, please reach out to Communications to ask for help at communications@brynmawr.edu.

RECAP

To recap what we covered: 

• An ANNOUNCEMENT is Syndicatable Content. This is WHAT we want to display as a Teaser somewhere else

• An ANNOUNCEMENT 4UP Flex Content Item added to a page will be the vehicle for displaying these Announcement Teasers. These can be added to any of the following types of pages: Basic Page, Event, News, Office/Services, or Story. This is WHERE we want to display our Announcement

• Tags and Display Themes are some of the factors that determine HOW the Announcement’s Teaser Display appears, according to the Display Rules for the Announcement 4up.

• How to put an Announcement 4up on a Basic Page.

To learn more about syndication and see examples, please watch our Syndication video.

More Flex Articles

Please see the https://askathena.brynmawr.edu/help/drupal page for all Drupal articles. Also visit our Drupal Training Videos page for links to all our available videos.

Please note that some Flex Content items require training and possibly special permission levels.  

As with anything on the site, if you are unsure what the item is, how it looks or how to best utilize it, please see our sample pages Basic Page with all content and News article with all content or reach out to Communications for guidance at communications@brynmawr.edu.

Please note, there are corresponding training videos available that cover some of the items in these articles. Some items may require increased permission levels and special training. Please reach out to Communications for guidance at communications@brynmawr.edu.