Article template
An article page can be created for general news and ministerial media releases, as well as agency-specific announcements. A view of your article will automatically display in relevant news listing pages and latest news components.
Using articles
Do
- Consider where your article will display – for example, a news listing page for your agency.
- Use the article page for news-based content that you want to display with a collection of other articles.
- Use articles when the content is time-specific news and is expected to eventually expire, for example news or announcements. If the content will be relevant for a long time, consider using a standard page instead.
- Articles have limited blocks that can be used and you can only add content in the Block / WYSIWYG editor and a single call to action (CTA) button.
Don't
- Create an article to be a stand-alone item of content. Use a standard page or landing page template for stand-alone pages instead.
- Don't create an article that promotes, or could be perceived as promoting, a person or group for political advantage.
How to create a new article
To add an article:
- From the site mega menu, select Content > Add content > Article.
- The Create Article screen will appear and you should select Article: News – unless you are from an editorial group that has been directed to use a different template.
- Click the Submit button and the Add Article screen will open for you to complete the article’s details.
Setting up your article
You will need to work through the following tabs – Content, Article, Media, Tags, Connections – to finish creating your article. Some fields are mandatory.
The content tab will be open by default.
- Enter a title for your article in the mandatory Title field.
- Use sentence case unless brand names or proper names are in use. No special characters. Aim for a maximum of 50 characters.
- The article title forms the end of the URL and appears in the breadcrumb at the top of the page.
- The title displays as the H1 heading for the article and is the default meta title for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
- Enter a summary of your article in the mandatory Summary field.
- This summary will display on the article page in slightly larger font above any other body copy in the article but below the article's title, published date and tags.
- For news articles, summaries can be written as a lead into the news story – instead of like standard or landing pages that would provide an overview of the entire page in the summary field.
- The summary will also display with the title and image on listings pages like the Ministerial media releases or listing components, such as the Automated latest news.
- The summary is the default meta description for SEO, of which the recommended length of copy is 140-160 characters.
- In the Block field, enter the body text for your article. To learn more about the block functionality see the Block / WYSIWYG editor guide.
- You should always clean your text using Notepad or other text editor before cutting and pasting it into the summary or WYSIWYG text field. Cutting and pasting from word documents or emails can import disruptive HTML like line heights and <span> code which affects accessibility for the audience who use screen readers and other assistive technologies.
- If you would like to add another content block click the Add Block button below the first Block.
- The Call to Action field can be left as None, or you can use the drop down to add a button that will be added to the article's listing on news listing pages. Options include:
- Browse more
- Continue reading
- Find a testing clinic near you (this relates to previous COVID-19 testing clinics and should not be used by general editors).
- Find clinic
- Find out how to
- Find out more
- Get help
- Get more info
- How to apply for
- Learn how
- Learn more about
- Read how to
- Read more about
- See all
- Read more
All options, except for Read more, will also add the title of the article to be descriptive. For example, if the article is titled ‘New electricity subsidies’ then using the How to apply button will format as ‘How to apply for new electricity subsidies.’
Short title (optional)
Use the short title field if you want to shorten your article title for navigation and breadcrumbs to prevent text wrapping for long article titles. Use sentence case. If no URL Slug is used, the short title will also modify the URL.
URL Slug (optional)
You can use the URL slug field to modify the end part of your URL. Use the URL slug to create a shorter, SEO-friendly URL and prevent duplication of words.
The URL slug will override the URL that is automatically generated from the article title.
The URL slug:
must be lowercase
must separate words with a - (hyphen)
should include the page's primary keyword
should not exceed 32 characters.
Display date
The date you created the article will display by default. If the publication date will be different to the date you first create the article, you can manually change the date so the correct one displays on the published article.
Show hero banner image
If you are using the Article: News variation of articles, you can add a hero banner image. To have a hero banner image show on your Article page, you will need to:
- Add an image in the media tab.
- Tick the box for Show hero banner image in this Article tab.
Example of hero banner image
Images added in the Card image field will display when the article forms part of another component, for example, a news listing page.
Show hero banner image
If you are using the Article: News variation of articles, you can add a hero banner image. To have a hero banner image show on your Article page, you will need to:
- Add an image in the media tab.
- Tick the box for Show hero banner image in the Article tab.
Example of hero banner image
Default images
Some article types may show a default image on news listing pages when no media is added. This will depend on your agency and how their news function has been created. If a default image is generated, it will be based on the tags applied to the article.
Image guidelines
All images should comply with the image selection and image file names, titles and alt text guidelines.
Tags are important for articles because they generate the filters that can be used on listing pages. For this reason, it is recommended that you apply more than just the 3 mandatory tags of Agency, Audience and Topic.
Filters on listing pages can only function if articles are tagged correctly.
How to add a tag
When you start typing in the tag field, auto-generated options will appear in a dropdown list that you can select from.
- You must select at least 1 of the 20 main Topic tags, that is relevant to your content. The list of main topics can be found on the homepage.
- You can choose more than one option from a tag dropdown list.
- If you add more than 1 Agency tag, it will be the first Agency listed that will be the main agency for the article and will receive the Google Analytics data for the article.
Tagging correctly
There are many similar tags and you need to check you are entering the correct tag. For example, Health is both a Topic tag and a Category tag. If you were only to enter Health as a Category tag and your listing page only has a Topic filter then users won't be able to find your article.
Mandatory tags
Agency
- Start to type the name of the relevant Cluster or Agency in the Agency field and select from the drop down list.
- You can choose more than one agency however, the first Agency listed will be the main agency for the content and will receive the Google Analytics data for the page.
Audience
- You must select 1 or more audience types, that your content is relevant for.
Topic
- You must select at least 1 of the 20 main Topic tags, that is relevant to your content.
- The list of main topics can be found on the homepage.
Use the Connections tab to add related links. These links will appear on your article page in the right hand side below an H2 heading titled Related links. For example, if your article is about the child protection system, you could add related links to the Child Protection Helpline and National Child Protection Week.
For standard pages and landing pages the Connections tab is used to set the parent page. This is not the case for articles. It is the article's tags that determine where it will appear, for example tagging a news article with your agency will allow the article to appear on your agency's news listing page.
After you have completed the tabs, Save your article.
Updating your article's URL
After you have saved your article, you should check the article's URL structure. The URL should be in this format:
nsw.gov.au/department-name/news/news-article-title
If it's not in this format, agency editors can have this changed by raising a Help Hub request. (If you only want to modify the end part of your URL you can do this by following the instructions for URL slug in the Article tab).
To update the URL as a content administrator:
- Go to the article's edit screen and in the right-side column expand the URL alias accordion.
- Untick the Generate automatic URL alias checkbox.
- Enter the new URL extension in the URL alias field. A redirect from the old URL to the new URL will automatically be created.
How to schedule your article to go live
To schedule your article to change to live, archived or another state:
- Go to the Edit screen by clicking Tasks in the top right of your article and Edit content.
- Scroll to the top of your webpage and click on Scheduled transitions.
- Click the + Add Scheduled transition button.
- Use the radio button to select which version you want to schedule to move to a new state, for example publish.
- Scroll down and select a state, such as archive or publish now and select the date and time you want the transition to take place.
Archiving your article
Before you archive an article, remove any links to your article that are on other pages.
In the Edit screen Usage tab you can see which pages on this website have linked to your article.
You won’t see news listing pages that your article appears on in the Usage tab – this is generated from the article’s tags, not a link being added on to that landing page.
When your article is archived it will automatically vanish from any news listing pages.
After you have removed all links to your article from other pages you can proceed to archive your article.
Articles that have been published should only ever be archived and not permanently deleted, to meet GIPA compliance requirements. Read more about your responsibilities when archiving web content.
To archive your article you can either:
- use the article's scheduling function, or
- change the status immediately of your article by clicking Tasks in the top right of your article, then Archive.
Managing duplicate content and SEO
Duplicate content is when the same content appears in more than one place on a website. The same content may appear both on your own website or an external site, for example a minister’s media release published on this site and on the minister’s blog.
Content that is the same on different pages or sites will affect your SEO rankings with search engines like Google. Search engines will rarely show multiple versions of the same content, so you should indicate pages that are duplicated, and which page should be indexed for search.
To prevent SEO issues with duplicate content
In the Edit tab of your article, in the right-hand column:
Open the Metatags accordion > Advanced accordion.
You can then either:
- scroll to the Canonical URL field and paste the URL of the main page from where the content is copied, or
- tick the noindex and nofollow checkboxes to request that Search Engines don't crawl or index the article.
For questions about SEO, contact the SEO team.
How articles display
Your article will display in the following order from top to bottom on the page:
- The title of your article will be an H1 heading.
- The published date.
- Any topic tags that have been added. Other tags types will not be visible on the article. In the below example the topic tags of About NSW and One CX Program have been added.
- The summary text – in slightly larger font than the body text.
- The article's body copy.
The right hand column has had to related links added, from the Connection tab. In the below example the sample links are to the CMS components guide and standard page template.
All other elements on the page are auto-generated for all articles.
Live examples
You can see live article examples on news listing pages and components: