What was ClubRunner's idea behind having the two categories "Stories" and "News"?

I have ignore 'News' and just used 'Stories' as it better caters for our needs

 

Until just this week that is what I have done. But I wanted a second "Stories" widget added to the Home page so I chose to use the News one and I find no substantial difference. That is why I asked the question.

 

Hello John and Les,

Thank you for asking this question, as others may have this same query.

'Stories' and 'News' is essentially a way to have different sets of stories on the same webpage--they both pull from the exact same story library.

For example one club uses 'Stories' as their main homepage stories, but they use the 'News' widget to highlight a 'story of the month'. This way the website designer person (level 30 admin) can choose whatever 'top' story they deem appropriate, but the content editors (usually level 50 or even 60) just type their stories in normally.

You can rename 'Stories' and 'News' widgets to anything else, e.g., 'Club Blog' or 'What's Happening' etc.

While many clubs don't use the News widget on their homepage, the clubs that do use it find having two different sets of story 'containers' helpful.

 

Mickey, I did just what you suggested. I took the News widget and renamed it after my blog and put it at the bottom of the page. It is at this point a beta idea because I am going to the executive to get approval to post blog ideas there. I would like others to do so too. Part of my goal is to bring a greater variety to the site in order to increase the number of visitors and page views. Of course, that means that I have to give the blog to the club which is okay as then I can use the Rotary logo legitimately. I hope they will accept it.

Part of my reason for giving it away is because having an independent blog is getting too expensive. Now you have to have a security certificate renewed annually and it costs $99.00/year in addition to the other costs. I assume that is in the clubs cost for its site and now that you have a comments section which I also use in the News Stories section as well it makes sense to incorporate a blog into the site. That is why in another thread I asked when the comments section will be open to all Rotarians.

 

Hello John,

That's correct - only members of the same club can leave comments on a club website story page. For example see a public Story (or News) page from your own site by clicking here. At the bottom only logged in users of your Dryden website can leave comments.

Comments are not open to all Rotarians, only to your fellow club member Rotarians.

I'm that happy we can hopefully save you some money. The new security certificate regulations i.e. purchasing "SSL certificates" have only been in effect for a few months, but will soon be common across most websites. That is - all future websites will need SSL security certificates.

If a club/district wants to purchase/transfer a domain over to ClubRunner, we have complimentary (free) SSL certificates for the domain name so the users don't have to worry about that.

If you have further questions please let us know.

 

As a means of expanding the blogging component would it be feasible to recode that component so that all Rotarians who have a website login for a ClubRunner website could use their ClubRunner login to post comments on other ClubRunner sites? Perhaps it could be coded in such a way as to permit the club to activate such a feature with the default being just the club members vs. the wider Rotary community.

 

Hello John,

Thank you for your suggestion to allow any ClubRunner subscriber (Rotarian, even if from a different club or district) to be allowed to add club website story comments. I've passed this along to our DEV team. I can't guarantee when or if this might be implemented, but each suggestion is carefully evaluated by our team. Have a great evening, let me know if you have more questions.