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Story Widgets: Confusion in Design and Execution

Discussion in 'Feedback & Suggestions' started by John Borst on Dec 8, 2020.

  1. John Borst

    By:John BorstDec 8, 2020
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    The Rotary Club of Dryden ON is in the middle of creating a new home page design using a team of two with consultation among various club committees and executive members.

    We have run up against some major problems trying to navigate between the two stories widgets.

    Here is what we want to do:

    Use of News  Widgets 1000px.jpg

    When we create a new story we always use a thumbnail and only put one or two sentences into the first editor
    (the top one) Everything else goes into the second or lower editor.

    When we save/publish the story we always check the Display on Story List Page. This creates a searchable Publish story 1st time 500px.jpg

    archive of all stories published.

    It is now that the fun begins. The question is how to get the story into the Home Page News widget.
    What we have discovered is that it MUST go into the Home Page Stories Widget FIRST. (Now watch)

    Now look at these two screenshots: Neither the Stories List Page and the Stories Library lead you to the Home Page News Widget
    Options from Stories list page 1000px.png

    Options from Story Library 1000px.jpg

    But if you go the Stories Widget also called the Stories for Home Page you will notice that on the left column you have "Home Page News" (see black arrow) If you check off the box to the left of the title and click on Home Page News you will transfer story to the Home Page News Widget.

    But watch what happens in the next screenshot. The Thumbnail image is missing.
    Missing Thumbnail Image 1000px.jpg

    Here is what it looks like in the Story Archive
    Story Archive with Thumbnail picture 1000px.jpg
    The question is why is this happening? It appears correctly in the Home Page Stories Widget

    Now to add another layer of confusion. If you go back to the Story Library and Right-click on "Actions" column beside "edit" you get "Display Options" - Story Library Options 1000px.png
    And you get three options as in this screenshot. The first two display options are understandable BUT
    3 story locations options 100px.jpg
    But what is Display on Page Stories Widget - we haven't figured out where stories go, we just know it is not the Home Page News Widget.
    And if you can choose from these three options why can't a fourth option be a way to put the story from the Story Library into the Home Page News Widget?
    BTW, what is the purpose of the checkable box in the Stories List Page?
     

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    Mark WILLIAMS likes this.
  2. Zach

    By:ZachJan 12, 2021
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    Hi John,

    Great set of questions, let me do my best to to help explain what is going on, and why the news and stories widgets work a bit differently.

    Each custom page in ClubRunner can have two list of stories widgets: Page Stories & Page News. The homepage is extra special, as it only has its own page's stories to be shared on the homepage, only the news and stories widgets are available. Originally these two widgets were very much the same, but as time moved forward more updates and work were focused on the stories widget with the news widget. A clear example here is the fact that the news widget does not display the stories thumbnail image.

    As you observe, you can get into the News for the Homepage widget's management from the Stories widgets' sidebar, or attempting to edit the widget from the homepage. Right now editing the widget through one of those methods to get into the listing is the only way to manage stories for the news widget type.

    As I mentioned earlier, each custom page also has its own lists of stories. So when you create a new custom page, that page can have up to 4 stories widgets on it:
    1. The homepage stories widget
    2. The homepage news widget
    3. The page's own stories widget
    4. The page's own news widget

    The first two are just a copy of the listing from the homepage. The next two are unique to the page and separate from the homepage. In the stories library the Custom Page Stories option should be related to the "Display on Page stories" checkbox. In the rest of ClubRunner if more input is needed an option like this would normally prompt to confirm which pages that you want the story added to. I can see that checking the checkbox does not appear to make a change to where the story is displayed. I will work with our team to investigate what is happening and update you once I have more information.

    The checkbox for the stories list page is so that you can remove stores if you no longer want them available on the stories listing page.

    I have shared your feedback with our product team for their review as well!
     
  3. John Borst

    By:John BorstJan 15, 2021
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    Ironically, having no thumbnail picture in the News widget for the Home Page is currently to my advantage. I want to make the most recent story feature a large inviting picture and elsewhere at ClubRunnerCommunity.com I have suggested a new News widget feature which would take the thumbnail and place it from the left side into the centre at full-width scale with the title and intro sentence and then when not there reverts back to the left thumbnail when in the News Stories and Archives widget. Could you pass that idea on to the development team, please?

    I also never knew that there were news and News stories widgets separately for a customs page. Ironically I was building a new custom page last night and realized I could have used one but had just finished when notices of your posts appeared in my e-mail.
     
    Zach likes this.
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