Creating an Announcement page in Typecase

The purpose of an Announcement

You should create an Announcement when you want to publish a news story, press release, or give an update on a service. For example, you can create an Announcement to:

inform staff about a change in senior management
announce a new University ranking or department achievement
provide a newsworthy update on our research
summarise the impact of a high-profile event
raise awareness of a deadline for an upcoming event
let staff know that a University service is changing

Don't create an Announcement to:

link to an off-site news story, create an External item instead
duplicate an existing news story or give information that is better provided by another organisation
explain a complex process, create a Guide instead
communicate information that is relevant for a longer period of time, this could be more suitable as a different content type
describe an upcoming event and how to attend it, create an Event page instead
tell a story that is longer, more detailed and more personal 鈥� create a Case study instead

Appearance

Announcements are used to provide information about University-related news and activity. They can include:

the date when the story was first published and updated
a call to action
a section for media contacts and a social media sharing function for press releases
images
quotes
multimedia embeds
links to related guides and contact information

Examples of an Announcement page

Accessibility

You must make sure your digital content is accessible.

As a public sector body, we're to make the content on our website as accessible as possible. The government checks our web pages to make sure they comply with the internationally recognised guidelines from the (W3C).

Find out more about accessibility and contact beta-content@bath.ac.uk if you have any questions.

Before you create an Announcement

Before you create a new Announcement, search the website to see if it already exists. You should think about if you and your team are the right people to write and publish the news story. We do not want to duplicate content on the website as this can be confusing for users.

Resources to help you write your Announcement

The University's style guide will help you make sure you're using the same terminology, style and tone as the rest of the website. This is important so that website users can understand us easily through the consistency of our content.

Our formatting guide will help you create appropriate headers, links, lists and other formatting for your page. This is important because it makes the information we provide clearer to website users.

Writing about research

As stated in point 7.3 in the Code of good practice in research integrity, you must make sure you disclose all funding sources, significant collaboration and any other potential financial interest.

Creating Announcement content

Subtype

Choose the subtype which best describes your Announcement. You can choose from:

News story
Press release
Service update

Core components

Your page must have a User need, Title, Summary, Narrative, Navigation, and Owning organisation or group.

Naming your Announcement

Write a title that is clear to understand and tells the user the story in a few words.

The title for your Announcement should:

be easy to understand - use simple English and avoid using technical terms if possible
use active language rather than passive like 'University hosts international conference', not 'International conference held on campus'
be informative by including enough detail to give the user a sense of what the story is about - 'Research to help blind people' is not as informative as 'Research helps blind people see photos'
make sense when read out of context - this will help users find your content through search engines
be limited to 65 characters if possible so users can read it in entirety on search results

Your title should not:

include the words 'Announcement', 'News story', 'Press release' or 'Service update' as these are automatically displayed on the page
include 鈥樐⒐酱解€�
be a question
use hyphens to separate phrases - use a colon instead

Writing an Announcement summary

Use the summary to explain what has happened and why it is important, for example:

After the recent homepage redesign, the Digital team will soon launch a new version of the Service start content type on the University website.

Make sure the summary works with the title of your Announcement. Always add a full stop at the end of the summary.

Labels

You can add Labels to your Announcement if you're an Editor or Admin, but you don鈥檛 need to add Labels and should only use them to:

pin content to a Topic page
create a filtered list of related pages

Don't use Labels for any other reason. Labels don't function like search keywords or tags on a blog. If you use Labels incorrectly, your content could appear in the wrong place on the website.

Find out more about using Labels in Typecase.

Top of page fixed-position components

You can choose to add a Focus component to your Announcement.

Drag and drop components

You can drag and drop the Multimedia embed component and the sections in the Narrative component if you want to change the order of where they appear on the page.

Media and research enquiries

If you are using the Press release subtype, you must add a contact for media enquiries using the Media and research enquiries component. You will also have the option to add a contact for research enquiries if your press release is related to University research.

This component appears at the top of the page for the Press release subtype only. In addition to contact information, it contains buttons allowing visitors to easily share your press release on social media sites.

Bottom of page components

You can choose to add the following components to the bottom of the page:

Setting a publishing date

You can set a publishing time and date for your Announcement. The time and date you set can be in the past or the future. When the Announcement appears on the website, the time and date you set will appear at the top of the page.

If you leave this field blank, the item will go live on the website when you click 'Publish'. In this case, the time and date that you published the Announcement will appear at the top of the page.

Schedule a publishing date in the future

To schedule a publishing date, select a date and time in the future from the drop-down menus, then click 'Schedule'. Your Announcement will then self-publish on the time and date you have set.

Set a published date in the past

You can set an Announcement's published date to a past date. To do this, select the date from the drop-down menus and click 'Publish'. Your Announcement will be published immediately with the past date at the top of the page.

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