Announcements

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For underwriting, an individual “announcement” is a single message that is scheduled and placed on the site individually (a little like an ad, although the underwriting system should not be used for ads since it lacks analytics and is not transparent to browsers that treat ads differently).

To display an announcement on the site, you add it to a “Placement.” Placements are slots that are inserted into the site and channel any announcements into that spot. More about placements >

To add an announcement

Under “Announcements” in the left-hand menu, click “Add New”

(To edit an existing announcement, click “All Announcements” and then click on the title of one of the announcements in the list)

Many parts of the editing screen for Underwriting Announcements work like editing, scheduling, and publishing a post.

Add a title (which will be publicly visible in some situations)

Edit the options in the “Underwriting Announcements” settings box

Placement

The placements you’ve created where you can make the announcement appear on the site.

Announcement type

The formats you can use for announcements (see details below).

Most of these Announcement Types will have an “Announcement text” field, which is the main part of the announcement (or the headline, depending on which options you select)

Plain text

Just shows the text you enter with no significant formatting

Image

Lets you upload an image

  • Image options:
    • Image size defines a couple of common display sizes you might want to use.
      • “Medium rectangle” or “Leaderboard” will make you to crop the image to the respective aspect ratio after upload
      • “Free” crop gives you the option to crop to any aspect ratio after you upload
      • “Original” won’t do any cropping – just use the uploaded image as-is

Event

Lets you add a date, which will appear above the Announcement Text, like this:

  • Events have several options:
  • Date options:
    • Date – just one date
    • Date & time – also lets you set a start time
    • Date range – a start and end date (no times)
    • Other – custom text describing the dates, e.g., “Friday evenings June-August.” Keep this very short!

Alert box

Designed to visually highlight the message from rest of the page (e.g., with a colored background). Can be used for a similar function as alert bars.

  • Alert box options:
    • Headline size – smaller numbers mean smaller text
    • Background color – a solid color behind the text
    • Text color – the color of the text
  • Important notes on colors: you have complete control here to put a raw CSS color value! (Note: the color picker widget has been disabled since the Invintus plugin has a bug that conflicts with it; if the Invintus plugin is fixed we can bring the color picker back)
    • Make sure your color is valid. Ideally copy-paste a six-digit hex color code from the brand site (including the pound sign at the beginning). If you’re not confident with hex colors, ask for help!
    • Make sure there’s enough contrast between the background and the text. Imagine how difficult it might be to read with bright sunlight reflecting on your screen or for folks with limited vision.

Underwriting Announcement

No special options that are different from plain text, but this can affect how it looks when displayed.

Full post content

The full content of this post will be used wherever this announcement is placed (you can even switch to the block editor for more control).

When laying out the post, be mindful of the space available where this will be placed (e.g., if it’s placed in a sidebar, it won’t be very wide).

Additional information

Additional text that follows the big “Announcement text” headline.

  • None – Don’t show anything after the “Announcement text” headline
  • Excerpt – A short sentence in the style of post excerpts
  • Subtitle – Very short; shows in the style of additional information below posts (like authors and dates do, for example)

Anything in this space should be as short as possible. The announcement will look bad and won’t do what you want if this gets very long at all.

Link

  • No link will not link the announcement to anything. Use this one carefully – the only information people will get is what’s in the “announcement text,” “additional information” or image. Nothing you enter in the main post will show up.
  • Full post (below) will use the text you enter below for a special announcement post, which will be linked — this works just like a regular post elsewhere on the site (e.g., new stories).
  • Custom URL lets you enter any URL, on this site or another, that the announcement will link to. Nothing you enter in the main post will show up.

If you select “Full post” and “Custom URL” a checkbox will appear letting you decide if you want the link to open in a new tab (the default if this is left unchecked is to open in the same window where the announcement is clicked).

Post options

You have similar options with an underwriting announcement as you would for a normal post

These include:

  • Saving it as a draft
  • Preview
  • Scheduling (click “Edit” next to the text saying “Public immediately”)
  • Expiration (click “Enable Post Expiration” and set a date and time)
  • Publishing