Automated Posts

This block is only featured in the Premium Tier of the NC State Web Platform.

Overview

When building out a page you may want to include timely related news content. The Automated Posts block allows you to display the latest news from a specific set of categories or tags. This functionality also allows you to display content from a specific Newswire collection.

The block allows you to choose how many stories are displayed. The featured images of the posts can also be hidden or displayed within block.

Excerpts and Images

The Automated Posts block uses the excerpt and featured images from news posts.

If an excerpt is not provided within the post, a teaser will be automatically generated from the beginning of the story. The automatically generated teaser can sometimes have odd truncations and have more text than desired. If a story has been imported via the Newswire, you can adjust the excerpt that was provided by the original author.

If you are showing images within the Automated Posts block, make sure that each post has a featured image set. If a post does not have a featured image, it will not display in the block when this option is toggled on.

Newswire Integration

The NC State Newswire helps aggregate news content from across campus, and it allows you to choose which stories you would like to republish on your own site.

The Newswire allows you to place a story into one or more collections. Your site then imports stories from those collections. Once a story is imported, a collection-specific tag is added that will allow you to display posts from that collection within an Automated Posts block.

This integration will let you curate and select stories within the newswire.ncsu.edu interface and have them appear in the appropriate locations within your site.

Similar Blocks

The Automated Posts block is visually very similar to the Featured Content block. If you have specific stories to which you would like to link, the Featured Content block might be a better option. It allows you to manually specify the title, teaser, and image. This block can be particularly helpful if you would like for specific stories to appear on a page for an extended period of time by not having their population be automated.

New Feature With Theme Update v3.4

With the most recent update of our theme, site maintainers now have the option to show Display Categories under each story feature in the Automated Posts block. This communicates to readers the specific category of which a story is a part.

Need help?

Have questions? Feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns at go.ncsu.edu/ucomm-dev-request.