What is News Importing?
News importing is a feature that allows one site to pull and display news stories from other official Brown websites hosted in Drupal Cloud. News importing doesn't import complete articles—it only pulls key elements like headlines, thumbnails, and dates for display on news listing pages. Visitors can click these links to read the full articles on their original sites.
Imported news stories display alongside your website's regular stories on listing pages. A label content from other sites, letting visitors know the story was created by another unit and that clicking will take them to the original source.
Purpose
News importing enables website visitors to easily discover news from across the University and increases the visibility of stories shared between sites. It also simplifies content management, reduces duplicate content, and ensures web editors have the ability to include relevant news across different websites.
When and How to Use News Importing
Here are key reasons and instances when you should consider using news importing:
- Expanded content reach: News importing allows sites to quickly share relevant stories from other Drupal Cloud websites, ensuring content stays fresh and engaging without the need to create everything from scratch.
- Save time and resources: Instead of creating all news content within your department, importing news saves time and effort, allowing communicators to focus on other tasks while still providing visitors with timely, relevant content.
- Align with content strategy: Imported news should enhance your site's existing content strategy by supporting your key themes and goals, ensuring all content remains relevant and valuable to your audience.
- Improve user experience: By surfacing relevant content from across the larger brown.edu web presence, news importing gives visitors access to a broader range of up-to-date information and encourages content discovery.
- Encourage broader exploration: By linking to related content across the wider Brown network, news importing encourages users to explore more areas of the University's web presence.
How to Use News Importing in Drupal Cloud
The Drupal Cloud News Tutorial explains news creation, management, and display options, including instructions on how to import news from other Drupal Cloud sites.
Pitfalls to Avoid
- Irrelevant content: Avoid importing news that isn't relevant to your audience, as this can clutter the site and distract from key messages.
- Inconsistent updates: If your site relies heavily on imported news and you don't import fresh stories regularly, your audience may be left with outdated or irrelevant stories.
- Using imported news without a content strategy: Imported news should align with your website's broader content strategy. Avoid using imported content merely to fill space or create the appearance of frequent updates.