Introduction
LocalGov Drupal (LGD) is a free and open-source Content Management System built by councils, for councils. LGD offers all the power and flexibility Drupal does, and brings with it preconfigured page types, content components, editorial workflows, and much, much more.
In this Dive into LocalGov Drupal series we cover LGD's main features for Content Designers and Site Builders.
In Part 1 we looked into LGD's page types for service-related content; in Part 2 we discussed Service Status updates and the Alert Banner system.
This third part highlights managing News Articles and setting up a Newsroom.
Installation
LocalGov News: Core is part of LGD Core, but is not enabled by default. It provides the News Article and Newsroom page types, and adds the News editor role.
News Articles
→ Image taken from Hammersmith's council website. It shows a News Article.
This module adds the News Article page type, a fairly standard type of content with fields for the article body, main image, publication date, news category, and more.
You can link each News Article to related articles, and have those appear alongside each article.
As with many types of content in LGD, you can setup editorial workflows, set up review dates, schedule automatic publication and archiving, manage revisions, and invite stakeholders to review articles ready for publication:
→ Screenshot of the editorial interface for creating LGD News articles.
We will cover all of LGD's editorial features later in this series.
Newsroom
Newsrooms are chronological lists of News Articles. Visitors can find articles by keyword search or select one or more search filters, also called search facets.
By default, visitors can filter on news category and publication year/month, but administrators can add new filters.
→ Image taken from Haringey's council website. It shows a “Newsroom” page displaying a list of News articles.
Summary
- News articles can have news categories assigned to them, can link to related articles, and have many editorial features.
- Newsrooms are chronological lists of News articles. Visitors can find content by keyword search, they select facets to filter the list.
LGD council training CTA
Looking for a quick way to get started with LocalGov Drupal?
We offer both live training and on-demand remote training on Drupal and LocalGov Drupal.
We've supported Hammersmith & Fulham, Audit Wales, and the Shared Resource Service Wales on their learning journey, and would love to work with your teams too.
→ contact us at [email protected].