How to upload a Daily News story with pics and video (updated Sept 2023)

Intro

• When you first log in, go to Content > Articles.
• Then click the dropdown menu at the top that says All Collections Tags, select Daily News then click the Filter button.
• Then if you bookmark this page, you should always come straight back to the Daily News list.

Adding a new story

• Click the button at the top left that says Add Article.
• The blank box at the very top that says Add Title is just the name of the article in the backend of the app, NOT the headline that will show on the story. But to make it easier and avoid mistakes, the easiest thing to do is put the same thing in this box and the Headline box (in the Header Group section a little bit down the page).
• For the actual headline in the Headline box, make sure it’s bold. You can click the B button, or all the usual keyboard shortcuts work, such as cmd B to bold something, cmd I to italicise etc.
• Then all the copy for the story goes in the big box just under the Add Title box at the top. 
• The first paragraph of each story should be in bold, but don’t capitalise the first word like we do in the paper.
• Always do one return after the final line in the article to add a line of blank space. Then add the published date and italicise it, thusly:
• Published Thursday 11 August 2022
• Then do a return after that line. This is to put a line of blank space in and avoid the bottom of a tablet/phone screen cutting off the bottom of the letters in the last line of text in stories of a certain length.
• Remember to italicise anything in the text that needs it (film titles etc), as the italics won’t always transfer over from InDesign/Word when you copy and paste.
• Some funny formatting things happen if you try to paste from, for instance a press release in an email. If anything like that happens, eg the whole thing pastes in italics that you can’t change to normal text or there are weird spacing issues, the easiest way to sort it all out is to paste that bit into a Word doc, highlight it all and clear the formatting. Microsoft keep changing where that is, but currently there’s a tab at the top of Word that’s called ‘Styles pane’. If you click that, you get a menu. The top option is called ‘Current style’ and if you click the dropdown menu you should be able to select ‘clear formatting’.
• For every story we do, you have to click Daily News in the Collection Tags section on the far right.
• In the Sections bit directly underneath, tick whichever section of the paper the story has come from or would go in. It’s not hugely important, so if you’re not sure if it should be in headlines or Home or whatever, just tick whichever you think is best.

Adding pictures

• Underneath the main text box is where your main image goes, in the Main Media section. Click the +Add Media button in that box, then drag your picture into the gallery that opens. It should select automatically. If you drag several pictures in at once, make sure you tick the one you want for your main image in this story. (See section below for making sure pics are the right size)
• When you select the pic, it’ll get a blue border round it and a tick will appear top right. At this point, you’ll also get a few boxes down the right that give you all the file info for the pic (such as all the Getty caption etc). If this is your main image for the story, it doesn’t matter what’s in this caption box, as none of it gets used. Click the blue Select button bottom right to finish. 
• If you want a caption on your main pic, you need to fill in the Caption box in the Main Media section. 
• Then add the pic credit (Getty etc) to the Credit box below the Caption box.

Making sure pics are the right size

• If you’re taking pics from the paper, they’ll be too big, so you need to open it in Photoshop and reduce it to 72dpi and max 1,536 pixels wide. I’ve just been choosing 1,400 pixels wide as that works fine and is easy to remember. Go to Image > Image Size, then make sure the ‘resample’ box is ticked before you start typing in the numbers. Change the dpi first, then the pixel width.
• There are various websites that do the same thing. It doesn’t matter how you do it, as long as the pics are 72dpi and 1,400px wide.
• The slider galleries are pretty crap. The pics show quite small and not all the same dimensions. If you have a second, third image etc, the best way to make use of it is to put a blank line in your body copy, make sure the cursor is on that blank line, then click the Add Media button top left, select your picture and then click Insert Into Post in the bottom right, and it’ll add the pic into your story. I think it’s best to have some copy then a pic, then more copy and another pic etc, rather than insert two pics right underneath each other. I also think it looks odd if you insert a pic after the first bold paragraph, so insert it after the second para which is in regular font (ie not bold).
• If you add pics into the story this way, when you select your picture, whatever’s in the Caption box (so all the Getty caption info, for instance) will appear in small text below the pic. Obvs you don’t want all that, so you should edit it down, use a different caption or, if you don’t need or want it, just put Credit: Getty (or iStock etc).
• It’s quite often best (and less messy) to just say “pictured” or “above” etc in the story, rather than having a caption anyway.
• I’m not sure if Pugpig (who made the app) have sorted this bug out yet, but the only thing I can remember that’s stopped pics from displaying is if the Getty caption has single or double quote marks in it. That confuses the app, so just delete the quote marks (or the whole caption if you don’t need it) and it should be okay.

Saving and publishing stories

• The last thing to do is to check that your story looks okay. In the Publish box top right, click the Preview button (it’ll say Preview Changes if you’ve updated the story) and it’ll show you what the story will look like on a phone/tablet. It’s always best to check them on a phone or tablet too, just to check it’s def okay. I’ve never really noticed any difference except sometimes some slightly weird font issue where the font in different paragraphs looks a different size. These weird effects are usually a result of copying and pasting from somewhere, so you could select your whole story, past it into Word and clear the formatting, then paste it back in. 
• We usually schedule the daily stories for a minute after midnight, but could change if we have an embargoed story etc. In the Publish section top right, click the Edit hyperlink next to ‘Publish immediately’, enter your date and time and then okay it, then save as draft if someone needs to sub it, or click ‘Schedule’ if it’s had the last sub and is ready to be definitely scheduled. Someone always needs to check them before they go live. At the moment (Sept 23) that’s Eddy, with Nicky doing it when I’m away.
• If it’s a story we want to publish immediately, like big breaking news etc, instead of setting the schedule time, just click the Save Draft button in the Publish section top right to make sure all your work is saved. DO NOT publish the story, as someone will need to sub it first.
• For whoever’s doing the final sub and publishing the story, just click the Publish button in the Publish section.
• If you accidentally publish something or realise there’s a terrible mistake in something we’ve published, go to the Publish section. The top line will say Status: Published Edit – just click the Edit hyperlink, select Draft from the dropdown menu and click okay. This will unpublish the story and you can carry on as normal.
• If you just want to correct a minor mistake or something that’s not crucial, just edit it, replace the pic or whatever you need to do, then click the blue Update button (where it usually says Publish or Schedule).

Linking to or embedding a video

• If you need to link to an FN video, you can make a hyperlink to one of the videos on our FN Education TV site at https://schools.firstnews.co.uk/fn-education-tv/ rather than on the FN Live site.
• Or if you have an actual video file you want to use, you first need to upload it to the FN Vimeo page. Here’s how:
• Go to https://vimeo.com/
• Log in with username: [email protected]
passwd: Dendawg64!>
• Click blue ‘New Video’ button top right
• Click choose files and select the video you want to upload or the easiest thing is to just drag the file onto the page
• Give the video a name and description
• Click the black ‘share link’ button, directly left of the ‘embed’ button in the top right
• Copy the whole link, e.g. https://vimeo.com/736534767
• Then back in the app CMS, add a blank line where you want your video to go (usually at the end of the body copy, but wherever you want), put your cursor on that line then click ‘add video’ (NOT Add Media) at the top. From the box that pops up, select Vimeo from the dropdown ‘Video source’ menu, then paste the video web address you just copied in the box below that, then hit OK