Research News Management¶

This chapter explains how to manage research news and announcements in the LabPress administration panel. The News module is used to publish laboratory updates, research highlights, conference reports, and other time-sensitive content on the public website.

The guide focuses on practical operations. It describes how to create, edit, and delete news entries, how to format content using Markdown, how to attach images, and how news items are displayed on the frontend.

1. Overview¶

The News module stores each announcement as a record containing a title, summary, Markdown content, optional image, author, publication date, and display order. The public website presents news in two views: a list page and a detail page.

Each news item can include a featured image that appears alongside the summary in the list and at the top of the detail page. The content field supports Markdown, allowing you to format paragraphs, headings, lists, links, and code blocks without writing HTML.

All news data is stored in the news table. The admin panel provides a dedicated management page for maintaining news entries.

Administrator News Manage Page

2. Accessing the News Manager¶

The News manager is available from the admin sidebar under Research News. In the admin menu, this page is labeled Research News or News, depending on the active language.

Access to the news manager requires the publications permission. Administrator accounts with the all permission can also access it. Users without the required permission will see a permission error message.

To open the page, click Research News in the sidebar. The page displays a table containing all existing news entries, ordered by date and sort value.

3. Understanding the News List¶

The news list shows the following columns:

• Title – the headline of the news item.
• Date – the publication date as stored in the database.
• Actions – buttons for editing and deleting the entry.

The list is sorted by date descending and then by the sort order field. This means the most recent news appears at the top. The public news page follows the same ordering rule.

If no news entries have been added, the page displays a “No data” message.

Administrator News List

4. Adding a News Item¶

To add a new news item:

1. Open the Research News page.
2. Click the Add News button at the top of the table.
3. In the modal form that appears, fill in the fields described below.

The news form includes the following fields:

1. Click Save.

The new news item is inserted into the database and appears immediately in the admin list and on the public news page.

4.1 Writing Markdown Content¶

The content field uses a Markdown editor. You can write formatted text without knowing HTML. The editor provides a toolbar with common formatting buttons, including bold, italic, headings, quotes, lists, links, images, and code blocks.

Common formatting examples include:

• Use # Heading for headings.
• Use **bold** for emphasis.
• Use - item for bullet lists.
• Use [link text](https://example.com) for links.
• Use triple backticks for code blocks.

The public news detail page automatically converts Markdown to HTML when displaying the content.

Administrator News Markdown Editor

4.2 Uploading a News Image¶

The image field includes an upload button. To attach an image:

1. Click the Upload button next to the image field.
2. Select an image file from your computer.
3. The system uploads the image to the uploads/news/ directory.
4. A preview appears in the form.

The image will be shown as a thumbnail in the news list and as a featured image at the top of the news detail page. If no image is uploaded, the news item will still display correctly, with only text content.

5. Editing a News Item¶

To modify an existing news item:

1. Find the entry you want to change in the news list.
2. Click the Edit button in that row.
3. The same modal form opens with the current values filled in.
4. Update any field, including the Markdown content or image.
5. Click Save.

The changes are saved immediately and reflected on the public website after the next page load.

Administrator News Markdown Editor

6. Deleting a News Item¶

To remove a news item:

1. Find the entry in the news list.
2. Click the Delete button in that row.
3. Confirm the deletion when prompted.

The news item is permanently removed from the database. The associated image file may remain in the uploads directory, but the item will no longer appear on the website.

If you want to temporarily hide a news item without deleting it, consider changing its date to an older value or editing the content to indicate that the item is no longer current, as there is no separate visibility switch in this module.

7. Controlling Date and Display Order¶

The public news list is sorted by the Date field, with the most recent dates appearing first. The sort order field is also considered, but its practical use is limited because date ordering usually dominates.

To control the display order of news items, set the Date field appropriately when creating or editing an entry. For example, if you want an item to appear at the top, assign it a more recent date.

If you need to pin an important announcement to the top regardless of its date, you can adjust the sort order value and, if necessary, modify the frontend template to prioritize sort order over date. By default, the current implementation prioritizes date descending.

8. Frontend Display¶

News items are displayed in two public views.

8.1 News List Page¶

The public Research News page lists all news entries. Each entry shows:

• The news image, if available.
• The title as a clickable link to the detail page.
• The author and date.
• A short summary.
• A “Read More” button linking to the full article.

The list is rendered by news.php and uses the news_list_title and news_list_summary filters before output. This allows plugins to modify the displayed text if needed.

Friontend News List

8.2 News Detail Page¶

Clicking a news title opens the detail page. This page displays the full Markdown-rendered content, the featured image if present, the author, and the date. A back link returns to the news list.

The detail page applies the page_title filter to the news title and the the_content filter to the rendered Markdown content. These filters allow plugins such as Dynamic Multi-Language or custom plugins to modify the output.

Friontend News Detail

9. Multilingual Considerations¶

News titles, summaries, and content are stored as raw text in the database. The core does not automatically translate news content.

If your site needs news in multiple languages, consider these options:

• Publish news in a single primary language, such as English or Chinese, while the rest of the site interface remains multilingual.
• Write bilingual news content by including both languages in the Markdown body, separated by headings or paragraphs.
• Use custom plugins or filters to translate news titles and summaries if multilingual news support becomes a requirement. The news_list_title and news_list_summary filters are available for this purpose.

The Dynamic Multi-Language plugin does not currently provide a dedicated translation tab for news content, but its filter system can be extended to support news fields if needed.

10. Next Steps¶

After managing research news, you may want to continue with:

• Publications – manage academic publications.
• Slides – manage homepage carousel slides.
• Tools – manage bioinformatics tools and software.
• Projects – manage research projects.
• Site Settings – configure homepage sections that display news and other content.