Newsagent
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| Author | Chris Page |
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| Contact | Support |
| Repository | github |
| Issue tracker | github |
| OS | Neutral (web based) Will not work with IE8 or older |
| URL | Newsagent |
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Overview
Newsagent is fundamentally a news feed generation system. It was originally designed to allow members of staff and research group members to publish news stories that can be syndicated across a variety of locations and platforms including the new School of CS website. It has grown into a powerful news and information dissemination platform capable of generating a variety of feeds on demand, and distributing copies of articles to a range of recipients when required.
At the most basic level, the system expects users to create news articles and add those articles to named news feeds at one or more visibility levels. Created articles are stored in the system, and potentially sent to selected recipients via email, moodle, or other transports. Websites, RSS readers/aggregators, or other systems request the content of the feeds they are interested in, potentially filtering the articles returned based on their visibility, and present the content to their users as appropriate.
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Several Newsagent features are not compatible with Internet Explorer 8 or older versions of IE, and Newsagent is primarily tested to work with Chrome and Firefox. In order to use Newsagent from Internet Explorer, you must be using IE 9 or newer, preferably use IE 11. If you encounter any problems, please use the latest version of Chrome or Firefox. |
From Megaphone to Newsagent
One thing that needs to be kept in mind while reading these pages is that Newsagent is not simply a replacement for Megaphone: the features provided by Megaphone - the ability to contact cohorts or groups of students via email, moodle, or other mechanisms - are now provided as part of a larger news, events, and information publishing system.
Megaphone's functionality is replicated as a 'Notification' mechanism in Newsagent: when creating articles, users with appropriate permissions may opt to send a copy of the article to groups of individuals via email, moodle, or other mechanisms. Note that this notification facility operates in addition to the normal feed publication mechanism: all articles are added to a feed as part of the publication process, regardless of whether any notifications are configured, and there is no way to simply use Newsagent to send messages without adding the message to a feed.
The need for a new system
As noted above, Newsagent was originally designed as a means of creating news articles that could be syndicated around the internet as needed. As it grew it became increasingly obvious that it was encroaching onto the functionality of Megaphone while offering far more scope. In addition, Megaphone was deeply integrated into legacy systems in the school: it was reliant on the School of CS username and email setup, generally had serious problems at the beginning of academic years, and still depended on several SoCS mailing lists to contact some groups (for example, all messages sent to postgraduates had to go through the (usually inaccurate) school phd and msc mailing lists). Newsagent addresses all of these problems and more, while providing many new features and allowing for more widespread access to historical data.
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