Newsroom Pattern

Audience / Scenario

The people who visit/use the site:

• want the latest news and information on events and promotions
• want to review your progress over a period of time, so historical information has to be made available

The people who own the site:

• want a simple method of providing news to keep visitors informed in a consistent manner
• want a feature that gives people a reason to come back to your site

When and where?

You should use this pattern when:

• you want more recent items to supersede older items in news summaries
• you have regular events, promotions or other news to convey to your clients

You should avoid this pattern if:

• you don't have much news – it might be better to just create a page and update it occasionally

You should incoporate this pattern in any of the following locations:

• a dedicated news section
• headlines on the home page and other key pages
• headlines in a side panel
• headlines in a Newsroom [tab]
• news summary on a home page

Solution

Post news articles, events, promotions, etc., in to a [blog]. You can usually customise the design of a blog to make it look more like a formal newsroom - in most cases just putting the organisation logo and colour scheme will do the trick.

Most blogs will have built-in [RSS Feeds] which allow people to get the latest news directly within their email client, RSS Reader or even wire it in to other web sites.

Why?

A newsroom is a popular concept - most people watch the news on TV or they read it on the internet. But this newsroom is special - it contains news that's specific to whatever your site is about.

A newsroom is a visible locaiton within your site - it's the place where people will go when they want to find out about your latest events, promotions, etc., and best of all it's a very good way to get people to keep coming back to your site.

Having an active and informative newsroom is a very visible sign that the site - and the people behind it - are active and thriving.

Examples

New website design No. 3 (Guy's Blog) Labels: theme, builder, community, bubbles, scriptix, plugins, communities, forums, support, news, website, design, tutorial

Linking to News (Atlassian Confluence Wiki) Labels: editing, content, wiki, text, notation, confluence, links, news, date

Rich Text Editor (Atlassian Confluence Wiki) Labels: confluence, pages, content, rich, text, editor, editing, news, comments, to-do

New tutorial - Adaptavist Website Theme (Theme Builder Plugin) Labels: tutorial, news

Adaptavist Saves The World (Website) Labels: news

Adaptavist host 2005 Montréal Bach Festival (Website) Labels: news

Adaptavist Embarks on World Domination (Website) Labels: news

Dial 321-Thousand for Adaptavist (Website) Labels: news

Confluence Small Team License (Website) Labels: news

Adaptavist announce Content Formatting Plugin (Website) Labels: news

Most blogs display chronologically-ordered content, for example: Guy's Blog

Related Patterns

• [Blog Pattern]
• [Feed Pattern]