Managing News

Content is King is a commonly used phrase relating to search engine optimization, and it exists for a good reason. Google likes fresh content and gives a higher ranking to sites that are frequently creating new textual content. SmartStore.NET contains a system to manage news entries, enabling shop administrators to create new content on a regular basis. The news you create can be displayed on the home page of your shop, and are made available through an RSS feed based on the settings you've configured in News Settings.

 

Creating News Items

Info

250px|Input FieldDescription
LanguageThe language of this news entry. A customer will only see the news entries for their selected language.
TitleThe title of this news entry.
Short DescriptionThe short description of this news entry.
Full DescriptionThe full description of this news entry.
Allow CommentsWhen this option is selected, customers can leave comments about your news entry.
Start DateSet the news item start date or leave empty if this entry should be visible right away.
End DateSet the news item end date or leave empty if this entry should be visible permanently.
PublishedDetermines whether the news item is published (visible) in your store.

Search Engines (SEO)

In this tab, you can enter specific SEO values for the news item, e.g. Meta titleMeta keywords or a SEO-friendly URL alias. For more information about the fields in the Seach Engines tab, read the topic SEO.

Stores

In this tab, you can manage which store(s) the news item should be published in. For more information about multiple stores, read the topic Working with Multiple Stores.

 

Managing New Comments

If you have allowed customers to leave comments on your news items, you need to review the comments and perhaps delete them. You can manage the comments to your news items by navigating to CMS > News > News Comments. In this section, you can see an overview of all comments, along with additional information such as the customer who created the comment, his IP address or the date the comment was created. You can also delete comments here.