Lists, Posts & Grids in broadcast.radio (website add-on only)

Modified on Tue, 24 Sep at 12:56 PM

Quick Links

Introduction

This article briefly introduces the concepts and uses for Lists and Grids when building websites using broadcast.radio.

Lists, Posts & Grids are used extensively to achieve various features within broadcast.radio websites and understanding them will allow you to rapidly add a wide range of features to your radio website without any need for complex settings or custom HTML code.

The potential uses for Lists, Posts & Grids are almost limitless but some pre-built options are baked into the core platform to get you started. These include:

Featured Content - Things you want to prominently feature on your website.
On Air Guide - Shows & Presenters
News - Manual, automated or both.
Playlists - Manual or automatically imported from Myriad 5 Playout (requires Myriad 5 Playout and Anywhere Cloud Pro).
Advert Banners (300x600 & 728x90) - To be displayed on all pages.

You can also create your own lists and display them on any page using Featured Content Element Blocks

What Are Posts?

Posts are content articles added to the website by a user or manually imported into the system as a News Article or Playlist item. Posts generally consist of a Title and Post image combined with a more detailed 'page' that can include all Element Blocks (so images, video, text etc). Common uses for Posts include:

Manual / Local News
What's on events
Blog posts
Anything you want to use in a List.

To add a new Post Click on Content > Posts then click on the Create button in the top right.

You will then be asked which Category you want to create the Post in. If you are not sure you can select the Generic Post then you can set the Category when editing your Post.

In the example above we have already created a Category called Cheese (see Content > More > Manage Categories). Let's create a new Post in the Cheese Category. Click on the Cheese category and then create your post using the same method you would to edit a Page.

Here you can see the completed post. Let's add another Post using the same method. We then be able to use these in either List or a Grid.

Of course you can create Posts about just about anything you need for your website content.

What are lists?

Lists are simply a fixed list of content in a specific order. Generally items within a List will contain a mixture of text and image as well as other Element Blocks. You can display a List using the Featured Content List Element Block. This will always display the content of a List as defined.

So let's create a new feature to go on our homepage that lists our favourite cheese!

Click on Content > Lists > Manage Lists.
We want to create a new List for our Cheese Posts. So click on the Add button.
You will then be asked what Type of List you want to create, in this example we want to create a Generic List.
Next we will be asked to give it a name. Let's call it Greatest Cheese!
The List will now be included as an option. Click on the ... and select Edit to edit the list.
On left hand side of the Edit List window is the Posts included in this List and the right hand section shows the all available Posts.
Drag the Posts from the right to the left, in the order you want them to appear in your List.
When you are ready click on Publish (top right).

The List in now created and contains a couple of Posts about cheese!

But we now need to see how we can put this list on our Homepage.

To do that follow these steps:

Click on Content > Pages > Homepage to edit your Homepage.
Click on the '+' button at the bottom of the page to add a new Element Block.
You need to add the Featured Content List. There are a lot of different Element Blocks available so you may find it easier to use the Search to find the correct Element.
Once selected the Feature Content List will be added to the bottom of your Homepage.
Add in a suitable Heading Text and then select the correct List using the drop down option. You can also limit the maximum number of Posts to be displayed if you wish.
Now that you have added the List, you can click on the Preview button to see how the updated Homepage will look.

Here you can see the finished List on the Homepage. The key thing to remember about a List is that it is a static list that will only change if you manually update it. In the next section we will look at how Grids can be used to show the latest Posts automatically.

What are Grids?

In the last section we saw how a List can be used to display a static list of Posts on your website. But what if you wanted an element on your homepage that always displayed the latest Posts without you needed to update a list manually.

Examples of this type of content might include:

News (both manually created or ingested from a subscription service).
Blog posts.
Latest events

Basically anything that you want to be updated with your latest Posts. To do this you would use a Grid.

A Grid is a Element Block that will always show the latest X Posts from a specific Category. So say for example you wanted to have the last two local news Posts always displayed on your Homepage (maybe more useful than cheeses!) then you could create a Category called Local News and then display a couple of items from that Category on your Homepage using a Grid.

Let's take a look at the steps involved.

First, lets assume we do not already have a local news Category so want to create one to use for storing the Posts. To create a new Category, click on Content > More > Manager Categories you can then use the Add New Category section to add a Local News category.
Now that the Local News Category exists, we can repeat the steps in the previous section to create a couple of new Posts that are in the Local News category.
Click on Content > Websites > Posts then the Create button in the top right.
Select the Local News Category for the Post type. This will set the correct Category for the Post. You can change it in the Categories tab later if required.
Add your Post content including the main story images and text as well as the Post image (right hand side) and summary text. There are many Element Blocks you can use to create your Post content.
When you are happy click on Publish.
For this example we will assume we have already added a few more Posts to the Local News Category.
Now that we have some Posts in our Local News Category, let's add a Generic Posts Grid to our homepage to display them!
To edit the Homepage click on Content > Pages > Homepage, this will open the Homepage for editing.

We can still see the Greatest Cheese list we added in the last section. We want to remove that so select the Featured Lists Element and expand the right hand menu on the Edit Bar to select Remove Block.
Now click on the '+' button at the bottom of the page to add a new Element Block and find Advanced Post Grid from the available Element Blocks (tip - use the search to find the Element you need).
Type in a suitable Heading Text for the Element Block.
Set the Only Show This Type drop down to Posts.
Set the From This Category drop down to Local News.
You can also set the maximum number to show if you like. Let's limit it to four stories.
That Element Block is now complete. Click on Preview to see what it looks like!
On the preview , you can see that the Greatest Cheese List has been replaced with our Local Stories Grid.
If you are happy, close the Preview and then click on Publish.

The main difference is that now that the Local Stories Grid is on our Homepage, it will always show the latest Local Stories so when we add some more Local News stories in a few days time, the homepage will automatically show them without having to edit the homepage or a List.

For more detail on creating content see Editing Pages.

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