Overview Our client desires to publish local news stories on their public Web site. Their staff reporters have little to no HTML experience and no time acquire the necessary skills. Since the news stories change daily, it was impractical to expect their Webmaster or other internal techies to publish items in a timely manner once written. After the reporter is satisfied with his or her story it must be approved, and possibly altered, by the editor befor being published for the public to view. Once approved, it needs to automatically fall in line on the public site. From time to time, however, there is a hot scoop, and the editor needs the abilty to restack the headlines on the public site to give prominence to specific articles.

The freshest stories are to default to the top of the public page and display the headline as well as the beginning of the story. As new items come in, the oldest need to automatically shift to the side and less-prominently display just the headline. Eventually items should fall off the bottom and land in the archives, but just in case a user wishes to look up an article from the past, a seach utility is necessary.

Challenges Provide a restricted access tool for internal reporters to write, edit, delete, and manage his or her own news stories. Provide a restricted access tool for editors to review and edit stories, release approved items, and order the headlines on the public Web site. Integrate published stories into the existing public Web site in a default patter unless restacked by the editor. Ensure stale items fall from the public headlines page, but allow users to search for and retrieve archived items.

Resolution This application requires two portions - an administrative tool and a public tool. The administrative tool, accessible only by authenticated users, differentiates among different authors and editors. Each author is able to create new local news stories, edit existing items, and delete unwanted stories. Stories under development can be kept private and accessible only by the author. Once released, the story is available to the editor to modify and release to the public web. Editors are able to see stories by all authors and modify any item as necessary. Once approved, stories are released to the public web for site visitors to read. The editor controls the final layout of the public headlines page specifying the number of 'Top Stories' and 'Sidelines' presented to the public as well as the order of individual items in each category.

As stories are release to the public Web, the newest items default to the 'Top Stories'. As newer items become available, older ones are shifted to the 'Sideline'. As items move to the 'Sideline', the oldest stories in that section are moved to the archive. The specifc number of each type is determined by the editor. If a particular story deserves special recognition, or if the editor simply desires it to remain on the public site a bit longer, he or she can specifically force it into a particular section. If he or she desires a particular order of stories, items can be shifted to fit this preference. Items are eventually retired to the archive. These can be specifically resurfaced by the editor, but are otherwise absent from the public

view. A visitor can still view a story, however, by useing the search utility. He or she is able to enter any combination of keywords, much like typical search engines, and retrieve all items that contain matches in order of closest match.

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