News Articles (News Center)

In the backend

Under CMS → News Articles, the “News Center” page opens. The list displays categories and articles. Use the tabs to create categories and articles (“Add Category,” “Add Article”) and manage authors (“Manage Authors”).

In the store

The news overview displays all articles, with topics available for filtering. Each article has its own page. In addition, there is the news section on the homepage, the “Latest News” box, and results in the store search.

Settings

You can specify what appears on the homepage and article pages under Settings → Design → News Articles. You can approve comments from your customers under CMS → News Comments.

Add a Category

1. Under CMS → News Articles, open the “Add Category” tab. To create a subcategory, first open the parent category.
2. Enter the name for each language. The SEO name and meta tags (title, description, keywords) are optional.
3. Optionally, set the “Category Image” and “Sort Order.” The “Status” is set to “Active” for new categories.
4. Click “Save and Close” to save.

How Categories Appear in the Store

• In the news overview as topics for filtering and in the sidebar under “Topic Areas,” each with the number of articles.
• A topic only appears if at least one active article is directly assigned to that category. A scheduled article counts toward this total even before its publication date. The store does not display empty categories or top-level categories without any articles of their own.
• Subcategories appear on equal footing with the main categories in the overview. The “News and Information” box displays only the main categories.
• The category image displays the store search results for news articles that do not have their own image.

Editor and Source Code

In the “Content” field, you can format text, set links, and insert images. You can edit the HTML directly via the editor’s source code view. Classes and ` style` attributes are preserved, while ` <script>` blocks are removed by the shop when saving.

Bulleted Lists

Create bulleted lists in the editor as lists, not as paragraphs with hyphens. In the default layout, the article text displays lists with bullets or numbers and indentation.

News Slider

If the “Slider” is enabled under Settings → Design → Slider (enabled by default), the article editor will include a “News Slider” section. Use “Add Slider Element” to add an image or video. The article page displays the first active element above the text.

Where the featured image appears

• News overview: always; the first article is displayed in full size, and the rest as tiles.
• Homepage: with “Show Homepage Image” or, for Top News, with “Top News (Homepage) Show Image on Homepage.”
• Article page: only with “Detail Page: Show Image”; disabled by default. The “Image Title” appears below as a caption.
• “Latest News” box: no image.

Thumbnail when sharing

If someone shares the article on social media, the store uses the featured image as the preview image; if there is no featured image, it uses the first image in the content. If both are missing, it uses the image from Settings → SEO / SEA → Title & Meta Tags → og:image - Fallback. from 4.9.12

Create an Author

1. Under CMS → News Articles, open the “Manage Authors” tab and select “New Author.”
2. Enter the “Name”; optionally, fill in “Profile Picture,” “With the Company Since (Year),” “Email,” “Profile/Contact URL,” and “Company” (overrides the default) for external authors.
3. Fill in “Function/Role” and “Biography” for each language.
4. In the article, under “Link Author,” select the author. Only active authors are available for selection.

What the store displays

• The author’s name in the article header.
• Below the article, the “About the Author” box with a photo, position, company, and biography, provided the linked author has a profile photo, a biography, or a position.
• If no author is linked, only the name from “Author (Free Text Fallback)” will appear.
• If you delete an author, their articles will lose the link. The free-text content remains intact.

What “Top News” Does

• On the homepage and in the news overview, the article is marked as a “Top Story.”
• The “Top Stories” sidebar in the news overview displays up to three articles: first the latest Top News items, followed by the latest other articles.
• On the homepage, Top News has its own display toggles; see illustration.

Number and Order on the Home Page

The homepage displays news under “News” as soon as articles are published. The number of articles is determined by Settings → Design → News Articles → Number of Articles on Homepage (default: 10). Top News articles are included in this count; there is no separate count for Top News. Items are sorted by “Sort Order,” then by date, with the newest first. Top News items do not automatically appear at the top: If you want an article to appear higher in the list, assign it a lower sort order than the others—for example, -1.

News Overview

Displays all published articles on a single page, sorted by sort order and date, each with an image, a short description, and a “Read More” link. Clicking on a topic displays only the articles in that category and its subcategories.

Article Page

Header with category, headline, date, author, and, if applicable, “Last Updated.” Below that: the content, the “About the Author” box, the comments, and the newsletter notice.

Boxes

Under CMS → Box Manager, you can enable or disable the “Latest News” box (the newest articles with date and category) and the “News and Information” box (the main categories). They appear in the left column, wherever your layout displays them.

Here’s how it works

Below the article is the “Customer Reviews” section with the “Comment” button. Guests are redirected to the login page. Each customer can comment on an article once.

Approve

New comments will not appear until you approve them. Under CMS → News Comments, you can approve, edit, or delete them. The store does not send notifications about new comments; be sure to check there regularly.

Disable

Under Settings → Design → News Articles, set “Opinions/Reviews (on/off)” to “ false.” The article page will then display neither comments nor the “Comment” button.

Link to another category

Use “Copy to” with the copy method “Link news article to More Categories”: The same article will also appear in a second category. Changes apply everywhere, but it appears only once in the overview.

Duplicate

“Copy to” with “Duplicate News Article” creates a separate article in the target category with all text, images, status, and date. The SEO title is copied as well: Change it in the copy so that both articles have their own URLs.

Move and Delete

“Move” changes the category. When “Deleting,” check the categories from which the article should be removed; it is only completely deleted once it has no category. Use the “SEO History” button in the delete dialog to redirect the old URL to another page beforehand.

URLs and Redirects

• By default, an article’s URL is /news/seo-name.html. In new stores, the “Overview” and “Topics” pages also start with /news/; in older stores, they start with /blog/.
• If you change an article’s SEO name, the store creates the old URL in the SEO history and redirects it to the new one using a 301 redirect.
• You can change the path portion under Settings → SEO / SEA → SEO Settings using “URL Prefix for News Articles” and “URL Prefix for Blog/News Overview.” This only takes effect in “Rewrite” URL mode; the store will continue to redirect old URLs.

Automatically for every article

• Structured data as NewsArticle with title, description, publication and modification dates, image, author, and publisher, plus the breadcrumb trail.
• An entry in the sitemap as soon as the article is published.
• Results in the store search; see the Store Search Guide.

Empty Languages

If you leave a language blank, the store will copy the text from the default language into it when you save. English visitors will then see the German text until you translate it.

DeepL in the Form

If a “DeepL Authkey” is stored under Settings → Interfaces → Translation Tools → DeepL, the option “Translate via DeepL” will appear next to the text fields in every language tab except the default language. The button translates the field from the default language, field by field.

Automatic Translation

Upon request, our support team can set up a regular DeepL translation process. It translates new articles and news categories, as well as those whose text in the default language has changed, and overwrites the other languages in the process. Therefore, you should make your own corrections in another language only after this run has completed.

Set Up and Post

1. Under Settings → Interfaces → SEO/SEA → Facebook (Meta), enter the “Facebook (Meta) App ID” and “Facebook (Meta) App Secret.”
2. Under Settings → SEO / SEA → Facebook OAuth, connect your Facebook page.
3. Open a saved article. Below the form, you’ll find the “Social Media” section with “Post Now (Facebook).” The post includes the name, a short description (truncated to 200 characters), and the link to the article.

Scheduled articles from 4.9.12

If the article is scheduled, the button says “Schedule for Publication”: Facebook will then publish the post on the publication date. Facebook only allows scheduling between 10 minutes and 30 days in advance; outside this window, or for inactive articles or categories, the button is disabled and displays the reason. The “Post History” shows all posts with their status and the actions “Retry” or “Delete Post.” In the list, the “Social” column indicates which articles are on Facebook.

Filters

The gear icon next to the search bar opens “Published News Only,” “Unpublished News Only,” “Top News (Sticky) Only,” “Categories Only,” and “Articles Only.” The “Include subcategories” and “Hide inactive” toggles are located above the list.

Search

The search field finds articles and categories by name. The list updates shortly after you enter a search term. Click “Go to” to jump to a category, and “Display” to select the number of rows.

Sorting and Toggling

Clicking a column header sorts by name, sort order, “Created,” “Modified,” “Published,” status, or Top News. You can toggle status and Top News directly in the row.

Item is missing

1. Status: Is the article set to “Active”? New articles start out as inactive.
2. Date: Is the “Publish news item on” date in the future? If so, it won’t appear until that day.
3. Category: Is it in an active category? An item located only in inactive categories will be missing from the homepage, the box, and the item page.
4. Homepage: It displays only as many articles as allowed by “Number of Articles on Homepage.” Articles sorted further down the list are missing there but appear in the news overview.
5. Language: Was the article created via an interface prior to XONIC 4.9.106 in only one language? If so, it will be missing in the other languages until you save it once in the backend.

Category Missing

1. Status: Is the category set to “Active”?
2. Article: Is there at least one active article directly in this category? The store does not display empty categories or parent categories without their own articles as a theme.
3. Parent Category: If a subcategory exists, is its parent category also active?
4. Box: The “News and Information” box displays only main categories.
5. Multiple Domains: If you operate multiple stores using a single backend, save the category again after creating or publishing products. This updates the theme list across all domains.