News pages are simple pages, text and images, that can be viewed in sheepApp and should contain relevant news and information that your members or group members might be interested in.

Common use cases for index pages can be:

✔️ General announcements

✔️ Latest news

✔️ Group specific news

1. Go to Settings > Self-service App > News Pages

2. Click 'Add News Page' button on the right. This will bring up the side panel.

3. Set the title of your news page.

4. Set the path (optional) from which your news page can be accessed from.

Please note: If you are setting you own path then the path is relative to your sheepApp URL. This means you do not need to put in the full URL of the location you want it to be found in the App.

❌ - https://app.sheepcrm.com/sheepy-owners-club/news/summer-meetup-tickets-are-now-available/

✔️ - news/summer-meetup-tickets-are-now-available/
​Note: Make sure to include the trailing / at the end

💡 - If you do not set the path then we will automatically create your path at

news/{news-title}/

5. 📷 Add a photo (optional) Recommended size: 800x450px or another 16:9 ratio image This will display on the right of your published news page and will also be used as the thumbnail on your news index page once you have created one.
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This will display to the right of your published content page and may be used as the page thumbnail elsewhere in the sheepApp.
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Please click on the image below and then save it, you can then add your photo/text on top as a template.
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6. 🟢 Publish date (required) In order for your news article to show on a news index page you need to make sure the publish date has been set. To make it live straight away put todays date. If it is in the future it will not show until the date specified.

7. 🗃️ Archive date (optional) If your news page is only relevant until a certain date, for example if it is advertising a ticketed event, you might want to archive the news page once the event has past otherwise users might try to access links that are no longer available.

8. Add content (required). The content field supports markdown so feel free to format your content as you wish and include links, lists, headings etc as you see fit. To see what you can achieve with markdown view this guide markdown basic syntax.

7. Add fallback body content (optional/recommended) this is displayed when a user does not have permission to view the news page and should inform them why they can't access it. Do they need to log in? Do they need to be an active member? etc. You can include some helpful snippets like a log in link or a sign up link. Working example below, just replace your-flock-name with your flock's path.

8. Add secondary photos (optional) you can add extra photos to your news page which will show next to your main image on the news page itself.

9. Set your visibility settings (optional)

🟢 Public - If set to yes anyone with a URL to your news page can access it even if they are not logged into the App.

🔴 Public - If set to no anyone with a URL to your news page who is not logged in will see a preview with a message saying 'You do not have required access to view this content' or your fall back content.

🟢 Member Only - If set to yes only users who are logged in and with an active membership can view your news page.

🔴 Member Only - If set to no any logged in user even if they don't have a membership can view your news page.

10. Context (optional) - If the news page relates to a specific event or team/group you can select it here otherwise this will be a general news item.

💡 Note: If you set the context to a team/group but your news index is setup in a way that the current news article fits the news indexes criteria then the news page WILL still show on the index page. Play around with tags and filters on the news index page to prevent this if that is not what you want.

11. Add any tags (optional/recommended) relevant to your news page.

💡 Tags are used by other recourses in the CRM to create relationships between two things. For example when creating a news index page you can set a filter to only pull in news pages with a tag of 'general'. This way you can make sure your news index only contains news pages created with the tag 'general'.

13. Activate your news page by hitting the active toggle in the top right of the side panel, by default they are set to active. This way it can be viewed in sheepApp if the publish date has passed.

If you want to set up a news index page please see our guide for setting up index pages below. Although the example in the article is setting up a member only magazine archive index, you can easily follow the steps for setting up a simple news index page as well.