Creating and editing stories
Use the following sections to navigate the Composer editor tabs when creating or editing a story in Composer.
The following sections describe the various stages of creating a story component in Composer. This includes defining all the details about the story, like circulations, metadata, and related items.
Navigate to the Composer app.
Click Create story and choose one of the following options:
Note
Some of these options appear only when you have templates set as default or favorited. Your menu might not display all options listed here.
Create blank story - opens the story editing page. Continue to the next procedure. To enable this option, see Enabling a blank story.
Default template - opens the story editing page using the template your administrator chose as the default. Continue to the next procedure. To set a default template, see Setting a template as a default template.
Starred templates - opens the story editing page using the template you choose. Continue to the next procedure. To set a starred template, see Saving a template as a favorite.
Browse all templates - opens the Story template window. Continue to step 3.
Click Create story on the template you want to base your story on. The Planning page opens.
The Planning tab is where you define your story’s key elements. Your admins can customize the fields that appear on the Planning tab.
Click the Planning tab.
Complete the fields on the Planning tab. Because your set of fields may be custom to you, see Composer fields for a description of all Composer fields.
Click Save.
The Metadata tab is where you define additional information about your story.
Composer creates the canonical URL(s) for your article when you publish the article. If the headline changes and you need to correct the URL—for example, your original headline stated that three people were injured in a car crash, but now that number is four—you can regenerate a new URL string and a redirect from the original URL.
Click the Metadata tab.
Complete the fields on the Metadata tab. Because your set of fields may be custom to you, see Composer fields for a description of all Composer fields.
Click Save, if you made changes.
Use the Featured Media tab to determine the thumbnail or primary media for your article on the homepage or social posts. By using media keys, you have the flexibility to determine if you want to use a different primary image (or video or gallery) for your thumbnail and for the main image when readers open your story.
Click the Featured Media tab.
Click Add media.
You can select from existing media that's been added to the story or
Manually search and add media to your story
Choose the media element you want to use as your featured media, and click Select. The media element appears in the Featured Media tab.
Optionally, update the Title and other metadata fields for your media element.
Click Save.
Use the Related Items pane to define stories, videos, images, or galleries that are relevant to this story. How relevant items appear in your story depends on how your administrators configured related items in PageBuilder.
Click the Related Items tab.
Scroll to the section of items you want to add: Stories, Videos, Images, Galleries, or Custom Embeds (Power Ups).
Click Add. The relevant object selector opens.
Select the items you want to add as relevant objects, and click Select. The item appears in the Related Items tab.
Story variants let you manage multiple versions of a single story and display a different version of that story on each website where that story is circulated. You can customize designated sections of your story, called variant zones, that can appear differently to your end readers, depending on which website they are reading. For more information, see Introduction to Composer Story Variants.
Note
Story variants is currently in private beta, which was introduced in Composer 1.62. If you’re interested in using story variants, contact Arc XP Customer Support.
The clipboard is a place to set aside elements within an article for consideration or for later use. You can add any element (text, images, social media embeds, and so on) to the clipboard, and the clipboard can be a useful space to keep notes or to gather photo options for a story.
Note
When you highlight and add an element to the clipboard, Composer removes that item from the story. Optionally, you can drag and drop items from the clipboard into your story. If you want to simply copy an element to paste it elsewhere, we recommend using either the right-click option or the keyboard command. Additionally, you can use the Copy story to clipboard action in the editor menu to copy the entire story.
Select the content you want to add to the clipboard.
Click the Actions menu > Add to clipboard.
To access the clipboard, select the Clipboard tab in the left pane.
The editor is where you author your story. You can add elements as needed.
If you have the appropriate permissions in Composer and Photo Center, you can upload images to the system from within Composer.
If you want to incorporate galleries (Photo Center) and videos (Video Center), you must create those elements in their respective tools prior to including them as content elements in your article. In the case of videos, you must publish them before you can select them. After your elements are in place, you can move them around by dragging and dropping.
In the editor, complete the following sections:
headline - update the story’s headline as needed. If you entered a working headline, that headline appears here by default. What you enter here overwrites the working headline. You can also create various headlines for one story.
If you have the Arc Intelligence license, this field displays an AI icon that lets you generate and choose from several headline and subheadline options. See Using field-level AI in Composer to learn more.
subheadline - update the story’s subheadline as needed.
If you have the Arc Intelligence license, this field displays an AI icon that lets you generate and choose from several headline and subheadline options. See Using field-level AI in Composer to learn more.
body - enter the content of your story by either typing directly into Composer or pasting text. When you press Enter, Composer creates a new element block denoted by the in-body menu that appears between paragraphs. Format the text as needed using the formatting toolbar. For an in-depth explanation of all menu options, see Navigating Composer.
Click Save.
When your content is complete, you can publish your story to your website. Publishing your content makes it visible to your end users, so ensure the content is ready; however, you can always edit the story and republish.
Click Publish. The Publish story window opens.
Complete the following fields:
Publish time - enter when you want to publish the story. By default, the field is set to Now. Alternatively, click the calendar icon to schedule the publish for the future.
Display time - enter the date and time you want to appear on the article. For example, if you’re updating the story to fix minor errors and you want the original publish time to appear, you can define that time here, and the publish time isn’t affected when you republish.
Expiration date - To enable, click the toggle to on and enter the date and time you would like the article to automatically unpublish at. This is also available in the Unpublish modal, but we've added this in a more up front way here. Articles without an expiration date will have to be manually unpublished.
Click Publish. If you scheduled your story to publish, you see a timestamp indicating the scheduled publish time.