A newsroom has editions. A portal has a first-screen job. A landing page has one button you will turn off. If you paste a ticker, three featured heroes, a scrolling notice, and an RSS dump onto /, you have not built announcements. You have built a second homepage that fights the first.
This article is how staff publish: an article forum for long pieces, feature for the thing that must be on the door this week, notices for the strip that is true for 72 hours, stickies for the post that must stay in one room. Official sources: XenForo manuals on articles, forum/thread types, notices, criteria, prefixes, RSS importer (index only). The 2.3 notebook adds feature:read on the API and the developer-tutorial feature checkbox — the product’s own Featured content tools are what the portal article already used.
If you arrived from an old “Ultimate News Ticker” shop URL, stay. A ticker is a notice type or a widget. It is not a CMS.
Decide the edition
Write the sentence before you create a node.
| Sentence | Tool |
|---|---|
| “This 1,800-word patch note is the story” | Article thread in an article forum |
| “This thread should be on the door this week” | Feature it. Portal featured widget / featured/ |
| “Everyone must see this until Friday, then never again” | Communication → Notices, dismissible |
| “In Support, read this before you post” | Sticky in that forum, not a site-wide notice |
| “We syndicate a vendor RSS into discussion” | RSS feed importer — last, and labelled |
Do not use a notice for a 1,800-word patch note. Do not feature a private staff thread. Do not sticky twelve threads in one room.
Article forums: the newsroom
Official articles chapter (2.2+ thread types): an article thread treats the first post as the piece. That first post gets higher character limits, more embeds/attachments, and different styling. Later posts are comments. After comments paginate, a compressed article stays at the top of later pages — unlike a discussion thread, where page 2 loses the OP.
Articles live in:
- A dedicated article forum (listing options below), or
- A mixed-type forum that allows articles
Official article-forum listings:
- Preview (masonry): large cover + snippet, not a thread list. Cover is the first
[ATTACH]or[IMG]in the body. Official trick: a cover that does not appear in the body uses[ATTACH]/[IMG]with zero width and height. - Expanded: blog-style, full articles on one page, chronological; click through for comments.
How you set the forum type in the ACP is not spelled out in the official notebook we queried. In the product it is a forum type on the node (Articles vs Discussions vs mixed). Create Forums → Nodes → Add node, pick the article type, URL portion news or announcements. Display in the node list: on if members should browse the archive, off if only the portal widget should show the latest. Display-in-list is still not a permission.
Permissions are normal node permissions. Staff who write editions need Post new thread here. Registered may only Post replies if you want comments without guest op-eds. Guests View. A private newsroom is a diary. If you sell a premium edition, that is the official user-upgrade + Private node walkthrough — grant staff View or they cannot edit what they sold.
Do not make the article forum the Index page route. That is a magazine portal (Architecture B in the portal article). This newsroom feeds the portal. It is not the portal.
How a piece is written
- New thread in the article forum. Title is the headline. First post is the article. Cover image as above.
- Prefixes if you have editions:
Patch,Policy,Event. Official prefixes chapter: they are part of the title and good for version / status / type. They are not a staff-only state machine on a public news forum. - Feature it if it belongs on the door this week (next section).
- When it is stale, unfeature. Leave the article up. Newsrooms do not delete Tuesday because Thursday exists.
Comments are comments. Moderate them like a busy thread, not like a blog disable-replies reflex — unless the edition is a legal notice, in which case lock it.
Featured: the door, not the archive
Official 2.3 product (already used on this site; the developer manual in the notebook only shows a custom feature checkbox): staff with the featuring permission use thread tools → feature. The public list is featured/. The same queue feeds the Featured content widget. Order is the featured date. 2.3 will not expire features for you. A calendar will.
REST: feature:read exists. You do not need it to run a newsroom.
Rules that stop the door from rotting:
- Feature what a guest can open. A hole in the hero is a private node.
- Three to six live features. An empty featured widget is worse than none — disable it.
- Do not feature every article. Then “featured” means “posted.”
- Context on a forum-related widget position narrows to that forum. Homepage: context off.
The portal article already placed that widget above the nodes. This article will not rebuild the homepage.
Notices: the 72-hour strip
Official notices chapter: Communication → Notices. Title + HTML message. {name} becomes the viewer’s name. Optional image (their avatar or a custom file). Display styling (stock styles or your CSS class). Visibility: hide below a screen width so phones do not drown.
Official notice types:
| Type | Where | Use for |
|---|---|---|
| Block | Top, under the nav, until dismissed | Downtime, policy that must be seen once |
| Scrolling | Cycle of several; only scrolls if more than one is visible | A ticker. This is your news-ticker product |
| Floating | Bottom-right, less loud; can auto-dismiss after fade | “Season 3 is open” once |
| Fixed | Full width, stuck to the bottom, covers content | Almost never. It covers the reply box |
Dismissable: members close it; they can review dismissed notices in the account. Floating can auto-dismiss after fade — official: once-only, not critical.
Display order: higher number first among the same type.
Criteria (official examples): User is a guest; User arrived from a search engine; plus the usual user/page/time criteria (avatar, message count, where they are). A notice that fires for everyone, forever, is banner blindness. The engagement article already said that.
A scrolling notice is the honest replacement for an old ticker add-on: short titles, three items, guests + members or guests only, end date on a staff calendar. It is not a masonry newsroom.
Stickies and RSS
Sticky is a thread tool. Official docs in the notebook only mention stick/unstick icons. In the product it pins a thread to the top of that forum. Use it for “read before you post” in Support. Do not sticky the same announcement in eight forums — that is a notice, or a featured item, or a link in the article.
RSS feed importer is in the official manual index under forums/threads. The notebook did not include the form. Community and the public manual treat it as: pull an external feed into threads. Label those threads (prefix Syndicated). Do not feature them by default. Do not point the importer at a feed you do not have rights to. A newsroom that is 90% other people’s RSS is a scraper with a theme.
What not to put on /
- A video autoplay “news hero”
- Every article in a widget with limit 30
- A Members online block next to the edition (vanity, and stale under page cache)
- A Discord iframe (integration article)
- Index route =
forums/news/“just for launch”
The portal keeps three widgets. The newsroom fills one of them.
A weekly cadence
Monday: editor picks up to two articles in news. One may be featured. Unfeature last week’s unless it is still the rule.
Wednesday: one Block or Floating notice if something is time-bound. Dismissable. Criteria: not “everyone on every page for a month.”
Friday: kill the notice. Check Outdated templates only if you touched chrome. You should not have touched chrome.
Staff page: who may feature, who may post in news, who may create notices. Featuring is a moderation right, not a prize.
Checklist
- Article forum exists; type is Articles (or mixed with articles allowed)
- Cover image convention written (first attach, or 0×0 cover)
- Comments policy decided (open / locked for legal)
- Featured queue ≤ 6; guest-open; calendar to unfeature
- Portal featured widget still one strip, not a second archive
- Notices: type matches urgency; dismissable; criteria; end date
- Scrolling ticker (if any) is short and temporary
- Stickies stay inside one forum
- RSS (if any) prefixed and not featured by default
- Index route unchanged
- Three sessions: guest sees the edition, member can comment if allowed, staff can feature
A XenForo newsroom is an article forum plus the courage to unfeature. The ticker is a notice. The door is still the portal. Keep those three jobs from sharing a URL.
Article node, clicked
- Forums → Nodes → Add node. Type the article forum (or a mixed forum that allows article threads — official 2.2+ types). Title
News. URL portionnews. Parent a public category. - Listing: Preview if you want covers; Expanded if you want a blog page. Do not pick Preview and then refuse to upload images.
- Permissions: Unregistered View; Registered View + Post replies if comments are on; a
Editorssecondary group Post new thread (and edit). Moderating / Administrative View always. - Create a dummy article. First post long enough to prove the character limit. Cover via first
[ATTACH], or a 0×0 attach for a cover that stays out of the body (official). Comment as a second account. Paginate comments and confirm the compressed article stays on page 2. - Feature it. Confirm a guest sees it on the portal widget and at
featured/. Unfeature. Confirm it remains in/forums/news/.
If step 4 fails because the forum is still a discussion type, you created the wrong node. Do not fake articles with extra.less.
Notice HTML that is not a landing page
Official notices accept HTML and {name}. Keep it a strip:
<strong>Season 3 applications close Friday.</strong>
Apply in the whitelist forum — do not reply here.No iframe. No 800-word policy. Link the article or the landing page. Type Floating or Block, dismissable, criteria User is a guest or everyone for 72 hours, then disable. Scrolling: three one-liners max. A fourth scrolling notice is how you recreate the old ticker product you do not need.
{name} on a guest notice prints nothing useful. Do not use it on guest-only notices.
Paid edition (official upgrade, not a paywall BB-code)
If the newsroom has a premium section: official walkthrough is a Subscribers group, Private node, Users → User customization → User upgrades. That is the credits article. Do not [CHARGE=X] the article body. Comments on a paid article still need a moderator who can View. Feature only public editions on the guest door.
Editorial calendar (staff page)
| Week | Article | Feature? | Notice? |
|---|---|---|---|
| This | Patch notes | Yes, until next patch | Floating 48 h |
| This | Event Saturday | No — sticky in Events | Block, guests+members, dies Sunday |
| Next | Policy change | Yes | Block, dismissable, one week |
If the table is empty, turn the featured widget off. An empty hero is worse than a forum list.
RSS importer (manual index): one feed, prefix Syndicated, never auto-feature, never the index route. If you cannot name the licence, do not import.
Why the old ticker URL maps here
A historic Ultimate News Ticker sold motion. Official Scrolling notices are that motion. Official article forums are the archive the ticker never was. Official featured is the door. Map the old product URL here, then ship a notice and a news node — not another add-on that injects a marquee into PAGE_CONTAINER.
Comments, bylines, and who may speak
Official article threads treat replies as comments and keep a compressed OP on later pages. That is a newsroom UX. It is also a moderation surface. Decide:
- Open comments on events and patch notes. Node mods on
news(not global) handle them. Soft-delete default. - Locked on legal / ToS / billing. The article is the record. Link a support forum for argument.
- No guest comments if you do not want SEO spam under a patch note. Registered Post replies only.
Bylines are the thread starter. Do not invent a magazine author field unless you already have a custom thread field you will keep filling. Official Forums → Custom thread fields can add “Edition” or “Author name” on the first post. Replies will not be asked again. Put fields in the status block if staff scan them; keep the body readable.
If two editors fight over the same featured slot, the staff page already named who may feature. Featuring is not a committee.
Search and the archive
Article forums are still threads. Search finds them. A thin masonry listing with no unique intro paragraph is a thin page — the portal article already warned about that on a page-node home. Give news a short node description. Do not noindex the archive unless you have a reason; the editions are the long-lived URLs. Featured is ephemeral. Notices are ephemeral. The article URL is what you 301 an old shop ticker to only when the article is the real replacement — usually you 301 the ticker product to this guide, not to a single edition.
When you retire a season, unfeature, leave the articles, add one new article “Season 3 is archived” that points at the landing page for season 4. Do not delete a year of URLs because the ticker looked dated.
Cross-links that stay honest
- Door: portal
- Campaign splash: landing page
- Discord ping for a new edition: webhooks, public nodes only
- Speed: no ticker JS, no autoplay, local images (performance)
If those four links confuse you, you are about to put four jobs on /. Stop. Pick the newsroom job again.
One more publishing rule: if the edition is not ready, do not feature a stub and “update later.” Official featured order is a date, not a promise. Members will quote the stub. Staff will forget the stub. Post the article when the first post is the article. Drafts belong in a staff-only node or in someone’s editor, not in featured/. The newsroom is allowed to be quiet. A quiet door is a working portal, not a failure of news.