SMF For Free Support Forum

This guide will walk you through setting up both the Regular News section and the News Fader.

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News Settings Page

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The Settings page of the News  section of the Administration Panel allows you to configure a few settings pertaining to forum news items that are shown in the forum header, and enabling an RSS news feed for your forum.

Groups allowed to edit news items - Check the groups that you wish to allow the ability to add and edit the news items.

Enable XML/RSS news - Allows people to link to RSS feeds of recent posts made on your forum and other similar data.
Many browsers have a built in button that when clicked while viewing your forum will allow you to subscribe to your forum's news feed.

Maximum post length - Here you can specify the maximum amount of characters to show for each RSS feed item. It is also recommended that you limit the size of recent posts and news because in some clients the amount of RSS data that is displayed is expected to be truncated.

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Setting up the News

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You have 3 options:

1. Regular news - shown at the top of the forum, above the "Home" button,
2. The News Fader - shown below the advertisements and above your first category.
3. Use both the Regular News AND the News Fader. - (be careful when using this 3rd option as the FIRST item of news you set up is what will show in your regular news at the top as well.)

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Turn on the News Feature

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Go to Admin CP > Current Theme.



Enable News - if you want the regular news to show. This only requires you to have one news item.
Show News Fader On Board Index - if you want the news fader. This REQUIRES multiple news items if you want the "fader" to work.
Check BOTH boxes - if you want to use them both.

If you choose the news fader, you will also need to set the "Fader Delay". This will set the number of seconds between each news item.
The lower the number, the faster they will fade in/out/

Click The SAVE button.

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Add News Items

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Admin >  Edit Forum News  (MAIN section - top left)

You can only list ONE news item per news box.

REGULAR NEWS
To edit the news displayed, simply enter what you want displayed in the text box on the page. You can use Bulletin Board Codes (BBC) and HTML in the Forum news box to format your news.

NEWS FADER
When using the news fader, you MUST have AT LEAST 2 news items for the fader to work. 
To add more than one news item, click the Click here to add another item link located at the bottom and enter the next news item in the new box provided.

You can also delete news by checking the checkboxes for the news you want to remove next to each news item and clicking the Remove Selected button to delete those selected items. 

You can add URL's with HTML.  This should work with just a text message such as:

"Click Here to go there".  You would replace the "here" with the code and put in what ever text you wanted.

<a href="URL">Text</a>
Hope this helps.

How do I make it smaller?

How do you add the different colors again? I forgot and I need for my friends forum.

Forum Url: http://http://wwwexpressforums..smfforfree4.com
Thx I have just started a new forum and also 1st time using smf4free, and that was very helpful.
Thank You

Forum Url: http://pogojustpogo.smfforfree3.com

I moved my question to the Support Thread  http://www.smfsupport.com/support/general_support/news-t23961.0.html;new#new

Sorry for the post here, you can delete if need be.  thank you

omg forgot, how i get BBC code??? 

nvm, i thought i needed a BBC code but i don't well thanks anywayz