News List blocks

What are News List blocks?

News List blocks are available to SiteMasonry sites that are connected to Content Hub. These blocks automatically update as more content is shared with the site, showing the most recent articles that match the given criteria.

There are two styles of News Lists that can be used: Mini List and Full Paged List. The News List block also offers a variety of filtering options, allowing you to customize what stories will appear in the list.

News lists display the most recently published articles first. Editing an older article will not automatically move the article to the top of the list. To do that, change the "display date" on the article to the date you updated the article. The article will now sort according to that date.

Related Content

Examples of News List Blocks

Please be aware that many of the layouts displayed below talk about the column layouts of SiteMasonry pages. On mobile, columns stack, creating a different experience. Keep this in mind when designing your pages!

Mini Lists

Mini List style blocks will always show the title and publication date of the five most recent articles that match the block's filter settings. If fewer than five articles meet those settings, less articles will be shown. There is no pagination or "view more" button on a mini list. If you wish for a reader to be able to view more than five articles, a link to a more complete feed is advised.

Mini Lists fit well into a range of spaces. Bear in mind that the length of the titles of your articles will be the primary determiner of how long this block appears to be.

This type of news list is very handy for showing related content on news articles. For titling such lists, you can use the "display title" toggle to show an H2 level header above your list.

Example Mini List

Full Paged Lists

Full Paged lists display an article's title, summary, thumbnail, and publication date. These lists will display all articles that meet the filter settings for the block. If this list is longer than the block allows for on one page, then navigation to more pages will be added to the bottom of the list. All other content for the page will copy over to these later pages, so make sure you are styling your page with that in mind.

It is highly advised that Full Paged lists be considered the primary content for any page they are on, and be used in 100% or 70% width columns.

Example Full Paged List

  • How to... Create a Profile
    December 12, 2022
    This content type is formatted to display a person’s name, photo, position, contact information, and bio, among other things. Once a profile is made, it can be connected to news stories to highlight those featured in the story.
  • How to... Format a News Story
    November 18, 2022
    If you want to make your article more appealing, you can add elements to your article on that page to better attract people to your content.
  • How to... Create a News Story
    November 18, 2022
    A highly-engaging news story with optimized formatting increases human readability, accessibility, and searchability. Learn how to make a news story within SiteMasonry.
  • How to...Create a News Item - Legacy
    July 26, 2022
    The summary text is a news item's 'elevator speech'. It is a one-sentence highlight of the article which displays both as the search engine snippet and intro text on a social media share.
  • How to...Create a Marketing Landing Page
    July 22, 2022
    Building marketing landing pages on SiteMasonry is as easy as building a regular page. OUB Digital Strategist, Kristin Heydt shows you how.
  • How to...Optimize Pages and News Items for Social Sharing
    April 28, 2022
    Social media shares increase Mason’s digital impact by connecting with potential new visitors and improving a news item’s search engine ranking.  Even if you have no distribution plans of your own, web content is highly shareable, and one can’t predict which stories will be shared by your readers.
  • How to...Use the Blockquote Style to Format a Fact Box
    April 8, 2022
    Blockquote styling is the unsung, and versatile, hero of a reader-friendly page or news item.
  • How to...Create a Content Editor Account
    April 5, 2022
    SiteMasonry Site Owners are able to issue Content Editor accounts.
  • How to...Topic Tag and Share a News Item
    March 10, 2022
    News Items with the same Topic Tag will appear together in a news item filter list and are grouped into a taxonomy list. News Items shared with a site will export to the designated subscribing site.
  • How to...Use the 'Display Date' field to Order News Items
    March 10, 2022
    This 'Display Date' field is used to list news items by 'Display Date' order in a news list filter block. This field appears near the top of a news item admin screen. The 'Display Date' does not affect the page's visibility to end-users. To schedule the news item to publish on a specific date, please use the publication settings at the bottom of the news item's 'Edit Settings' screen.
  • Sample News Item with Optimization Tips
    March 9, 2022
    The text here will display as the search engine result snippet. This text is the item's 'elevator speech', a one-sentence highlight of your content.
  • How to...Create a Profile in Content Hub - Legacy
    November 22, 2021
    A snappy, robust profile is a great way to show off a Mason community member's accomplishments.
Take a look at how the navigation between pages above works. When you click on a page, you are taken back to the top of the page. Only the content of the News List block changes. Because of this, it is advised that all multi-page lists be the focus of the page, with the block being high up in the page content.