Instructions: How to integrate EasyDNNnews and EasyDNNrotator modules

For the integration to be functional, both modules need to be installed on the same DNN portal. All the settings are available in EasyDNNrotator module.

Place the rotator module on your web page. Open Rotator settings. In the first step select the desired rotator type. In the second step select content source. Options include Lists (referring to those lists added directly into the rotator module), News module (this is our choice when we wish to load articles from the news module) and Gallery module (our EasyDNNgallery module you can also use to load galleries into the rotator). So, to integrate with EasyDNNnews module it is necessary to select the News module as content source.

After selecting the News module as content source, a panel with instructions will be opened, allowing you to set up all the options of loading an article into the module. What follows is a list of explanations what each option actually does.

• Select permissions source
  Here you can select which permissions will be used by the rotator module to display articles to the users. In the rotator there are no permissions that could limit users' ability to see articles, but the rotator module can load permissions from the news module, thus displaying articles in accordance with permissions from the news module to the users.
  Available choices are None, Portal and Module. If None is selected, the rotator module will use no permissions at all. If Portal is selected, the rotator module will use permissions set up to be valid across the whole DNN portal for EasyDNNnews module. If Module is selected, you can choose between some of the EasyDNNnews module's instances on the portal whose permissions will be used.
• Enable clean-up for this instance
  If this option is selected, the scheduler will automatically clean up the images and thumbnails not used in the rotator anymore. Images used in the news module will not be subjected to this clean-up.
• Clean up images not used after
  Here you can set up the number of days prior to the clean-up of images.
• Select instance of the news module where articles will be opened
  If you have multiple instances of the news module on your portal, here you can select that instance of the news module where you wish the article details to be opened.
• Select categories for articles to be displayed from
  Select the categories for the articles to be displayed from. "Display All Articles" will display articles from all categories. If you unselect "Display All Articles", you can choose individual categories for the articles to be displayed from.
• Select authors whose articles will be displayed.
  Select the authors from the news module whose articles you wish to be displayed in the rotator. "Display All Authors" will display the articles by all authors. If you unselect "Display All Authors", you can choose individual authors whose articles you wish to be displayed in the rotator.
• Display Featured articles only
  If this option is selected, the rotator will only display those articles that are marked as Featured articles in the news module.
• Display Events only
  If this option is selected, the rotator will only display events from the news module. Other articles, which are not events, will not be displayed.
• Dynamically display current category's content
  If this option is selected, the rotator will only display articles from the currently selected category of the news module, while navigating through multiple news categories on the page.
• Order articles by
  Choose the manner of listing the articles loaded from the news module.
• Limiting number of articles
  Choose between two options. The first one, "Display all articles from selected categories" will display all articles from selected categories, disregarding how many of them there are. The other option, "Display a set number of articles from each category" limits the overall number of articles to be loaded from each selected category.
• Select description source
  Choose between two options. The first one, "Use article summary as description" takes the article's summary and uses it as description in the rotator. The other option, "Use article content as description" takes the article's content and uses it as description in the rotator.
• Display articles with main article image only
  If this option is selected, the rotator will only display those articles from the news module that contain a main article image. The main article image can be added from add/edit form of the news module.
• Module visibility
  Here you can set when you wish the module to be visible on the page. If "Module always visible" option is selected, the module is visible all the time. If "Show module only when the news module displays the list of articles" option is selected, the rotator will only be visible when the news module displays the list of articles, yet it won't be visible when article details are displayed. If "Show module only when the news module displays article details" option is selected, the rotator will only be visible when article details are displayed, yet it won't be visible when the list of articles is displayed. Note: The module is always visible to admin and host users.
• Cache content
  If this option is switched on, the rotator's content will be cached. The rotator uses DNN portal's cache settings (Host > Host Settings > Advanced > Performance Settings)

Main article image in EasyDNNnews

The prerequisite for displaying of articles in the rotator is using the main article image within articles. If you wish to display an image from an article in the rotator, you need to specify in the module which image it is, and you will do that by marking it as the main article image.

EasyDNNnews module has an in-built image management so it is very easy to upload images into articles, and the module will automatically adjust them and display them in articles. Whichever image you have uploaded into the article, you can mark it as the main article image.

Main article image is not used only to display articles in the rotator – it is also used as the introductory or first image in the article. Furthermore, main article image is used to create thumbnails displayed on the list of articles.