Using plugins
Plugins enable your system administrator to add functionality to your Newscoop installation without having to write a large amount of code. They can also help you to make better use of the content already in your Newscoop publication.
Plugins are managed via their own Plugins sub-menu on the main Newscoop navigation menu. See the chapter Installing plugins for more details. Some plugins have a corresponding box in the sidebar of the Edit Article page, when the plugin is active. Other plugins have an entry on the Plugins menu for configuration purposes.
Currently, there are no plugins installed by default with Newscoop. Plugins available from https://github.com/newscoop/ can enable your publication to:
- Filter articles by author or publication dates and export an .xls file for accounting
- Sell access to the content of issues, sections and articles with a paywall
- Ingest Google Calendar events
- Allow readers to send an article recommendation by email
- Set an 'Article of the Day' and display it in a calendar
- Deploy Apache Solr as a publication search engine
- Allow readers to send feedback on articles
- Issue a reader newsletter integrated with Mailchimp
- Deploy a new Article Edit Screen
- Generate Piwik and Google Analytics codes
- Ingest, manage, and display Instagram photos
- Import external data sources from RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, ATOM and NewsML feeds
- Clear the cache on Facebook and add Open Graph tags on article update
- Deploy a community ticker for comments, new user registrations and blog entries
- Display city weather data from the Meteoblue API
- Manage and display data from the Airtime broadcast automation API
Older plugins for Newscoop 4.2 can be installed via the Legacy Plugins Manager. These include:
- Debate: When this plugin is active, a box in the sidebar of the Edit Article page enables you to attach a specific reader voting debate to a specific article. Clicking the Attach button opens a pop-up window in which you can select the debate that you require. You can also create a new debate there.
- Polls: Your readers can vote on a question; the question can be set dynamically and can be multilingual. The new Debate plugin offers more features, but Newscoop 3 publications may have stored existing reader votes using the Polls plugin. So the Polls plugin is provided in Newscoop 4 to make upgrading publications from Newscoop 3 simpler.
- reCAPTCHA: This plugin enables a CAPTCHA on your Newscoop publication's comment and registration forms, helping to deter spammers. To use this feature, you will need to obtain a reCAPTCHA key from http://www.google.com/recaptcha and enter it into the plugin's configuration page.
- SoundCloud: This plugin enables audio files, such as podcasts and radio programmes, to be hosted on the third-party SoundCloud service. You will need to register for a SoundCloud account on http://soundcloud.com/ in order to make use of this feature. When this plugin is active, a box in the sidebar of the Edit Article page enables you to attach a specific audio file to a specific article.
- Interviews: Enables on-line interviews for your Newscoop publication; readers can see the latest questions and answers.