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News announcements

Please email the Web Team about news and announcements on the website.

What is news?

Almost all the news content on our site is handled automatically through a news publishing service, administered by the Web Team. This delivers the appropriate content to the pages it should appear on dynamically.

These short text items summarise and link to pages elsewhere (either on our site or NERC-related content on another site). If you ask, the Web Team will set up a news item when you supply new content. You cannot request a news item alone.

Pages covered

Content on the following pages is published automatically:

News items can also be displayed on pages for each research area or programme, and if relevant to NERC staff can be shown on the Extranet. Please tell us when supplying content for your new page(s).

Homepage news

News can also be displayed on the site Homepage (again, please tell us if this is required). However, as space on the Homepage is very limited, items are automatically removed once three more recent news items are added - it is not possible for news items to persist.

So please:

  • do not ask for extended Homepage display
  • consider leaving less important news off the Homepage
  • keep news items as concise as possible

Also see: Other homepage news content

Writing news items

Be concise. The longer the text, the harder it is to spot key points. It also means fewer items are displayed in a web browser - which means more scrolling, and a greater chance of not seeing items.

News should have:

  • a short heading: it must be fewer than 40 characters including spaces. This will be set up as a hyperlink to a page with full details.
  • a brief text: focusing on the key facts alone. This should be an absolute maximum of 3 lines of text when formatted on the web page (2 is better).
  • a deadline / key date: if relevant
  • location details: if relevant
  • a full web address for the page that the heading should be linked to. Note that only one page can be set as a hyperlink (any additional links should appear on the page to which the news links).
  • a list of categories into which the news item falls.

Research area and programme categories

Funding or research news items can be added to one or more of the following categories:

Research areas:
- science-based archaeology
- atmospheric science
- Earth science
- Earth observation
- marine science
- polar science
- terrestrial and freshwater science

Science programmes
They can also be displayed on the 'Events and announcements' page of each current programme, for example the APPRAISE 'Events and announcements' page.

Please state any relevant areas/programmes in which a news item should be displayed.

Science themes
Theme pages are being developed. It is expected that news will be streamed by science theme as well, so please specify which are relevant.

News links to other websites

We do not post news items about non-NERC activities on this website.

If NERC is directly involved in an activity, the news link should point to a page on this site with full details.

However, in certain circumstances we can add a link directly from our news feeds to external websites, but only if NERC is involved in some way. Requests must come from NERC staff. These items will be flagged with the external link icon: External link icon

Publicising web content by email

Once your new page is live you will no doubt want to email everyone to let them know. This is fine, but do bear in mind that if a news item has been added the update will appear in the relevant RSS feeds.

If you do decide to send out an email, please do not quote document URLs (links to files ending ".pdf", ".doc" etc). Someone following that link will access the document easily enough, but will be unable to navigate easily to anything else on the website. Instead always quote the address of a web page (ie with an address ending with either a "/" or ".asp") from which the document is linked, so that navigation menus are visible. Better still, consider quoting a general page (such as a science programme homepage) - this also raises awareness of related pages.

Check the link before emailing it. A simple typing error (or extra space) will make the link unusable, and a correction will need to be emailed. We are not able to redirect or change web page addresses if incorrect addresses are quoted. If you are at all unsure, please contact the Web Team who will be happy to advise you.

Other homepage news content

There is a small amount of space in the lower parts of the left and right-hand menu columns which may be used to promote new publications or specific events for a limited period, typically not longer than 4-6 weeks. These feature a thumbnail image of the publication cover (at standard dimensions), brief description text and a link to the publication's full page.

Central image

The feature image beneath the description of NERC (top of centre column) may be replaced for up to 1 week by a topical image of the same size. However, it must be clear what the image is, have a concise caption and offer a hyperlink to a page of supporting information (including appropriate links to further content, external websites etc). The image, caption text and supporting page text must be supplied at the same time to the Web Team or no action will be taken.