Public site

Tidenda includes a public news site for each organisation. It shows the organisation's published articles, organised by section, with little setup: switch it on, choose a look, publish, and point a domain at it.

An article appears on the site when it reaches usable and leaves the site when it moves out of usable. The site has no editorial controls of its own; the workflow decides what is public.

Turning it on

A member with the owner or admin role switches the site on under System settings > Account, with Enable the Publisher. A Publisher entry then appears in the main menu for members with the owner, admin or publisher role. The editor role does not see it.

The server checks these roles on every request, not only the menu. Changing the site's settings, publishing it and verifying its custom domain need the owner, admin or publisher role; anyone else is refused with 403. Only the owner or admin role may switch the site on or off, or run Backfill published content.

The site's settings are a draft until someone chooses Publish. Later changes show Publish changes and reach visitors only when published.

What appears

• Articles at usable, at /artikel/<slug>, usually within seconds of publishing. Articles at withheld or cancelled never appear.
• Images in those articles, as copies. A copy keeps none of the uploaded file's metadata, so location, camera and owner details are not published, and carries the image's copyright, credit, photographer and usage terms as XMP and, in JPEG copies, IPTC metadata. See rights on public copies.
• Audio is not played on the site. Quotes taken from audio appear as text.

When an article leaves usable, its address answers that the page is gone, and images used only by that article are removed from the site.

Moving an unpublished article into usable or withheld from the status menu asks the member to confirm when the article embeds images with usage restrictions, listing each image with its terms. The site does not check rights itself: what the member publishes appears.

An article whose AI label is on shows a quiet line under its byline saying it was produced with the help of AI. An article an AI workflow step published without review says instead that it was produced with AI and published automatically, without review by an editor; that line stays until a member publishes the article. Both come from the published version's meta.aiGenerated and meta.publishedWithoutReview. See Publishing without review.

Articles already at usable when the site is switched on appear without further steps, usually within a minute. If one is missing, a member with the owner or admin role can run Backfill published content under Administration on the Publisher page.

Rich text keeps its formatting: bold, italic, underline, strikethrough and inline code, links, bulleted and numbered lists, code blocks and tables. A link appears only when its address is an absolute https:, http: or mailto: URL; any other address, including javascript: and relative addresses, shows as plain text.

Switching it off

Switching the site off under System settings > Account takes it down entirely, usually within seconds:

• every address on the site, preview URL and custom domain alike, answers 404 with a "Site not found" page;
• its articles and image copies are deleted from the site, and no article reaches it while it is off;
• no new certificate is issued for its custom domain.

Nothing in the newsroom changes. Articles keep their status, and the site's settings are kept. Switching the site back on brings back every article that is usable at that moment, and the site as last published.

Suspend the site, below, is the temporary alternative: the site stays configured and the custom domain shows a holding page.

Look and feel

The Theming settings offer two layouts. Classical is serif with generous spacing. Contemporary is sans-serif and denser, with room for a breaking-news ribbon. Each layout has three colour palettes and three type sets to choose from. A header logo and a favicon can be uploaded. When the organisation's published brand kit has a main logo, the site header shows that logo instead of the header logo set here; the favicon always comes from these settings. There are no free colour, font, script or style inputs.

Basics sets the site's name, language, locale and description. Analytics connects Google Tag Manager or Google Analytics 4, or nothing.

Sections

Sections are the organisation's section tags, managed by members with the owner or admin role under System settings > Tags. An article's section is chosen on its planning item and travels with the article to the site. Each section has a page at /<section-slug>.

Front page and follow-ups

By default the front page shows top news. Articles that belong together are grouped, with the newest one leading:

1. articles from the same planning item, such as a first report and its follow-ups;
2. then articles sharing a story tag.

Top news leaves out articles with the two lowest news values and covers the last 48 hours, reaching further back on a quiet news day. A Latest tab lists every article newest first.

Addresses, domains and feeds

Every site has a preview URL, shown under Domains. It shows the site as last published, to anyone who has the address.

The site can also have one custom domain:

1. Enter it under Custom domain.
2. Add a DNS TXT record on that domain with the value shown, tidenda-verify=<site id>.
3. Choose Verify now. The settings report whether a matching record was found.
4. Point the domain at the platform, as instructed by the platform operator, and publish.

A certificate for the domain is issued automatically. Changing the domain resets its verification, and every domain change takes effect on the next publish.

Suspend the site makes the custom domain show a branded "temporarily unavailable" page from the next publish.

RSS. The site publishes RSS 2.0 feeds at /rss.xml and, per section, at /<section-slug>/rss.xml. Each holds the latest 50 articles, with title, link, date, lead and section. Feeds carry no full text.

The public site, webhooks and an own site

The public site reads published documents the same way any integrator can, and does not need a webhook. An organisation can run it, its own site, or both. An own site fed by webhooks receives the signed snapshots and can verify them; the public site does not show signatures. See Setting up webhooks.

Limits

• One custom domain per site, and no redirects from old article addresses.
• No custom layouts, blocks, scripts or styles.
• A site must be published once before it can be suspended.
• Switching the site off removes the Publisher menu entry and takes the whole site down; see Switching it off.
• Deleting the organisation removes its sites and everything they serve.

Related pages

• Workflows
• Webhooks
• Setting up webhooks