Campus & community, Campus news

Top tools for the new NewsCenter

By Steve McConnell

The new NewsCenter has plenty of new bells and whistles for you to explore. We hope this brief user’s guide to some of the highlights will help you get the most out of this rebuilt portal for campus news.

Top Stories: Our five most important, interesting, or just plain readable stories will always be stacked down the middle of the NewsCenter, nearly always accompanied by strong images. We update this collection throughout the day, so make sure to check back to see what’s new and notable.

Latest News: Everything we publish, with the newest stories on top. Click on Latest News just to the right of the Campanile, or check the list at the top right of any story page.

weather icon
Weather: Not near a window? On another continent? The top-right corner of the NewsCenter shows you what it’s like on campus right now.

Popular Stories: The stories that get the most eyeballs on our site are tracked and dynamically listed in the right sidebar. A companion tab shows which stories are being emailed using our built-in sharing tool. Check back often to see what’s catching the eye of your fellow readers.

search box
Archives: You can find all the stories published on our new WordPress-powered site, plus the thousands of stories from our back catalog (stretching back to the dawn of the web in 1994) through the Search box atop every page. This may be a little messy in the beginning as the search ‘bots index all our new content. If you prefer to browse instead of search, you can always dig back through our archives, starting with the Latest News page; the Pre-2010 stories by year link below the feature image will take you further down memory lane.

tag cloud
Tags: These flexible bits of organization are applied by our writers and editors to group stories on similar topics from across categories and disciplines. You can see a “tag cloud” of the most-used current terms to the right of each story (bigger type = more frequently tagged), or a list of all our tags on the Tags index page. The tags and categories chosen for each story are always listed at the bottom of the text.

News for the Campus: We’ve pulled out stories of special interest to those who work and study at UC Berkeley, highlighting them in the Faculty/Staff News and Campus Notices sections at the top left of the NewsCenter.

Research Discoveries: Top-flight research is Berkeley’s claim to fame through much of the world, and stories about those discoveries are something our readers told us they wanted more of. So we’ve collected research stories from across the disciplines – arts to technology, science to humanities – at the top right of the NewsCenter.

Multimedia: Our collection of news videos, audio clips, photo slideshows and galleries and other multimedia features is in the menu bar across the top of each page. Use the dropdown to go directly to the section you want, or click Multimedia to see them all on one page.

Media Hits: Berkeley in the News, our daily digest of how the world’s media report on UC Berkeley, has a more prominent presence in the right sidebar throughout the NewsCenter site. Plus you can click directly to a story from the press, or read the full digest of Berkeley in the News excerpts.

Subscribe: If you can’t make it to the NewsCenter, our news can come to you. We supply RSS feeds

for every category and tag that you can plug into a news reader or browser. Or you can sign up to receive daily email alerts for any of our news topics.

sharing tools
Sharing Tools: Stories are now easier than ever to share with your friends and followers, through links to Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon and other social media sites, plus an Email Story link, at the top and bottom of each page.

Stay in Touch: We want to hear your thoughts and suggestions. Click the author’s byline on any story to send a direct email, or click Contact us in the footer to get in touch with the NewsCenter team.