Step by step

1. Open the Announcements list

   In the left-hand menu, find the Communications group and click Announcements. The system takes you to the full list of your organisation's announcements.

2. Click Create New

   Use the Create New button at the top-right of the list. The button only appears if your role permits creating announcements — lodge-admin, secretary, and website-editor all qualify.

3. Fill in the announcement form

   Enter a title and body, both required. Optionally add an image from your media library, a related event, and an expiry date. To make the notice visible to the public, set Audience to Public and tick the Show on Website checkbox.

4. Save the record

   Click Save. There is no separate publish step on this collection — saving writes the record to the database and makes it live immediately. The system checks your role one more time before writing.

5. Notice appears on the news page

   Your public news page queries for announcements where the publish date is now or earlier, the expiry date is in the future or not set, the audience is Public, and Show on Website is ticked.

6. Check the full notice at its own address

   Each item in the news list links to a page at news followed by the record's ID. If the notice has expired or the ID is wrong, the page returns a not-found response.

7. Let the notice expire on its own

   If you set an expiry date and time, the notice stops appearing on the news list and its individual page as soon as that moment passes. No manual deletion is needed. The record itself is not deleted.

What happens next

Once saved, your announcement appears on the public news page in newest-first order and has its own web address that you can share directly. Any visitor to your site can read it without logging in. If you set an expiry date and time, the notice disappears from both the list and the individual page automatically when that time passes, with no action required from you.

Good to know

The Audience and Show on Website settings both have to be correct for a notice to go public. Setting Audience to Public alone is not enough — Show on Website must also be ticked. If a notice is not appearing on the site, check both of those fields first.

There is no draft or approval workflow on announcements. Saving is publishing.