Website/News
The Website/News channel is a dedicated channel that emulates an internet browser.
Create a realistic information environment that looks like the real Internet
Players can use this channel just like the regular web (searching for info, visiting websites and commenting on new articles etc.)
Running
Searching for websites
When you add a new tab the search page will appear, here players can search for terms on shown or hidden websites:
In article-based websites players can search for any term used in the title, subtitle or body in any new article.
When players type an invalid URL which hasn't been added to the exercise, a "No results found" page will appear as the following:
View website details
View the website details by clicking the three dots upper right in the Website/News channel, or by clicking the customisable icon.
Note that when a website is hacked, the icon will never appear but the three dots can be accessed or not, depending on your configuration.
To find out about sharing article URLs live during an exercise, visit the page below:
Designing
There are two stages of configuration for the Website/News channel:
Configuring an individual website:
Website URL
Search results
What happens when it's hacked
Past articles
Style (i.e. the look)
Configuring the website channel:
If a website should be visible or only found by search
If the website is visible, where it appears in the channel tab order
Configuring an individual website
Each website is a persona that has been set as an organisation. To add websites, navigate to Personas in your Editor and create a persona for each site.
The website options won't appear until you check the Is organisation box.
Here you'll find all the different options for designing with the Website/News channel:
Website configuration
The basic information you need to provide for a website is:
Website name - what the site will be called
URL - this is how the site will be available
http or https - only change to http if you need to show the website as unsafe
Search results
Conducttr prides itself on realism and for some exercises the Website/News channel will act as it does in real life, with no pre-opened pages. This requires players to search for information as they would on the web.
The following fields affect the ability to find a website and it's search results:
Website description is what's shown in the search results and is included in the search
Keywords - use these if you need the website to be displayed in search results for topics not specifically mentioned in the description or any articles (past and present)
Ranking - when websites return similar results, this control determines which is shown higher in the results list
Paid promotion - this ensures the site ranks highest but the search result displays a label saying it's a paid search result.
Display options
These are the options you have on the display options page:
Website type - article type is preferred because everything is self-contained in your simulation space
The "use URL" is available to embed other "real" websites into your Website/News channel. This can be very helpful but many sites prevent embedding for security reasons so it won't work in all cases.
Webpage details - this allows additional information about the website to be displayed on investigation by the player
Hacked website - this allows you to upload an image or select one of our pre-made images to be displayed when the website is hacked
Past articles
You need at least 1 past article if you want the website to be displayed before you publish anything from the Master Events List (MEL):
The purpose of the past articles is to make the website look credible and provide context to this persona/organisation. The timestamp on the article can make some difference to the realism or storytelling of your exercise. You can set an absolute Date and time or one that's Relative to the publication of the exercise.
Style
Click the pencil in the style page to configure how the website page will look:
Click the drop-down menu to edit different sections of the website:
Header
You have two options when customising a website header:
Default: edit the colour, logo, font, and header terms for your website:
Header image: or upload a high quality image and crop to size in-platform:
Bulk changes
If you have a lot of websites and want to check across them all or configure in bulk, export to a spreadsheet, manipulate, and reimport:
Configuring the Website/News channel
Channel tabs
There can be a lot of websites in large exercises and so you're provided with a lot of options for how websites are made available or not.
Tabs configuration
Decide which websites should be active or inactive and if they should appear as an open tab at the start of the exercise.
You need past article(s) on your website for it to be displayed at the start of an exercise, otherwise there is no content to display.
Order of tabs
There are various options for deciding the order of websites in the open tabs at the start of the exercise:
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