Websites/News
Websites/News Channel is a dedicated channel that emulates an internet browser. Players can use the web channel just like the regular web:
search for information
visit websites
comment on news articles.
There are two stages of configuration:
configuring the individual website:
the 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 Websites
Each website is a Persona of type Organisation.
To add websites, create a persona for each site.
The Website options won't appear until you check the "is organisation" box.
There are a lot of configuration options.
Website configuration
The basic information you need to provide the website are:
Website name - what the site will be called in the website channel
URL - this is how the site will be available in the website channel
http or https - only change to http if you need to show the website as unsafe.
The other details of configuration are for other purposes.
Search results
Conducttr prides itself on realism and for some exercises the web channel will act as it does in real life, with no pre-opened pages - requiring 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:
wesbite 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 browser channel. This can be very helpful but many sites prevent embedding for security reasons so it won't work in all cases
page details - this allows additional information about the website to be displayed on investigation by the player.
hacked website - this allow 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 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 on your exercise and you can set an absolute date & 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.
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.
Website Channel configuration
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.
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