News Sites Pro โ
The Falcon News plugin adds what a news or magazine site needs on top of posts and categories: a view counter with Most Read lists, view counts anywhere in the builder, RSS feeds and a Google News sitemap.
It ships with FalconCMS Pro and needs FalconCMS 2.8.5 or later. Activate it under Plugins. It has no menu of its own; its screens sit where you would look for them:
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| Most viewed stories, and the view counter's settings | Analytics โ Most Viewed |
| RSS feeds | Settings โ RSS Feeds |
| Google News sitemap | SEO โ Settings โ Google News sitemap |
For your Instagram posts, see the Instagram Feed builder element.
The view counter โ
Every time a reader opens a story, it is counted. Analytics โ Most Viewed lists the top stories today, in the last 7 days, the last 30 days and of all time.
- It works with the page cache and behind Cloudflare. The story page reports the view once it has loaded, so a cached page counts like any other.
- Bots are left out. Search engines and monitors that do not run scripts never count, and known bots are filtered by name too.
- A reload is not a new reader. A visitor counts once per story every 30 minutes.
- Your own team is left out. Signed-in visitors are not counted unless you switch that on.
Open Counter settings on the Most Viewed page to choose which post types are counted, the time before the same reader counts again, whether signed-in visitors count, and how many days of daily figures are kept (the all-time count of each story is kept for ever). Each counted post type gets a Views column in its admin list, with the last 7 days beside the total.
Most Read and Trending boxes โ
Add a Card element and set Order By to one of:
| Order By | Shows |
|---|---|
| Views | the most read stories of all time |
| Views โ today | today's most read |
| Views โ last 7 days | this week's trending stories |
| Views โ last 30 days | this month's most read |
Combine it with Posts By โ Categories for a "Most read in Sports" box.
Showing a story's view count โ
Any title, text block or button can show the count through dynamic content: click the database icon, choose Post Views, then pick:
- Period: all time, today, last 7 or 30 days.
- Number:
12,345,12.3Kor12345. - Label: the words after the number (
views), or around it with{count}:Read {count} times. - Digits: Latin, Bangla (
เงงเงจเงฉ), Devanagari or Arabic. - Hide below: show the fallback text instead until a story has this many views.
It works on a single post layout and in each card of a Card grid. In text you can also type the token {lazy:post_views}.
Reading time โ
The Reading Time dynamic source (and the Post Meta element) counts words in any language, and in posts made with the builder. Choose its label (min read, or {min} minute read), the reading speed and the digits.
Showing a lead story โ
To pick stories by hand, add a custom field (a checkbox or true/false field called featured, say) to posts, then use a Card element with Posts By โ Custom Field, key featured, value 1. Leave the value empty to list every post where the field is filled in.
RSS feeds โ
| Feed | Address |
|---|---|
| The whole site | /feed |
| A category | /category/{slug}/feed |
| A tag | /tag/{slug}/feed |
| Another language | add ?lang=bn |
Each page links its feed in the <head>, so browsers and feed readers find it. Under Settings โ RSS Feeds, choose the post types, the number of stories and whether a story shows its summary or its full text.
To check a feed, open /feed in the browser, paste its address into the W3C Feed Validator, or add it to a reader such as Feedly. A new story shows up within ten minutes.
Google News sitemap โ
/news-sitemap.xml lists the stories published in the last 48 hours in the format Google News reads, with each story's language. It is added to robots.txt for you. Submit it in Google Search Console under Sitemaps, and register your publication in the Google News Publisher Center.
Under SEO โ Settings โ Google News sitemap you can set the publication name (exactly as Google News knows it) and limit the sitemap to news categories, leaving out sections such as recipes.
Permissions โ
Most Viewed is shown to whoever can see Analytics. RSS Feeds needs the Settings permission, the Google News box the SEO settings permission.