Importing news articles from another CMS

Aiir's web content management system allows you to import news articles you previously published elsewhere, by going to News > Settings > Import.

Your existing CMS will need to be able to export its stories as a CSV file, or you can create one yourself using spreadsheet software.

Do you need help creating your CSV file? Download our example template

At a minimum, your CSV file should contain two headings:

Title

Your story headline

HTML content

The content of your article, including HTML tags. For example:

"This is the first line of an example story. This is another line of a story."

You can also include several optional fields:

Abstract	A one-sentence description of your story.
Image URL	The URL of your article's main image
Image caption	Your image caption
Audio URL	The URL of an associated audio file
Start date and time	When an article should be published (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS)
End date and time	When an article should be archived (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS)

Include quote marks around any fields where you want to include commas in the data itself, such as the article content.

If the file has been created correctly, when you open it with a text editor, it should look something like this:

Title,Abstract,Content,ImageURL,ImageCaption,AudioURL,StartDate,EndDate
Your story headline,An abstract is a short summary of your story.,"<p>This is where your story content goes — including HTML tags."</p>,https://www.stationfm.com/image.jpg,Image description,https://www.stationfm.com/audio.mp3,YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS,YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS

If you created your spreadsheet using Excel for Mac, make sure to tick the relevant box as its files are formatted slightly differently.

Once you have created your file, press 'Upload' to begin the import. It will take some time to populate your articles.

Before Aiir starts importing the bulk of your stories, it will give you a preview of the first and last stories in the CSV file so you can make sure they are formatted correctly.