Use Announcements to communicate important information to your community about emergencies, disruptions, privacy policies, and more. Announcements are visible across every page on your site, and can even be shared across multiple sites.
Announcements use the OC Announcement content type, and while you can show as many as you need to at one time, we recommend a maximum of 3 concise announcements due to the amount of screen space they use when viewed on a mobile device.
The Announcements module comes pre-installed on main sites, Intranets, and subsites. Read more about OpenCities site types
When to use announcements
Although announcements can be used to communicate information about a variety of topics, we suggest only using them when the topic is relevant (and important) to most or all of your community. Here are some examples:
- Emergencies, like:
- Severe weather
- Wildfires
- Flooding
- Landslides or earthquakes
- Riots, violence, or police operations
- Gas leaks in public places
- Disruptions, like:
- Public transport disruptions
- Vital service disruptions (e.g. in-person council service disruptions, or waste collection cancellations due to industrial action)
- Information about the site viewing experience, like:
- Your cookies policy
Use a single announcement per topic and keep it brief and to the point. If you need to show more information about a topic, create a page with the details and link to it in the announcement (OC General pages are a good option for this).
When not to use announcements
Announcements can be disruptive to your community's viewing experience, and if they see too many, they might start overlooking them entirely. We suggest you think twice before using announcements to:
- Advertise services, programs, or opening hours
- Remind residents about upcoming important dates (e.g. deadlines for rates payments)
- Wish your community Happy Holidays
- Announce things like the annual budget
- Communicate to only a small subset of residents
In general, it's best to use announcements sparingly. If you often find your homepage crowded with announcements (especially on your mobile site), it's time to cut back or shorten the announcement.
We also recommend trying to keep your announcements as short and concise as possible. It's always best to look at your announcement on a mobile device to ensure that they don't take up the entire screen.