What is a character?

This tool is intended to represent a group of entities. A character, in this documentation, means one entity. It could be a person, an agency, an organization or even a single incident. A cast of characters project collects many characters/entities.

Parts of a basic character

In its simplest form, a character is a name with a text description. Characters can have optional images, titles and a few other standard possibilities

Adding characters

To begin filling out your information:

1. In the characters tab, each row represents one entry
2. The basic minimum needed are a name and description. Descriptions can be multiple paragraphs (two hard returns between paragraphs), but must be pasted into the single spreadsheet cell.
3. Each additional piece of information for each entry (examples: Address, state, ""charges against"" or other features) should be added to their own colum. No matter how big or small, one piece of information per column.

Characters go in the characters tab. One row per character. Each cast of characters project can have it's own, custom format. This is expected (more on that in the discussion of the columns spreadsheet tab). There are a few basic elements

Column	Purpose	HTML/formatted text supported	Required
name	The character's name	No	Yes
id	A unique slug for the character. Must be lower case and only numbers, letters, hyphens or underscores	No	No
title	Appears under the name.	No	No
description	The main blurb	Yes	No
image	Can be a Presto ID or a full CDN URL to an image.	No	No
category	If using categories, the category is assigned here with the category ID.	No	No
labels	If using labels, assign them using list of label IDs, separated by semicolons.	No	No
thumbnail	Can be a Presto ID or a full CDN URL to an image. This image column is more flexible than image because the layout is not dependent on each character having one. If you have some photos but not a lot, consider thumbnails. Like images, the aspect ratio for thumbnails can be set in the top spreadsheet tab.	No	No
theme_color	If set, any element in the character that uses the theme color will use this color instead.	No	No

Good, descriptive alt text for images is not required here. The name field is used in its place.

Draft mode to block characters

Each character can be set to a draft mode by adding a column publish_status and giving it a value of draft. These characters will not be published (to preview or public) and are 100% ignored. The character will publish if any other value — even mispellings of 'draft` are used or if the column is omitted altogether.

When to use:

• Early data entry when you might not have all required information. You can still publish what you have.
• Projects that publish over the course of several days. All characters should live in the characters spreadsheet tab, but can be enabled and published over the publication window by changing the draft status.

Column	Purpose	Required
publish_status	If set to draft, then the character will not publish.	No

Character add-ons

All character displays have a some slightly more advanced options.

Kicker	Rank badge	Thumbnail image
A small label above the name (not to be confused with proper character labels). Kickers are configured in the columns spreadsheet tab.	A small, circular icon suitable for displaying a ranking or grade. The circle picks up the specified theme color. Rank badges are configured in the columns spreadsheet tab.	A smaller image notched into the description. This is good for when you don't have a photo for more than just a couple of characters. Thumbnails should go into athumbnail column in the characters spreadsheet tab.

Customizing information

Your cast of characters will display nicley with only the primary columns described above, but you are not limited to only those. No two stories have the same exact informational needs. Maybe, your public corruption story needs to highlight possible charges, pleas and legal outcomes for each character. Or perhaps your professional athlete ranking needs a blurb for each player's college career and a fun quote.

You can add as many columns as you need. In fact, it is recommended that you add columns so that each cell only contains one item: a short blurb, a factoid, etc. Keeping your spreadsheet tab clean and structured will make it easier to handle.

The columns tab

To customize the display of your information, use the columns tab of your spreadsheet. You have options for additional columns of data:

1. Bullets: Simple factoids, such as age or hometown, can be collected into a bulleted list.
2. Blurbs: Longer text items can be displayed as blurbs with optional headers underneath the main description (if used).
3. Links: Sometimes it makes sense to include a recirculation link with a character, or multiple links to source documents. One or more links are collected into a comma-separated list in the character. Full URLs or Presto IDs are accepted.
4. Relative links: Related links provided by Presto IDs, by default, will be directly to the originating news property. For example, a story made in the Indianapolis Presto will link to indystar.com, regardless of the news site the reader is on. Relative links will keep a reader on whatever news property they visited regardless of whichever Presto instance was used to write the articles. This will have no effect on direct links, which begin with https://.
5. Kicker: Kickers are small, all caps labels that appear above the character name. They are optional, and the contents of any character columm in the spreadsheet can populate that label. It is best if they are short (max 24 characters). There can be only one kicker, so if multiple columns are set to kicker then the last one in the list is what will be used.
6. Badge: A badge is a small circle with enough room for 1-3 alphanumeric characters that is notched to the left of the name/title. They are good for ranked lists, as they give the ranking a little visual prominence. They also could be used as yet another means to categorize/label characters. Badges have no kicker.

Blurbs	Bullets

An optional header/label can be added to the bullet list. This is covered in Configuring the page

The order in which the bullets and blurbs appear will match the order of the rows in the spreadsheet. Custom blurb columns can use formatted text.

Custom columns that are not configured in the columns tab will be ignored. This means columns used for internal notes, links or references will not be published.

Column	Purpose	Required
column	identity the column that your are configuring. This must match the column name.	Yes
type	Must be link, relative_link, blurb, kicker, badge or bullet	No
searchable	When set to yes, the content of this column will be searchable through the text-search bar	No
header	This is a label for the column content. For type blurb, this text is used as a bold header. For type bullet, this text becomes a bold lead-in. For type link this is the link text.	No

A list of character facts

The bulleted list, which is available for all characters has a couple configuration options which are handled on the top tab.

Key	Purpose	Default	Required
bullets_position	Places the bulleted list, if used, above or below the main text and blurbs of a character.	below	No
bullets_header	An option header/label which appears at the top of the bullet list. Use the placeholder {{NAME}} if you want the character name to be in the text, e.g. "About {{NAME}}" would become "About Jane Hopper."	-	No

_The bulleted list position is not configurable on the wide layout under the assumption that each character has a ton of text already. If not, then why are you using the wide layout? _

Bullets above the text	Bullets below the text