Trust content on your website

Overview

If your school belongs to a multi-academy trust, the trust can share news posts, pages and alerts with its schools from its own website. Whatever it shares with your school appears on your website by itself, usually within five minutes, and changes when the trust changes it.

You will recognise trust items by their label. In Posts and Pages they say From <your trust's name>, and on your website a trust post's byline shows the trust's name rather than a person's.

A school may also belong to a school group: a school that runs a group of schools inside its trust, such as XP School for XP East, and shares items with them in the same way. If yours is in one, you may get items from your trust and from your school group. Each is labelled From , with the name of whoever shared it, and each can be hidden on its own: hiding the trust's copy of a post does not hide the group's copy of it, or the other way round. Everything below applies to both.

Why you cannot edit or delete a trust item

A trust item belongs to the trust, because the same item is on every school it chose. That is what lets the trust correct a mistake once and have it corrected everywhere.

So on your website:

• there is no Edit, Quick Edit or Trash link on a trust post or page;
• if you open one in the editor, you are taken back to the list with a note saying which trust shares it;
• its featured image, which is copied into your Media Library, cannot be edited or deleted either.

To get something changed, contact your trust. When they update it, your copy updates within about five minutes.

Hide a trust post or page on your website

If a trust post or page is not right for your school, you can hide it on your website. Your trust can see that you hid it, and who did.

1. Go to Posts (or Pages).
2. Hover over the trust item and choose Hide on this site.
3. A message confirms it is hidden, and the item is labelled Hidden on this site.

A hidden item is a draft on your website only. It stays hidden when the trust updates it.

To bring it back, hover over it again and choose Show again. If the trust scheduled it for later, it goes back to being scheduled.

You need to be able to edit other people's posts (or pages) to see these links: usually an administrator or an editor.

If the message says Realsmart could not be reached, or that trust content is being updated right now, nothing was changed. Try again in a minute.

Trust posts and their categories

A trust post arrives filed under the trust's own categories, such as XP Trust News:

• if your website already has a category with the same address name (its slug, such as xp-trust-news), the post goes into that category, and your category keeps its own name;
• if it does not, the category is created on your website, at the top level, the first time a trust post uses it. In Posts → Categories it looks like any other category;
• a category your website lacks that the trust sent without a name is left out. A post left with no category goes into your default category.

When the trust changes which categories a post is in, your copy follows. A category is never deleted from your website, even when the trust stops using it, because you might link to it. You can delete one yourself; if a trust post still uses it, it comes back the next time the trust updates that post.

Show trust posts on your website

Any of these lists the trust's posts as they arrive:

• A menu link. Go to Appearance → Menus, open Categories under Add menu items, tick the trust's category and select Add to Menu, then Save Menu. A Custom Link to /category/xp-trust-news/ (with the category's own slug) does the same.
• A list on a page. In the editor, add a Latest Posts block. In its settings, under Sorting and filtering, choose the trust's category in Categories.
• A banner. Choose the trust's category in Smart Alert Plus.

Trust alerts

A trust alert is a short message across the top of your website, or in a card in the corner. It looks exactly like your own Smart Alert, with "From" and the trust's name under the message. Trust alerts:

• appear above your own Smart Alert, whether or not you use Smart Alert;
• cannot be hidden by the school, because they are usually about something urgent across the trust, such as a closure;
• can be closed by visitors, if the trust allowed that. A visitor who closes one does not see it again, unless the trust changes it;
• may be shown only to signed-in pupils and staff, or only to staff, if the trust chose that;
• end at the time the trust set, and disappear by themselves then.

They come in the same six types as Smart Alert: Information, Important, Urgent, Good news, Countdown (a countdown to when the alert ends) and Emergency. An Emergency trust alert opens a pop-up the first time each visitor sees it, then shows a red bar that can't be closed until it ends. If your own Smart Alert is an Emergency too, only one pop-up shows on a page: the trust's first, then yours on the visitor's next page.

When the trust removes something

When the trust removes a post or page, it is moved to your Bin, and it disappears from your website. WordPress empties the Bin after seven days. If the trust shares it again later, it comes back.

What trust content cannot do on your website

For safety, some things are taken out of trust posts and pages when they arrive:

• scripts, and code that runs when someone clicks or hovers;
• videos and other embedded content from websites that are not on the approved list.

The approved list:

• YouTube and Vimeo videos;
• Google Maps (map embeds only: nothing else from google.com), Docs, Drive and Calendar;
• Microsoft Forms and Sway;
• Microsoft Stream videos, from any organisation's SharePoint, because school and trust Stream videos live in their own tenant (their organisation's own SharePoint);
• Padlet and Canva.

Your trust is told what was taken out. Also:

• a post goes into the trust's categories (see Trust posts and their categories);
• a page goes under your own page with the parent name the trust chose, or at the top level if you do not have one;
• shortcodes (text in square brackets) show as plain text.

Troubleshooting

A trust post has not appeared. It may be scheduled for later (look for Scheduled in Posts), or still on its way: allow five minutes. If it never arrives, ask Realsmart to check that this website is your school's registered website.

It says you are not allowed to edit or delete an item. That is a trust item. See Why you cannot edit or delete a trust item.

The trust changed a post, but our website still shows the old version. Allow five minutes. If you hid it, it has updated but is still hidden.