Jul 02, 2013 Some Web Publishing Tools must be installed on a workstation. Others are server-based and are accessed via a web-interface. Web Publishing Tools are also called Web Authoring Tools. There are two types of Web Publishing Tools. The first type is 'code centric' and simply assists the web author to write and validate HTML code.
Overview
Throughout this course, you've learned to create websites, and in the previous lesson you learned how to get those websites onto the World Wide Web. This is all useful knowledge and having skills in this area can be a great asset that potential employers will view favorably. But the landscape of the Web is changing rapidly. Millions of people worldwide have something they'd like to publish on the Web, about themselves, their interests, or their business or organization. Most of these people don't have the skills that you now have, and are not able to create their own web pages from scratch. A growing variety of products and services have risen to address this need. Content management systems, blogging software, wikis, and website publishing tools all provide back-end technology that lets users focus on content. These tools take the content that users submit, and publish that content on a web page. Users don't have to know anything about HTML. This lesson explores a variety of these tools.
Learner Outcomes
At the completion of this exercise, you will:
- be able to describe the differences between content management systems, blogging software, wikis, and website publishing tools.
Content Management Systems
A content management system (CMS) is a system by which users can enter and upload content (text, images, audio, video, etc.) and have that content published on the Web. CMS's support multiple users working collaboratively, so many people can work collaboratively on authoring content for a particular site. An important feature of these systems is version control, so as users create or edit content, multiple backup versions of that content are saved so users can revert back to an earlier version if they mess up.
The content entered by authors is stored in a database, and is ultimately published to a template using server-side scripting, which you learned about in an earlier lesson. You also learned about templates in this course, and used a template in creating your portfolio site. Each page in your site has the same core HTML structure - the only thing different between pages is the content you added. CMS's work the same way, except authors' content is added to the template automatically after they save and publish it. This method of publishing can be great for Web standards - if a template conforms to standards (i.e., uses valid HTML, valid CSS, and is fully accessible) then every page published within that template is likely to conform to standards as well.
Three of the most popular CMS's are Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress.
Blogging Software
Blogging software is a type of CMS that was specifically designed to support blogs (short for 'Web log'), personal Web-based journals published on the Web by individuals or small groups of authors. Individual entries, or 'posts', are typically listed chronologically, can be tagged or otherwise grouped by topic, and visitors are able to add comments to them.
The CMS WordPress originated as blogging software, and still serves that function today although as its feature set has grown it's become a viable option for serving websites too. WordPress software is free and open source, and can be downloaded from wordpress.org and installed on a web server. WordPress boasts about its Famous 5-Minute Install. Alternatively, you can use wordpress.com, a site that hosts your WordPress blogs for you, so you don't need to worry about the technical details and can simply focus on content.
Other popular blogging tools include Movable Type, TypePad, and Google's Blogger.
Wikis
Wikis are designed for collaborative authoring. Users can add, modify, or delete content right from their web browser. The most famous wiki is Wikipedia, which is built using MediaWiki wiki software. Wiki software is a CMS that specializes in the sort of multi-user collaborative web-based authoring that defines a wiki. Many wiki software packages use a simplified markup language, intended to be easier for the masses to learn than HTML. For example, here are a few examples of how to markup text in MediaWiki:
- To add an <h2> heading, use two equal signs on either side of the heading, like this:
- To add a heading at a deeper level, just increase the number of equal signs to reflect the heading level, like this: This is a Level 3 Heading
- To add an item to an unordered list, just add a * in front of the item, like this:
- Use apostrophes (') to make content italicized or bold (two apostrophes for italics, three for bold, and four for both), like this: This sentence includes 'italicized text' and ''bold text''.
There are more tags listed on the Wikipedia Cheatsheet. Users enter content using this simple markup language, and it's converted to HTML before being displayed.
Some wiki software provides users with an on-line rich text editor that includes buttons for marking up text, so users don't have to learn a markup language at all. There are dozens of choices when it comes to wiki software. See the Comparison of Wiki software on Wikipedia for more detail.
Website Publishing Tools
Blogging and wiki software have specific use cases for which they were designed. There are also online tools available that focus specifically on creating a website much like the portfolio site you've created in this course. Two of the most popular tools in this category are those provided by Web giants Google and Yahoo. Google Sites promotes its service as 'a free and easy way to create and share web pages'. Yahoo! SiteBuilder provides a similar tool and service, marketed specifically at small businesses.
Implications for Careers in Web Design and Development
With a growing variety of CMS's available so people and organizations can create and manage websites without knowing anything about HTML, does that mean everything you've learned in this course has been a waste of time? Not at all! Each of the tools and services described in the lesson ultimately delivers content to the browser in HTML, stylized with CSS, with behavior added using JavaScript. As long as there's a World Wide Web, these technologies will likely be at the heart of that Web. What the current trends do suggest though is that if you're interested in pursuing a career in web design and development, a good next step will be to learn more about these tools, and the server-side scripting languages that were used to build them. There's currently a huge market for (a) people who know how to install and manage a CMS behind the scenes, and (b) people who can do server-side scripting to build tools like these, or to extend their capabilities with plug-ins, add-ons, or modules.
Wikipedia's List of Content Management Systems is organized by platform, which is the programming or scripting language that was used to develop the system.
Activities
Now that you've acquired an understanding of how websites are built and have developed skills in creating sites from scratch, consider what you'd like to do with your knowledge and skills. Would you like to further that knowledge by learning more HTML, CSS, and JavaScript? Would you like to embrace the new directions the Web is headed and learn more about how CMS's work? Would you like to learn one or more server-side scripting languages? If so, which ones? Would you like to take just the knowledge and skills you've acquired in this course and apply them toward creating a website for a real world client? If this is you're answer, you're in luck! You will now have an opportunity to do exactly that in Unit 8. But first, you still have one more lesson in the current unit.
A Digital Publishing Platform is a software solution that enables marketers, publishers and designers to create, edit and publish content online and as an app in app stores. This solution makes it efficient and easy to create content online and generate traffic and possible monetization from online content. It enables the transition from print and PDF-based formats to responsive, mobile-friendly reading experiences.
As more and more consumers use their tablet and mobile devices to consume content, we have seen major growth in digital publishing software and tools available to brands and publishers.
To help you select the right digital publishing software or tools for your business, we have also built a straightforward list of must-ask questions that you can use in your own decision process.
And we have also added why we think these questions are important, so you can decide for yourself which questions are important to you and which ones not. It’s 100% free if you join (or are already on) our ContentDesign newsletter. Click here to get it.
Contents - click on the section you want to visit
DIGITAL PUBLISHING TECHNOLOGY : Digital Publishing For BRANDS & ORGANIZATIONS
DIGITAL PUBLISHING TECHNOLOGY: Native Apps: Digital Publishing For The App Store & Publishers
Native Apps vs Web Apps/websites: What's The Difference?
Native Apps vs Web Apps/websites: Which One Is Better?
Digital Publishing solutions and platforms have begun to vary from each other quite a bit, as they serve vastly different purposes within digital publishing. Here is a list of some of the best digital publishing platforms which we will review:
BEST DIGITAL PUBLISHING PLATFORMS 2019
- Readz
- ZMAGS
- JooMag
- Woopie
- Adobe
- MAG+
- Aquafadas
- Paperlit
- iMirus
- Magloft
Digital publishing (which is also referred to as online publishing or e-publishing), is the publication on the web or on electronic carriers of magazines, e-books, white papers, reports, or any form of content that is typically long form.
Some digital publications are sold as subscriptions for monthly magazines while others are created specifically as free content and are monetized through advertising or used for (content) marketing purposes as digital magazines, reports, ebooks or catalogues.
Some platforms work best for the paid content model, while others are more suited for content marketing and organic search.
We have divided up these different digital publishing solutions into two categories:
1. Web apps / websites or 'digital first' content experiences on HTML/CSSTypically more for brand publishing and content marketing
2. Native apps (and thus available on Apple Newsstand and GooglePlay)
Digital Publishing: Definition
- Brand publishing / Content Marketing
- Advertising-driven Media & Publishing
- Company / internal magazines & publications
The needs and wants of communications, marketing and advertising departments tend to differ significantly from traditional paid content publishing needs. For brands and advertisers, content helps to realize a conversion and needs a bigger 'instant rapport' factor.
Therefore, values such as a great user experience, easy & smooth access, fast loading speed, SEO and analytics to name a few features, are of primordial importance to help achieve business results. On the other hand, features such as easy monetization of the content are less relevant here.
Web apps or HTML/CSS-based content applications are stored on a remote server delivered over the Internet through a web browser. This means that readers never have to install anything. The applications can be reached on any web-connected device, whether that be desktop or mobile.
Native Apps: Digital Publishing Platform for the App Stores
- Publishing for audiences that favor app stores
- Field sales- and marketing-tools
- Out-of-the-box monetization of the content, thanks to the presence on these stores
- Content is downloaded so good for off-line content needs
- Integration with InDesign
Here are the best publishing tools and platforms for creating native apps:
Previously known as the Digital Publishing Suite/Solution, Adobe's product is now the 'Mobile Content' component of a solution group called the Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) which in turn is part of the enterprise content solutions. The Mobile Content solution allows you to produce digital, interactive magazines as apps.
Adobe Mobile Content - Experience Manager Review ⁕⁕⁕⁕
Adobe has a very complete product, and since they are also the makers of InDesign, the integration seems a no-brainer. The offering is quite complete, and you can make a highly customized app. By placing the product in the enterprise solution group, Adobe has clearly given a signal as to the future direction of the product: use cases like information distribution for field sales reps and even retailers.
The only downside seems to be the price point. This digital publishing solution is now part of the enterprise portfolio, and sources have told me that pricing starts at 50,000 USD yearly.
MAG+
Mag+ offers tow products: Designd and Semble. Designd allows you to create digital magazines on tablets and phones starting from InDesign. Semble offers you a visual creation environment to create your content apps from scratch.
Mag+ Review ⁕⁕⁕⁕
Mag+ positions itself as a 'creative and efficient Adobe DPS alternative. They will even convert your DPS layers as part of the contract. So if you are tired of Adobe's digital publishing platform for some reason, then maybe Mag+ could be the solution for you.
With a price point between 999$ to 2999$ monthly, the price point is not low, but should be within reach for many publishers.
Aquafadas allows publishers to convert their existing print layout from InDesign. Aquafadas offers content 'enrichment' tools like video, animation, etc. Aquafadas is used by Elle, Paris Match and Men's Fitness.
Aquafadas Review ⁕⁕⁕
Just like Adobe, Aquafadas has strongly oriented itself to the corporate market, and is focussing a lot on solutions like sales enablement. A cool feature of the Aquafadas solution is ConversionFlow, which allows you to upload your (old) PDF's to a server and you will be able to retrieve them as an app. design apps, eBooks, and digital magazines for mobile devices with no cost-per-download or revenue sharing. The publisher pricing starts at $720 for a single issue, and $4,200 for multiple issues.
Paperlit has kept its focus on 'pure' digital publishing for magazines and brands. It offers you the possibility to export your app from Indesign.
Paperlit Review ⁕⁕⁕
Paperlit also offers a web-reader with integrations into subscription management solutions such as Dovetail, CDS and Cambey & West.
iMirus integrates printed content with multimedia interactivity to create branded apps accessible on smartphones and tablets. Clients include Allstate and Porsche.
iMirus ⁕⁕
I have seen iMirus in action at conventions in the past, so I still keep them on the list. But it seems hard to find new examples of their work. MAGLOFT
Magloft allows you to create 'responsive' content that will be easily readable on smartphones and tablets. Magloft offers their own visual drag-and-drop editor allowing you to create and design your content. Clients are magazines like Mocha Kid, ReAfrica and Homeopathy first.
Magloft Review ⁕⁕
Magloft's pricing starts at about 100 USD monthly, bringing it in reach for beginning magazines.
Readz helps brands and organizations create beautiful interactive publications, like reports, magazines, brochures,...
Readz offers a drag-and-drop visual editor, with pre-made modules and a wide variety of animations.
Readz offers brands and organizations a powerful publishing platform, and you can start from InDesign, or build with templates or from scratch.
The ZMAGS Creator solution is ideally suited for eCommerce brands, lifestyle and fashion
'It's your content. In beautiful, digital formats.' Woopie helps businesses and organizations create documents and publications that look professional and beautiful on every device. Woopie's name stands for 'Write Only Once, Publish It Everywhere.' Clients include Telefonica, Matter and Wayra.
Woopie Review ⁕⁕⁕
Woopie really lives up to its name. Content created on Woopie looks good on browsers, as well as on eReaders. It handles nicely on mobile and tablet. Woopie uses templates, and the Woopie editor is very reminiscent of the Wordpress editor. As a content creator, you will live in these templates, so you better like them or get started on creating new ones. However, Woopie's system fails significantly short in anything related to marketing. There seems to be no way to acquire leads or sales, page speed tests on Woopie's content reveal rather bad results, and technical SEO seems non-existent. A no-no for marketing, but a use case where Woopie would be suitable is internal communications, where you are talking to an existing audience and you're not concerned with leads or sales.
Zmags offers content creation software without the code. Zmags value proposition for its clients is that they will stand apart with rich digital experiences...powered by Zmags easy-to-use content creation software platforms. Zmags is used by Neiman Marcus, Marks & Spencers, Godiva and Vivienne Westwood.
Zmags Review ⁕⁕⁕⁕
Zmags has concentrated its technology efforts completely on the fashion and retail sector. Like Readz does with Shopify, Zmags offers integrations with many eCommerce platforms that allow brands to create shoppable content.
If you are not a retail company, you will not fall into Zmags' ideal customer profile.
If you don't want shoppable content, then Zmags is not your choice.
If you are in retail though, then Zmags can offer you embeddable, responsive (mobile + desktop) shoppable content, allowing you to drive sales directly from your content. On the min side, speedtests reveal that Zmags' content is rather slow (even when surfing the Zmags website a spinner regularly appears), and the quality of their technical SEO is doubtful at a minimum.
Zmags pricing model places them in the mid- to high range.
Joomag allows you to do free or paid publishing, and offers a Newsstand option.
JooMag will offer you a flipbook or a templated approach to create your magazines. You will have to start from scratch, but the templates allow you to get results in a good time nevertheless.
The templates are somewhat restrictive, and as a result brands using this digital publishing platform wanting to create a branded look should not select this technology.
Woopie is an ideal solution if you're looking to publish as ePubs and many other formats.
Readz is undoubtedly the most business-results focused solution in this group of communications/marketing/advertising oriented online digital publishing platforms.
They offer a powerful visual editing environment and complement that with a powerful marketing stack so marketers and advertisers can drive their content goals: forms, CTA's, a strong focus on SEO, as well as integrated analytics about actual conversions on your content.
Readz also offers the possibility to restrict access to content, for example for internal, partner, or member oriented publications.
The Readz plans offer unlimited publications, and Readz is an obvious choice for companies looking for a solid ROI on content and/or advertising.
You can check the Readz website here or request a demo.
- support for flipbooks. The advantage of this is that you can use a single platform to host your old PDFs as flipbooks and start upgrading content to responsive formats when it suits you.
- InDesign import, to quickly offer better (mobile) experiences from and
- a powerful design studio to offer intense customization to fit your brand.
digital publishing solution
With Readz, you can offer flipbooks, import from InDesign or create your own custom responsive publication from scratch.
But first, let's make sure we are all on the same page with the definition of digital publishing.
10 Reasons To Create Interactive Digital Publications
Creating a digitally interactive publication can seem difficult, time consuming and expensive. Is it even necessary? If you want to increase sales (or any other business goal) and not get left in the dust by your competition, the answer is resoundingly yes. You might think you can’t afford the right digital publishing tools to create great-looking content, but the truth is you can’t afford not to. Given that we are such visual creatures, simply throwing up a page with endless product images or a novel of text doesn’t get the job done. Instead, it’s vital to present your viewers with a good-looking design and story that draws them in and makes them want to stay. But hurry, because you only have 3.42 seconds before your visitors make a judgment on the credibility of your page based on your design! Great-looking, interactive content, or the lack thereof, impacts all aspects of your business, whether you realize it or not.
Design: Who cares what my digital publication looks like? It’s the content that matters, right?
1. 45% of consumers say they make judgments about the credibility of websites based on design alone.2. 2/3 of people would rather read something beautifully designed than something plain.
3. Visual content drives 567% more inbound links than text-only. 4. 65% of senior marketing executives believe that visual assets (photos, video, illustrations and infographics) are core to how their brand story is communicated. Advertising, anybody?
Video: I’m in digital publishing, not film. Do I really need to think about the possibility to add in some videos?
5. 51.9% of marketing professionals worldwide name video as the type of content with the best ROI.6. 53% of customers feel more favorable towards companies whose mobile sites provide instructional video content.7. Syndacast says 74% of all internet traffic as of 2017 is video.
Here’s what marketers already publishing interactive content had to say:
8. 81% agree that interactive content grabs attention more effectively than static content.9. 79% agree that interactive content can have reusable value, resulting in repeat visitors and multiple exposures.10. 66% agree that audience engagement has increased since their organization started using interactive content.Whether you’re already creating an interactive experience or not, you’ll want - and dare I say need, a digital publishing platform that allows you to add interactivity to your content without an external service. This will make your life much easier now, and in the future.
Visual content: I publish a lot of text on my website, isn’t that enough?
It is never easy to compile a list of digital publishing platforms in an industry that’s so heavily populated. For every solution mentioned, there must be dozens, if not more, alternatives out there. If there's anything I might have missed that deserves to be on this list, please don’t hesitate to reach out!
Bart is a digital marketing veteran and co-founder of Readz, a platform used by brands of all sizes to create superior content experiences. His writing has been featured in Sparksheet, Business2Community, Skyword and other martech publications.
digital publishing solution
With Readz, you can offer flipbooks, import from InDesign or create your own custom responsive publication from scratch.
![Web Pablishing Tools Web Pablishing Tools](http://i.i.cbsi.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2012/08/21/Adobe-Muse-contact-form.jpg)
Web vs App As A Digital Publishing Platform: - What's The Difference?
Everyone’s heard the term “app” thrown around, but many don’t know the difference between a (mobile) web publication and native apps. In essence, the big difference is as follows: It comes down to where each of them lives, so to speak. Whether you want to call them mobile apps, responsive publications/sites or mobile publications/sites, the point is that web publications live on the Internet. In stark contrast, native apps live on the handheld device itself. There’s even a third choice, which is the hybrid app.Now days it's becoming difficult to distinguishing between the web and native apps. Nonetheless, important differences remain, and we’ll walk you through them.
While you may have been led into thinking otherwise, a web publication or web app is actually a website that you can access on your handheld device. Though they may appear like a native app, they definitely aren’t implemented as such. Usually written in HTML5 and accessed by a browser, a mobile site has its own URL. The user can even 'install' the mobile site on his homepage by simply bookmarking that page.
- In this corner, we have the native app. As explained above, it lives on your handheld device.
- Accessed through the icons that you see on your device’s home screen, it needs to be installed via an app store such as the Apple App Store or Google Play.
- Only developed particularly for one platform, it can utilize all of the features of the device. This means that a native app can utilize your device’s camera, its contact list, its compass, its GPS and much more. It also supports gestures (whether it’s an app-defined gesture or a more standard one based on an operating system), working offline and the device’s notification system.
A hybrid app is essentially a mix of both a mobile website and a native app. For instance, it needs HTML to be rendered in a browser (just like a mobile site), but it also exists in an app store and utilizes a lot of the features of your device.
Much of the time, a hybrid app will be created as a so-called wrapper for an already live webpage. This is usually because the app creator wishes to obtain a presence in an app store, but without expending material effort on developing a completely different app. Another reason for the popularity of these apps is the reduction of development costs that comes by way of cross-platform development.
Does it make sense yet? Both web publications and native apps have their pros and cons and we will split them out in feature groups below.
When Considering Features:If your main concern is having a myriad of features from which to choose, then use native apps. Native apps have access to the whole boatload of device-exclusive features like notifications, camera and GPS, to name just a few.A business that mainly interacts with its customers in person or on the phone likely doesn’t need a mobile app. A regular online digital publication will be exactly what you want.
However, if your business is one that offers an existing web service that caters to user logins and account management, then the native app is the way to go because it’s offers more features and is more convenient.When Considering Installation, Rapid Access & SEO:Web publications are much easier to install than native apps. When you “install” a web publication, you just have to create a bookmark on your home screen. However, installing a native app means downloading it from an app store, which takes longer and also has to get over the hurdle of the user first justifying the effort to do so.
Accessing a native app is easy immediately after the download. However for future access and updates, often additional downloads of content and updates of the app are required. This can create a burden on the reader, and it should not come as a surprise that more than 9 out of 10 apps are deleted after installation.
Also, do take into account that native apps cannot be accessed on desktops, which is still about 50% of your traffic.
When Considering the User Interface:Native apps are your best bet if you’re looking for that extra crispy feeling and high-resolution graphics.
However, for 99% of us, the experience and interface possibilities offered by web publications are not just good enough, we feel totally satisfied with the experience.
About Hybrid Apps
In theory, hybrid apps could offer the best of both worlds. The reality as we have experienced it though, is that hybrid apps can run both on app stores and on the web, but are not particularly good in either. So you'll get a second rate experience everywhere.
It Comes Down to PreferenceAs you can see, both online digital publications and native apps have their pros and cons. Each is also better for specific situations which the other’s not well-suited for. Web publications started to get increasingly popular due to the use of HTML5: This made more users aware of the fact that they could achieve native-like functionality right in their browsers.
What’s the best digital publishing platform for brands and publishers: apps or not?Fact. More and more people are using smartphones and tablets NOW to access content.Fact. Mobile devices will be or are already the primary devices for accessing content in the future.We don’t have to look into a crystal ball to predict that; it’s already happening, with people moving from screen to screen and checking things out on mobile devices late into the night.The question is: what do content providers, marketers and the brands they represent do about it?
And the answer: if your core audience has gone mobile, so must you – you have to deliver content in the way that works best for your readers.It sounds simple enough, but it isn’t because content producers have a choice to make between using a native app or a web app for content delivery.Don’t be confused by the terminology. A native app is simply an app that is downloaded to a mobile device, that runs on a particular mobile operating system (such as Android, iOs or Windows Phone), and is specifically designed to work with the features and functionality on that device. Generally, most users will pick up a native app in an app store.In contrast, a web app uses the latest web technologies to mimic the functionality of an app. Most people can’t tell the difference, but if you want to really understand it, check out this article from NNGroup.Which should you choose? Here are some of the advantages of each kind of app.
Native App Advantages
Most importantly, a native app will always feel just a little bit smoother because it’s made to work with a specific mobile device and an operating system.One of the best things a native app has going for it is the ability to use all the features built into a mobile device. That means if your online magazine includes a map, it can open in the built in maps application. And if you have a phone number in the app, smartphone users can call your business with one tap or swipe.Another feature is the ability to access content offline. Think of something like Google Currents, where people can sync the latest news with their mobile device and read it even when they don’t have a connection. Of course, some web apps offer offline access as well.But of course, native apps have major disadvantages – the need to have a different mobile app for every operating system and to keep these constantly up to date as those systems change. Also, mobile app development can become costly very fast.
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Web App Advantages
Mobile web apps also have a lot to offer users. For example, mobile web apps are universal, no matter what mobile device they are using. And the user experience can be the same as a native app including swipes, user interface, etc.They are much, much better for SEO because they are spidered like other websites. That’s an important consideration for content marketers.No-one needs to install anything special to use a mobile web app and to keep them updated. They are easy to update and maintain, likely more affordable and a very important element is that no-one has the hassle of trying to get the app into an app store.For more on the differences between the apps, there’s an excellent slide deck on the Business Insider site.What Content Providers Must DoWhichever format wins out the imperative for content marketers hasn’t changed. To keep readers happy now and in the future, content providers must make their publications:- optimized for search (which is why we like web apps)
- easily obtainable (i.e., minimize steps to obtain it)
- readable on mobile
- readable by email (on mobile devices)
- easy to navigate and share
- small and adapted – no download
This last point is important, because as marketers produce more content, your readers will be less and less inclined to take extra steps to get to your content.
Drag-and-drop content creation, integrated marketing tools and performance analytics, all in one platform.
The Definitive Guide
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Start publishing content like Deloitte, IBM and Nike.
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