News Magazine

The News Magazine uses PROPS which is an open, extensible Internet publishing system designed specifically for periodicals such as newspapers and magazines who want to publish online, either exclusively or as an extension of their print publication

STANDARD FEATURES:

• Well-documented, robust API allowing third party developers to create 'plug-ins' to extend base functionality
• Delivery of content to multiple target platforms (HTML, XML/XSL, WAP/WML, text, etc)
• Readers may format a story for printing, or email to a friend
• Pages are presented as static URLs so that 'spider' type search engines may crawl and index them
• Strict separation of design and content - designers control site look and feel by developing templates using standard site editing tools such as Dreamweaver, GoLive, BBEdit, etc., while editors manage site content via a web interface
• Permissions-based multiuser site management screens allow a PROPS site to be maintained by a distributed team of reporters and editors
• Will support the XML-based News Industry Text Format
• Will speak various XML dialects for both import and export, allowing syndication in both directions, and enabling PROPS sites to participate in distributed news networks
• Is targeted at mid-sized publishers serving fewer than one million page views daily, however will be architected to scale through deployment of multiple front-end web servers, separate image servers, etc.
• Readers will be able to access content in HTML or WAP/WML format. Use of XML/XSLT will allow delivery in other formats as standards develop. (Note: we're currently not using XSLT, but it should not be hard to adapt the software to use it in the future if any benefits to doing so become obvious)
• Readers will be able to view a printable version of all stories, or email a story to a friend. XSLT will also be used to generate these versions.
• Readers will be able to perform advanced keyword searches on archives. Archives will be free, however if someone wants to add paid archives capabilities, we'll let you.
  All pages will be presented as static URLs, so that 'spider' type search engines may crawl and index stories. This should be a configuration option, since access to the Apache config file is required to enable this.
• The content management screens will have an intuitive and consistent end user interface. Style guidelines will be written to ensure that 3rd-party plug-ins are consistent with the core system's user interface.
• Multiple users will be supported through ACLs or user/group privileges.
• Editors will have access to a 'web desk' screen listing new stories from external feeds, and stories that have been assigned to them by another editor.
• In addition to editing stories from the wire, editors will be able to enter stories into the database using web-based forms.
• Stories may be scheduled to publish on a future date.
• Photos will flow into the web desk from external feeds/interfaces, and may be assigned to stories.