JCM - The Next Level

[Alice Grevet]

Dear JCM team,

When the JCM launched a year and a half ago, no one knew if it would catch on. We are grateful to the volunteers whose contribution of time, talent and skill have made it possible, and to the community who continues to read it. We would like to keep improving.

We are fortunate that the K2 team helped to give the magazine a beautiful face with the ability to organize our issues each month and meet the goals we defined 18 months ago. 

Paul, Dianne and I have been talking about a magazine redesign to take it to the next level and accommodate our ever-growing wish list of features and functionalities. For example, it would be great to have improved frontend article access/editing for authors, a wider use of tags (currently tied to our customized table of contents system), and an email alert system to editors based on the article category.

Within a month or two of launching the magazine, the decision was also made to see if inviting article contributions in languages other than English would meet with enthusiasm. That experiment has met with a good and steady response, however, we are up against some technical limitations in making the international section what it could be.

We would like your feedback on the idea of a website redesign. You guys know the magazine inside and out. Do you think it's a good idea, and if so, how do you think we should explore that possibility? 

We are considering, with your help, of creating and publishing a list of goals for the next phase of the magazine. We would then publicly invite developers to respond with an outline of how their CCK can support it, and what kind of tech support they would be ready to devote to it. We could do this in an article in the next issue of the magazine. What do you all think of this idea?

Please respond with your input to these questions.

On a separate topic we are also talking about improving our news-gathering process for engaging content but that's for another email thread.

Thanks everyone,

Alice

[Milena Mitova]

Awesome email, Alice! 

Not to repeat myself as I already said that in the chat, but I would suggest looking into easyblog - http://stackideas.com/ it is paid ($79/year, which I am sure we can find a way of finding funding for:), but has reliable support, lots of features and a great way of featuring tags, team bloggers, etc. It is a Joomla component, which integrates easily and nicely and it seems to be quite well adapted for a large user base.

I think that a small investment will mean many volunteer hours of hard restoring and debugging work saved:)

My 2 cents:)

 

With Best Regards,

 

Milena Mitova | email me back  | Cell: 646.596.6433 | Dynamic Websites, Data-Driven Applications, Interactive Customer Care Tools and more | completewebsitecare.com | Twitter 

 

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From: Alice Grevet <agr...@gmail.com>
To: joomla-commu...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2012 8:07 PM
Subject: [JCM] JCM - The Next Level

[Jen Kramer]

I think any paid extension we can ask the dev to contribute -- and
they likely would. StackIdeas is a Joomla Day New England sponsor.

Having said this -- are we back to the beginning on this discussion?
We were talking about a redesign in December. I spent a few hours
talking to Paul about it, and the wireframes are up here: www.4webinc.com/jcm

The wireframes do not include the implementation discussion, just a
strategic one. As always, I feel strongly that the strategy needs to
be in place before it's worth discussing any kind of technological
implementation. Otherwise, we're letting technology drive strategy,
and there is no faster formula for a failed IT project than doing
that.

Jen

On Jan 20, 9:41 am, Milena Mitova <milena_i_mit...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Awesome email, Alice!
>
> Not to repeat myself as I already said that in the chat, but I would suggest looking into easyblog - http://stackideas.com/ it is paid ($79/year, which I am sure we can find a way of finding funding for:), but has reliable support, lots of features and a great way of featuring tags, team bloggers, etc. It is a Joomla component, which integrates easily and nicely and it seems to be quite well adapted for a large user base.
>
> I think that a small investment will mean many volunteer hours of hard restoring and debugging work saved:)
>
> My 2 cents:)
>
> With Best Regards,
>
> Milena Mitova | email me back  | Cell: 646.596.6433 | Dynamic Websites, Data-Driven Applications, Interactive Customer Care Tools and more | completewebsitecare.com | Twitter
>
>
> ________________________________

>  From: Alice Grevet <agre...@gmail.com>

[Milena Mitova]

Oh, I suggested the extension as an alternative to K2 and assuming that it would fit what you suggested, Jen - and only because I thought that was final and decided upon. :)

 

---

From: Jen Kramer <focus...@gmail.com>
To: Joomla Community Magazine <joomla-commu...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, January 20, 2012 9:54 AM
Subject: [JCM] Re: JCM - The Next Level

[Paul Orwig]

@Milena - Thanks for mentioning EasyBlog. Once we have our list of goals and requirements (that's what this thread is about), then we can check it against EasyBlog along with any other options we want to take a look at.

@Jen - From my point of view, I don't think this thread goes back to the beginning of the redesign discussion. I think this thread builds on the earlier "JCM redesign: Starting with the content strategy" thread you started.

In that earlier thread I think we all got on board with the tag strategy you proposed. That thread also helped us decide how to re-organize the JCM team around our new shorter list of topics, and it helped solidify what we could work toward for what I described as "Phase 1" of a 2 Phase redesign.

So I see this thread as beginning to look at the "Phase 2" aspect of the JCM redesign, and asking for more specific feedback from this team about our goals and requirements. Here's an excerpt from an email I sent on Dec. 15 in that earlier "content strategy" thread where I summarized those two phases of the redesign:

* Phase 1 (Target-Feb 1 issue?)*

   - Present the new list of consolidated topics in the existing right side
   "In this issue" module.
   - If we want to start more comprehensive tagging of articles, we will
   need to modify how our "In this issue" modules display topic and article
   links.
   - No significant horizontal nav changes.
   - The main part of the home page doesn't really need to change much
   beyond potentially adding a description of the current issue's theme (if we
   adopt the theme idea-no suggestions for January themes got much traction),
   adding a module with social media links, and implement some marketing
   improvements (list article ideas, etc.).

* Phase 2 (Target-July 1 2nd anniversary issue?)*

   - Work on a more extensive visual re-design on the JCM sandbox site.
   - Present the main things we want to highlight on the home page.
   - Create new tag based views for topic pages, article pages, search, etc.
   - Re-tag all JCM articles and add modules to take better advantage of
   tags, and possibly revise categories.
   - Look at revisions to how the International content is presented.
   - Look at adding targeted RSS feeds, and other "push" content options.
   - Update Author Resources and other supporting content so it fits new
   content strategy and design.
   - Improve integration of JCM content on other joomla.org sites
   (documentation, community site, etc.).

[Alice Grevet]

Thanks Jen, Milena and Paul for that input.

Planning for content strategy will continue in another thread.

In the meantime, is there any more input on the redesign idea put forth at the beginning of this thread? If not, I'll go ahead and share a doc with all of you so we can start building a list together of redesign requests.

Best regards,

Alice

[Brian P Sullivan]

I agree that a content strategy should be formulated and articulated before design and development proceed. I have some “pet peeve” design issues for this site, mostly related to typography and icon sets, menu systems, threaded discussion, social media republishing and so on, but before we can describe a design or choose software we need to have set our content strategy and communication goals so that there is some sort of reference point by which we can judge effectiveness  and overall beauty.

 

That’s right: I want a beautiful JCM! Beauty happens when you grow into your skin with confidence and a purpose!

 

-Sully

Alice

[pferrero+flatworldcommunication.com]

Hi Guys,

I didn't been participating too much in the conversations but I was reading a lot, as a new member in the group I was just trying to understand hoy you work and how you like the things to be done.

When I first comment back in december about the graphic look of the magazine was because as a publisher myself I usually like to see designs that stand out from the shelf's with great graphics and interesting easy to read articles, and I though that the magazine was needing a little work on this side, now I know there is a huge group working and lots of the things I bought they where already been treated by the magazine team, that is great.

Now let me go a one step further, during the last year I dedicate myself to analyze  and thing about the future of digital magazines and books, and I can notice the things are happening much faster that I originally though, but we are still in the very beginning. Because of this I started my first digital magazine as a personal project, this is Navis Yachts Design  Lifestyle, for this I develop a complex iPad App that is the magazine reader and today we are finishing issue number 4 with a  great success for a project that didn't have any type of marketing, just a website and the App.

Where I want to go with all this, an idea was turning in my head for sometime, the JCM is ready, it has all the content and it has a complete editorial team, I can donate to JCM my Magazine reader app, we will need a graphic design team to prepare the magazine as it will be printed, and we can publish it to the iPad platform nearly at no costs and the costs that will be around $100 will be my donation to the project, I think this will be a tremendous success, our readers will be able to carry our the mag with them even if they are not connected to the net, and if we think it commercially add's  can be a great income to the joomla project.

I know just more things to think and more work to do, I know we all run our own business and we have very little hours to invest in the project but ideas are what make the world turn round and we need to express them if we want them to happen.

Cheers guys.

Pablo Ferrero

---------------------------------------

Flat World Communication LLC

201 S. Biscayne Blvd., 28^th Fl

Miami, Florida,   33131

USA

USA Toll Free: +1 866 796 1363

USA Office - Miami: +1 786 406 6111 

Europe Office - Dublin: +353 14 43 47 16

South America Office - Buenos Aires: 

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info@flatworldcommunication.com

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Ichat: pabloferrero

Skype: pabloferrero1

Twitter: http://twitter.com/pabloferre

[Alice Grevet]

Dear Pablo,

Thank you so much for your comments and your offer of an iPad app! I think over time we have been so focused on our website wish list, that not much thought has been given to mobile devices. Successful online magazines have apps, and it would be so exciting if we could have one too! 

A few technical questions run through my mind at this possibility - some apps pretty much render a pdf version of a magazine on the app, and others do amazing things that are very different from the online magazine website. I don't know what you need to pull content and graphics from the website to produce an app, and I don't know if the process is dependent on the specific extension we are using for the magazine. As you know, in this email thread we are discussing wished-for JCM website improvements which may result in changes.

Now you have me thinking about the app thing. I'd like to hear more about what's involved. We are so lucky to have you on the team. I'm going to ping you to learn more about what's involved.

Pablo this is such an exciting and generous option you are bringing up for us. Thank you so much!

Best regards,

Alice

[pferrero+flatworldcommunication.com]

Hi Alice,

Usually digital magazines always start from a printed mag, and that is why most of the mags out there on the iPad are based on their printed sisters.

What we did in the case of Navis, by the way you can download it to your iPad from here http://itunes.apple.com/tw/app/navis-luxury-yachts-magazine/id464692852?mt=8 , is not dynamically pull the content from the website, but work as the traditional mags do start from a InDesign file, this gives you the possibility to very easily cover the printed and digital market with just one file.

By the way in this project the website (a Joomla 1.7 with a modified Gavick template plus a subscription system) navisyachts.com serves as a marketing tool of the Mag and a shipyards catalog that can improve our advertisers exposition, impressions and also our SEO.

Navis is designed as a traditional magazine, laying out the pages with inDesign 5.2 at the special iPad size and exported as pdf, then we developed a Mac App that converts automatically this pdf in an iPad ready zip file and create the thumbnail, once we have this we develop an online tool on php that manage the files  from our server and where you create the contents menu for the mag and indicate if it is a free or a commercial issue, with this the iPad app check if there is a new mag in the server, download the overflow image and now that we just release the latest upgrade that works with newsstand the iPad automatically download the new issues and notify the user about it.

One more thing in the same process the iPhone version is created automatically.

This is more or less the process, designing the mag take us one week, uploading to to the iPad one hour.

Now from your question, no this is not dynamic content display as a mag, is still a pdf and you can do all a pdf can do, include movies, sounds, interactivity, forms and so on. 

What I was thinking for JCM is not pulling dynamic content, is creating something like a comercial magazine with the content of the online version and deliver it trough the digital devises.

By the way I have develop also a Mac App to convert the magazine to Zinio system and with this  you have covered all the devises that exist today through their technology, but we have to consider that at least you have to pay zinio $400 for every issue.

:)

Pablo Ferrero

---------------------------------------

Flat World Communication LLC

201 S. Biscayne Blvd., 28^th Fl

Miami, Florida,   33131

USA

USA Toll Free: +1 866 796 1363

USA Office - Miami: +1 786 406 6111 

Europe Office - Dublin: +353 14 43 47 16

South America Office - Buenos Aires: 

+5411 4707 0695

info@flatworldcommunication.com

http://www.flatworldcommunication.com

Ichat: pabloferrero

Skype: pabloferrero1

Twitter: http://twitter.com/pabloferre

[Dianne Henning]

Hi Pablo,

I am really interested in this as I am doing several print projects right now. I work with ID5.5, and this might be a great thing for my clients. 

I'd like to chat with you once we get this JCM issue launched. 

Best,

Dianne

[pferrero+flatworldcommunication.com]

Great Dianne,

Whenever you like to talk let me know, I am sure the JCM on the iPad first and then other devises will be a tremendous success.

Cheers.

Pablo Ferrero

---------------------------------------

Flat World Communication LLC

201 S. Biscayne Blvd., 28^th Fl

Miami, Florida,   33131

USA

USA Toll Free: +1 866 796 1363

USA Office - Miami: +1 786 406 6111 

Europe Office - Dublin: +353 14 43 47 16

South America Office - Buenos Aires: 

+5411 4707 0695

info@flatworldcommunication.com

http://www.flatworldcommunication.com

Ichat: pabloferrero

Skype: pabloferrero1

Twitter: http://twitter.com/pabloferre