For 10 years I've helped small daily and weekly newspapers have successful websites, (400?) I have helped those clients with the software, but the main part of my consulting was the revenue - how the newspaper leveraged their traffic for income.
I have worked with the largest software development companies in the US newspaper industry. Recently I have decided the future is Open Source for smaller newspapers, my niche.
After playing with Wordpress, Joomla and now Drupal and researching how the different platforms are accepted by the development community and, most importantly, how well the user experience is going to be accepted, (ease-of-use), I have decided Drupal has got the best set of all those attributes.
I am now actively promoting and launching Drupal newspapers so they are better positioned for a long-term future with a platform, I believe, that will only get better.
If you want to ask many any questions about "How do you..?", "What's the best way...?", "Who's got a good example of..." etc., just send me note. I'm all in and happy to help.
Thanks, -Rob
Comments
Good to know
My friends using Wordpress impressed me to try it.
But after 1 year drupalling and knowing the flexibility of Drupal it's hard for me to just move to Wordpress.
I think the same - Drupal is more flexible and Powerfull, but I also think most of easy things can be done the same.
There is also some common experience that is being copied from WP to Drupal and from Drupal to WP.
Good there are several OpenSource CMS's - competition move things forward :]
Best Newspaper Template in Drupal 7
I'm a non-techie and in the process of setting up a newsletter "All About Louisiana." It will cover politics, education, economic development, & healthcare. Is there a template that you can recommend? I've been playing/practicing in Drupal Gardens & listening to training/education videos from Tom Geller & Open Source Training.
I've got a new computer with the Sandy Bridge chip being built right now & it should be completed in two weeks. At that time, I plan to load Drupal 7 & newspublisher. Is there any tips you can offer for the non-techie?
I'm a Management professor & teach Entrepreneurship. My work is in the area of "Codifying Academic Research." I think Drupal & the Semantic Web have a tremendous amount to offer in this area. I also think that it is important that I build the site so that I understand the components.
Daily I get requests to do business plans. I explain to these clients that it is important for them to do their own business plans to ensure that they know & understand all the components. At some point investors and/or bankers will ask the hard questions. They need to be able to answer these "hard questions." Doing their own business plan will allow them to do this.
Thanks, Ron
best newspaper template
I found, that openpublish uses a nice theme for newspapers.
What do you mean with "newspublisher"?
Regards
M
Best Newspaper Template
A newspaper is more than a CMS, it's full-blown set of modules: classifieds, subscription forms, e-commerce for both, photo galleries (with watermarks), advertising inventory for sizes+rotations and much more. I have found the best one for COMPLETENESS is http://www.surfnewmedia.com/ out of Maine.
Out-of-the-box and for the price, nothing I've seen works better that I'm aware of.