I officially begin the website design/building process tomorrow for the new site for the newspaper where I work.
I've been given a team, including a project manager, a tech lead, and designer/programmers -- but they're all elsewhere in the country, except for myself and our in-house graphic designer. (I count myself as a graphic designer, too; it may not be my official job title, but I've worked as a designer -- freelance and employee -- in print, Internet, and multimedia since 1993.)
Our paper is a small daily -- circulation of 18,000, total staff around 50-60 (that's everyone from business office to classifieds, advertising to circulation, editorial to pressmen). Not a lot of tech knowledge; the project manager asked me today about our "online group," and I said, "I'm it." (I'll eventually be training our editors and reporters how to create stories on the website; I have freelanced for years as an instructor of computer classes and workshops.)
The discussion about moving us to a new CMS began last week, though I've been anticipating the conversation for months and doing research -- which is how I settled on Drupal. From there, I decided that ProsePoint would be our best choice.
All of that was finally approved today; the ProsePoint development site has been set up; I have my login information, and I start the design/building process tomorrow.
I've also started a weblog to keep track of the process for myself, as we are -- for the media syndicate -- a "test case" for using Drupal. If our site turns out well and they decide to move other papers to Drupal, I may end up helping those other newspapers to make the transition ... so I'm documenting everything I do (as much as possible).
I'm on a pretty tight deadline -- they want the new site up in 3-4 weeks. I think it's doable; I've already learned a lot of lessons with my test site that I can move over to the development site pretty quickly.
Comments
thanks for sharing!
This seems like an interesting project - your insights will definitely be helpful to other people. I don't see a link to your blog in the post nor on your profile here on groups.drupal.org so please do let us know so we can read about your experiences.
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
Cautious about giving out weblog address
I’m being cautious about giving out the weblog URL publicly at the moment, because it’s also a place where I’ve been collecting links on articles and blogs about newspapers using Internet technology — and sometimes, amongst the links, I end up sharing my opinion. My personal opinion, not necessarily the “company line.” I don’t know if that would get me in trouble with the newspaper or the media syndicate — but just to be on the safe side, I’ve only been giving out the weblog URL upon personal request.
Katrina
Site builder, writer, trainer, graphic designer
Welcome!
Look forward to seeing what you come up with!
3-4 weeks is a pretty ambitious timeline if you've never worked with Drupal before, but its certainly not impossible. Have you thought about how you'll get content in the system? Are reporters going to file their stories there or are you going to copy and paste? And are you a daily?
Answers
Well, I've been learning Drupal on my own for the last month or so, working on my own test site, so I've already been able to work out solutions for certain things before tackling the actual site for the newspaper. And the man assigned to the team as a tech lead has built several sites in Drupal, so he'll be a resource if I get stuck.
And yes, the plan is for the reporters and editors (who also write stories and columns) to submit stories online several times a day. It's not clear yet how much will be copy-and-paste from stories going into the print version of the newspaper and how much will be going to the website first; it will probably be a combination of both.
And yes, we are a daily; I mentioned that in my first posting above, including information on our circulation and staff size.
Katrina
Site builder, writer, trainer, graphic designer
Good luck
Good luck with it.
I think it took six weeks to get our first Drupal site up and running, in 2005, but that included learning how to theme not only Drupal but also Gallery2 (which was not at all documented).
Since then our launch cycle time has actually grown. But then, so have our ambitions.
Thanks
Thanks. I think we're already looking at pushing back our launch date — especially because of features that are going to require third-party or custom solutions: a real estate section where users can search all our local Realtors' listings; an online forms section where people can order ads for announcements for births, birthdays, anniversaries, engagements, and weddings; classifieds (getting our print classifieds online and providing the ability to take classified ad orders online).
I've been drawing a lot of inspiration from the Morris websites such as CJOnline.com, SavannahNow.com, and Jacksonville.com. I've also suggested that our media syndicate look into some of the Morris DigitalWorks solutions, especially for real estate and classifieds.
So far, everyone who has seen what I've built thus far has been delighted by how "clean" it looks; I hope to keep it that way!
Katrina
Site builder, writer, trainer, graphic designer
Update
After two weeks of working with ProsePoint, adding modules, and working (mostly) within the existing code, I've finally reached the point where some customization will have to take place to tweak the site as needed.
We're also looking at third-party add-ons for features not available through Drupal modules -- such as a real estate section, classifieds, obituaries, online forms, and a weather page.
I'll also soon begin putting together training manuals so I can train the staff on how to use the site to create and edit stories, upload photos, etc.
Katrina
Site builder, writer, trainer, graphic designer
classifieds site in drupal
We have done classifieds website in Drupal 5 some two years ago:
http://midwestclassifiedads.com/
With Drupal 6, we created even more powerful classifieds solution with the help of cck,views, node expiry and rules module. Of course, to create a friendly layout and appearance for the ads, we need to make use of contemplate module.
-Babu
Drupal Projects showcase: http://paramprojects.com/website/drupal-servicesprojects
Promote Drupal with Tshirts/merchandise: http://paramprojects.com/drupalstore
.
Classifieds can be done with Drupal. There's a classified ads module or you can build your own with modules like CCK and node expiration. Online forms can be done with webform. There are a couple of weather modules out there as well. I don't know what you mean by "real estate section", but there's a nice real estate site done on Drupal: http://drupal.org/node/155457
Michelle
Well ...
But can the Classifieds module in Drupal interact with the system we have at our newspaper so that the same classifieds we enter in the system for the print version of the newspaper can also go on our website?
And can Webform create forms where the form fields do not have labels and are strung together in paragraph form? In other words, instead of
First name: Peter
Last name: Smith
Birthday: December 10, 2002
I need a form that reads "Peter Smith celebrated his seventh birthday December 10."
I actually created all the forms we need to look that way in HTML; I have yet to figure out a way to port them over to Drupal.
And yes, we could probably build a real estate section in Drupal -- but I also know that online real estate sections for newspaper websites have already been created; why reinvent the wheel?
Our corporate office is looking into solutions for us for those major areas. The places where I personally could really use some help are the places where I need to tweak the modules in ProsePoint -- and the add-on modules -- to get the result I want.
For example, finding a way to combine Primary Term and Taxonomy Breadcrumb. Or finding a way to write a tiny module that duplicates a checkbox on the Source content type that links to a View of stories attributed to a source -- so I can use the same functionality on a new content type I created called Photo Source. Or finding a way to make the Relevant Content module only show stories whose Workflow status is Public.
There is a Drupal expert in the corporate office ... but I have to submit a request to his superiors to get permission for him to write code for me. If I could find someone -- say, through one of the Drupal groups or forums -- who was willing to help me out, that would probably end up being a lot more convenient for me.
Katrina
Site builder, writer, trainer, graphic designer
Update
I have nearly completed the editorial side of the design process, though I'm stilll experimenting with a few modules for add-on features (particularly looking at various ways to display sets of photos).
The last two weeks or so have mostly been focused on tweaking a few things -- with the help of a Drupal expert in the corporate office (on the other side of the country) -- such as finding a way to combine Primary Term with Taxonomy Breadcrumb to create the particular breadcrumb functionality I want, or figuring out how to work around the fact that the Relevant Content module doesn't know not to display stories that are not in the Public or Archived status in Workflow, or adding a little custom module so my Photo Source nodes could employ a feature built into the Source nodes in ProsePoint.
I'll begin training our newsroom staff this week on how to create and edit stories, how to upload photos for stories, how to include maps in stories, how to work with Calais tags, and how to change Workflow status. I wrote the first major draft of the training materials last night, and I'll finish revising them tomorrow. Fifteen pages so far — but 90 percent of that is made up of screenshots.
The next major phase of the design process will be the advertising side; we finally got an add-on real estate module approved (uListing: http://www.netrift.com/content/ulisting ). The corporate office is going to buy it for us; I'm hoping to be able to get it installed this week so I can begin setting it up (styling it to match the rest of our site, revising settings and options as needed, etc.).
Our launch date has been moved to April 1 to allow time for the major pieces to be put in place -- particularly Yahoo APT as our online ad server.
Katrina
Site builder, writer, trainer, graphic designer