RE: Non-automatic frontpages

Hi, Manuel,

Regardless of which CMS you're using, you typically have the option of
either 1) adding a meta data attribute (say, displayRank with values 1
through 5 to display the top 5 news stories), or hacking at the publishDate
or effectiveDate of the news article in order to force certain articles to
appear in a desired order within a chronologically ordered subset of feature
stories (if you defined a slot/portlet for the latest 5 news articles to
appear, sorted by effectiveDate in reverse chrono order, let's say.)

This is what we've done on a recent project for a client using Plone/Zope,
but we've done this with numerous other tools as well.  You can view a page
from one of these sites which has numerous such dynamic (5 next shows, 5
most recent event results, 5 top stories, etc.) type of slots/portlets on
the home page.  It's really not very difficult, so if you have questions
about how we did it (that the above doesn't provide enough detail for),
please let me know.

Here is an example of the technique:   http://www.arenacross.com

You asked about the taskflow/UI needed to accomplish this.  The workflow
would be specific to your client, but the taskflow would just involve your
content managers setting the rank attribute or modifying the effectiveDate
(again, a hack, but if your CMS doesn't allow you to customize content types
by adding attricutes, this will suffice) to achieve the desired result.  I
don't see any special GUI concerns on the content entry side.  On the
presentation side, again, the above web link is one example of a layout to
achieve something similar to what you mention, but I think presentation
design is going to be client- and site- specific.



Ken Wasetis
Director of Technology
SPR Inc.
312.528.2417 (office)
224.628.1665 (mobile)

Please visit our website at http://www.sprinc.com

At SPR, we help our clients assess, evaluate, and implement the most
appropriate ECM strategy by leveraging industry expertise with open source,
commercial and custom solutions.

-----Original Message-----
From: cms-list-admin-/[email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]On
Behalf Of Manuel González Noriega
Sent: Monday, December 22, 2003 11:12 AM
To: CMS List
Subject: [cms-list] Non-automatic frontpages


Hi,


i know some of you are familiar with Drupal (i know Bob Doyle is ;), an
opensource LAMP WCMS. We are currently building a site using Drupal and
we want to run away from the standard 'latest posts in reverse
chronological order' homepage and move towards a more online
news/newspaper site look. That is, a main story, several 'second level'
stories, several more 'other headlines' and a few other content
blocks... Not so crowed as cnn.com but hopefully similar to
themorningnews.org. Hope you get the idea :)

So, i have to design/code something that allows editors to decide which
story of the published ones is the main one, pick a picture from the
galleries to join it, etc.., press submit and end up with a brand new
frontpage.

I'd like to know what are the standard taskflow and UI design for these
kind of tasks in online publishing and electronic media. Articles,
examples of  similar functionality in existing systems etc..

Thanks in advance



--
Manuel González Noriega
Simplelógica, construcción web
    URL: http://simplelogica.net
    EMAIL: [email protected]
    TELEFONO: (+34) 985 22 12 65

Logicola es el weblog de Simplelógica http://simplelogica.net/logicola/

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