Page 1 of 1

Press Release / News application - suggest features

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 9:24 pm
by Luke
I am building a press release / news application for our clients to be able to easily accomplish the following to cut down on the nickel and diming we get from having to constantly update client's news and press releases. I imagine somewhat of a simplified blog system. I know I need the following features:
  • Login system (admin)
    ability to add news / press releases
    ability to attach 1 or more documents (pdf/doc etc. versions of PR) to any press release
    ability to tag and categorize each news piece
    ability to format news posts (to some degree)
Can you guys think of any other features that are must-have in an application like this? I would really like to enhance the application once I'm done with it with subtle ajax-ness to enhance user experience (and to get my feet wet with it). I've done some ajax, but now that I've found jquery, I feel that I can execute it in an unobtrusive and elegant way.

Anyway, thanks for reading... and I look forward to your suggestions.

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 9:33 pm
by superdezign
Well assuming you're programming your own text-editor for users that seem to have little to no HTML knowledge, you'd have to match most html tags (anchors, font styling, tables, etc), and display them in an editable format, and probably add the upload functionality either to it's own page, or automatically added to their text in some way.

If they need this, chances are they'll still end up calling you with problems if it's not simple, except this time you probably can't charge them.

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 9:39 pm
by Luke
Thanks for your response. The idea is to make it really simple and intuitive. I plan giving the administrator the option of using a javascript editor such as tinymce or some sort of lightweight markup language. The more advanced users can use html, but they will be limited in the tags they are allowed to use. To make it simple, if the author chooses to use some sort of markup language, I will post a guide on how to use it right next to the entry box.

My question though, is not so much the how, but the what. I know how to do pretty much anything I'll need to, and if I don't I'll address each issue individually. What I need from you is... what features would you expect in an application such as this?

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 9:45 pm
by superdezign
Personally? It's hard to think that way.. I guess that's why you need to ask..


Well, definitely, a "Preview" ability, emulating the page with the new content to ensure it will look okay before setting it live... I don't see this done a lot in custom-made CMSs

I'm not sure if this is possible, especially over the internet, but .*doc to *.pdf conversion (not necessary, but an awesome feature if you could figure it out)

Being able to create a new page? I know its not something I'd particularly trust a client with, but it's a thought.

I'm out of ideas.

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 10:14 pm
by Christopher
I find that these system have three parts: a file uploader/manager/picker, CRUD "item" management, and a controller to display the "items". Of these the file manager is reusable for various types of "items", but you need to write an admin CRUD controller and display controller for each type -- press releases, blog entries, news letters, this months specials, etc. You might want to look at your current code base and see what you like and what you already have that you want to refactor to improve.

Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 12:43 am
by wei
They probably want to upload and insert a picture with the text of the press release

may be also have the releases as RSS

Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 1:44 am
by nickvd
Easy archival ability. Perhaps some sort of versioning system to allow users to 'backtrack' if they've gone off track, etc...

Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 2:31 am
by Kieran Huggins
In practice, your users will probably paste from Word. Make sure you use a good wysiwyg editor like FCKeditor that can compensate for the cruft word includes in a copy/paste operation.