The Hidden Requirements of Web Publishing Infrastructures
MANY PUBLISHING HOUSES under-specifiy their epublishing systems before starting inhouse development
projects. This is often because they do not have sufficient experience of running commercial websites
when they start their projects, or because they have not yet experienced the demands of running sites
that generate significant revenues. The omissions fall into two main categories: Commercial and architectural.
Commercial omissions occur when the functionality needed to maximise revenue generation is
inadequately specified. This occurs where, for example, a publisher assumes that online advertisements can
simply be woven into Web page templates on an as needed basis. What they do not realise is that while such
a system will suffice for placing banners and tower adverts onto pages, it does not enable advertising sales to
maximise revenues from a site. To maximise revenues, advertising sales need to be able to sell and deploy
advertising in much more sophisticated ways, as well as being able to control the deployment of advertising themselves.
Such systems can limit advertising sales to less than 30% of their potential, while also proving
more expensive to operate.
Architectural omissions occur when systems are designed in a manner that ultimately hinders the
development and maintenance of the site, increasing costs and reducing the time that is available to focus
on content design. A simple example of this problem occurs when a publisher believes that it will be
adequate to store the HTML of their articles inside a content management system, and the embedded images
inside a separate folder. After a period of time, when much content has been created and deleted, this leads
to a situation where a mass of images exists, but it is not possible to determine whether which still
belong to valid articles, making upgrades and maintenace more difficult. Furthermore, the hardcoding of
image positions within the body text prevents rearrangement for the purposes of inserting advertising.
The advantage of using the System 7 epublishing platform is that issues such as these have already been dealt with,
and the design has already been tested, tried and proven on highly successful websites. A dedicated engineering
teams works continously to improve the underlying technology, evaluating and perfecting every nuance of design.
If you would like to know more about the nuances of epublishing system design, contact System 7.
|
