CP5 takes the next step in web publishing to enable college newspapers to reach the next level for their website. While operating in a live beta testing environment through the school year of 2008-09, an unprecedented amount of development in a relatively short period of time produced a CMS that stays true to being customized for the college newsroom.
However, it also improves distribution of college news and presents solutions to the challenges of sustaining resources that support newspaper websites (developers are welcome, but not necessary).
The unique configuration of CMN sites is the potential network cross syndication capacities. CMN worked with a Sweden-based firm, Polopoly (part of Atex), to build on the tools of CP4 while collecting the media produced into a single network where content can be shared across newspapers as well as collected in a single destination.
This configuration presents the benefits of the network business model as well as opens a whole new option of content sharing across college media (or will at least make it much easier).
The network model increases the stickiness factor of sites which will increase traffic that can lead more revenues. CMN see this wider distribution as a recruitment tool for its partner newspapers as well - a much broader audience for the individual journalist looking to establish his/herself outside their campus market is a compelling value proposition.
Previous versions of the College Publisher software were customized to the needs of the college newsroom, but had never been able to package news from across the country before. In essence, pre-CP5 CMN was a network of individual sites using the same software without any connection between them – almost like calling all the news sites using Wordpress a network – which they are not.
Other open source CMS’s like WordPress or Django offer similar flexibility in publishing and design management as CP5, but cannot address the distribution CMN can offer through CP5 and mtvU’s media partners. CP5 enables CMN staff to bubble up the most interesting college news into places it hasn’t been before.
Therefore, CP5 is both a software upgrade and a distribution upgrade – in print terms, it is like improving your work flow, upgrading your printer and distributing more papers to more places with no extra cost.
From a technical perspective, CP5 is a highly customized installation of the java-based Polopoly platform – which means that it enables CMN newspapers to:
- Publish on a 24 hour cycle
- Redesign the section pages and front page everyday
- Automate publishing to keep content fresh on the home page
- Integrate blogs into the searchable archive of content
- Integrate any third party applications that the newspaper staff like for news production
Just from a workflow perspective, the CP5 administrative graphical interface offers drag-and-drop function for story layout and for time saving purposes CP5 also is able to ingest XML for bulk uploads.
CP5 attempts to address many of the shortcomings pointed out in previous versions (yes, we heard you!).
Collegepublisher.com is built on the same CP5 platform our newspaper partners use and is designed to be a resource for newspapers using CP5. We encourage you to poke around and learn more about our services, the publishing platform and ways to monetize your site using CP5.
