MOLINE, Ill. – An all-in-one content management system – serving both the Web and print production – has been beta released by TownNews.com.
Total CMS is being unveiled at the Newspaper Association of America’s MediaXchange, April 11-14, in Orlando, Fla. The products are already planned for deployment company-wide across Lee Enterprises newspapers.
Until now, most newspapers needed two systems – one to produce their web products and another to produce their printed news pages. Now they need just one system – BLOX Total CMS, which totally integrates articles, videos, photos, graphics and other content into one system.
“Total CMS is a major breakthrough that fully integrates newsroom systems with Web publishing,” said Lee Enterprises Chairman, President and Chief Executive Office Mary Junck. “It streamlines the copy editing process, lessens the production burden on editors and provides advanced tools for better print and online products. Also, because it greatly reduces hardware needs, the cost savings can be significant.”
TownNews.com is offering private demonstrations of the new products at MediaXchange in Orlando.
The web-only version of BLOX was released at the 2009 MediaXchange. BLOX allows editors, web masters or others designated by the newspaper to place programmable and movable blocks of content any place on a web site. The blocks can be moved by newspaper staff members, or can be programmed to move, appear or disappear at designated times and dates.
Each block can be programmed to pull in text, photos, videos, graphics, HTML documents, related links and portable document files. Smart blocks can change structure or design in response to the type of content they are fed (video versus text, for example).
BLOX CMS is fully integrated with an interactive calendar, blogs, Social Marketplace, online Yellow Pages, classifieds and more.
All the content is managed in a centralized database, and content can be easily shared between other newspapers on BLOX CMS. Total CMS allows the content to be flowed into InDesign templates.
BLOX CMS contains its own word processor and photo editor that can be linked with commercial word processors and photo editors.
Total CMS is fully integrated with a new Social Marketplace solution, which merges business information (default business listings as well as detailed profiles) with user-generated content (videos, photos, etc), calendar information and advertising content (both display and classified) – all under a single sign-on. BLOX Social Marketplace allows businesses and members of the public – if granted permission by the newspaper – to manage commenting, advertising, content and reviews on business profile pages.
“We are very proud of these products,” said TownNews.com General Manager Marc Wilson. “We think BLOX and BLOX Total CMS will set the new standard for content management systems.”
TownNews.com, based in Moline, Ill., is majority owned by Lee Enterprises (LEE), a premier publisher of daily, weekly, online and specialty publications. TownNews.com hosts more than 1,500 online publications, and offers a wide variety of products and services to U.S. newspapers. For more information, visit www.townnews.com.
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If you’d like more information about this topic, please call Greg Booras at 904/794-1400 or e-mail Greg at gbooras@townnews.com.
