The latest trend in the publications world is shifting your print magazine to an online format. Tons of traditional print magazines are finding it hard to maintain their traditional print magazine, dumping them and moving to an online only version. This makes total sense in this day and age, plus there are many advantages to do this.
Advantages of Online Magazines over Print Magazines
- Dynamic Ad Serving
- Online Allows for Interaction
- Print out as many copies as you’d like
- Online Magazines are printable
There are a few things to consider when migrating from print to a web-based magazine format. Customers will want to print pages out, so keep in mind your print style sheets.
In order to manage your newly created online magazine, it is important to make use of a content management tool that is geared specifically for and online magazine format. While there are many (WordPress, Joomla, Drupla), many have so many options and features that it is impossible to even know where to start. Many features are extraneous and cumbersome to use.
Here is my list of required features that are perfect for maintaining an online magazine:
- Article Rating
- Flash Carousel of Article Images
- Online Gallery
- Polls
- Drag-Drop menu items (great for rearranging articles and departments
- Asset and Image management
- Event Registration
- RSS feeds <- This is totally important for getting your articles out there
- SEO ready tools…built in
If the core CMS doesn’t contain all of these requirements, then chances are you will have a hard time converting your print publication to online. I know for a fact that the Brady Communication’s CMS is a perfect tool for creating and maintaining on online magazine. I’ve used it and it is pretty slick.
The Fate of Print Publications
Who knows where we are all going with this. I thought for sure a few years ago that everybody on my commute into town would be reading the Wall Street Journal on their Amazon Kindle