Online Alumni Magazines

[Michelle Mierzwa]

What solution are you using to publish your online alumni magazines? Examples would be appreciated.

[Rob Pasquinucci]

Issuu is OK, but I really believe the best solution is an HTML-based web page (http://northernmagazine.nku.edu/). This allows true Web extras like this: http://northernmagazine.nku.edu/vid2/vid.html. We use an on-campus, student/faculty run web shop to do it, they use Joomla.

[Bill Sutley]

Rob,

I've been looking for a tool to help me get from pdf of a print magazine to putting it into our Joomla-based news system. Do you know if this student-faculty web shop has found something to help them with this process? I'm overwhelmed at the PDF-extraction tools out there, most of which provide less-than-great results. Thanks, Bill Sutley, Columbus State University

[Mark Lee]

We use WordPress for ours: http://blog.coloradocollege.edu/bulletin/

[Ben Steckler]

We use a company called Page Turn Pro. We looked at probably a dozen or so vendors before deciding they were the right price and offered enough features. You can see an example here.

The multimedia component leaves something to be desired, but I got around it by creating a simple page to house the video and then putting a play image over the photo in the issue.

[William Frankhouser]

So for those who have used some of the PDF >> to Flash based page flipping tool, what are some of the added features?

For example, if we wanted to lock down certain newsletters per department or group, is there a way to achieve permission based viewing of the e-magazine? Or maybe a one page teaser and only members can view the whole newsletter or magazine?

[Ben Steckler]

We haven't used it but the vendor we went with does give that option to require log in before you can view it.

[Brian MacDonald]

Saint Michael's has a simple wordpress.com implementation at http://smcmagazine.com/. The clear benefit is it takes just a day and a half, on average, to put up a new edition, complete. Our prior, customized attempts took much longer.

I also like the ability to keyword and tag these stories - it's been a good method of attracting interest from people who otherwise don't know about the college.

[Carmen Lowry]

The Web Content Specialist at our institution used Issuu to post the Alumni magazine online:
http://www.clcillinois.edu/roles/alumni.asp

We're currently using the free version and she said it was really easy to set up and just upload your PDF.

[Michael McGlynn]

I used to build this magazine by hand from a PDF, the physical printed magazine itself and bunch of high res photos.

http://www.curry.edu/special/magazine/winter2007/page0.aspx

You can see in subsequent issues they moved to PDF.

I'll have to say that given the time it took and the fact that almost every page used a different layout that am proud of it, especially the class notes sections in the rear. There is something to be said for lots of index-able HTML code.

[Mike Murray]

Ugh, just looking at what you all are doing with Wordpress makes me jealous. We still publish in straight, SEO-unfriendly PDFs.

[g_wilt]

We currently use ISSUU (pro version) to display the printed copy of the magazine. However, I'm looking into solutions now to actually have an online presence where it isn't a duplicate version of the printed copy, but rather a host of complementary pieces with videos, photos, etc.

[Ed Vander Bush]

We are using presspublisher.com to host www.sinclair360.com. It took a little tweaking but so far we've been fairly satisfied with it. The company has also been very responsive and helpful.

I spent a number of years working in IT for a magazine publishing company so I set out looking for a CMS that was built for periodicals (and affordable) and not for regular content. The concept of an issue and associated articles is often harder to pull off in a traditional CMS.