Rank: Enthusiast
Joined: 3/16/2008
Posts: 11
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Hi First of all, nice work on umbraco. Really amazing piece of software Now my question, is it possible, or are there plans to extend umbraco to a cross-media CMS which can create,manage and publish content not only to the web but also for example to print and digital signage/narrow casting systems ? Regards Erwin
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Rank: Umbracoholic
Joined: 9/8/2006
Posts: 1,831
Location: MA, USA
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Hi, Erwin, You can do the most amazing things with umbraco with a little bit of creativity as well as extend it to interact with external systems without modifying the core code at all. Now, I'm no expert in narrowcasting, and the wikipedia article was a bit thin on details. Can you give us a little insight into what you want to do and how you currently accomplish it? What kind of data are you sending to the screens (mpeg, wmv, mov, ppt, ???)? How is the data transferred to the screens or screen controllers (api, ftp upload, ???)? Whatever you can do to explain your needs will help the creative folks suggest how--or if--umbraco might be used to accomplish your goal. cheers, doug.
MVP 2007-2009 - Percipient Studios
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Rank: Enthusiast
Joined: 3/16/2008
Posts: 11
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Hi Doug,
>Can you give us a little insight into what you want to do
Ok, i'm looking for a cms which can be used in a digital signage environment and i'm wondering if umbraco is suited for this job. Offcourse i realize that we should probably build some new functionality on top of umbraco to make this possible.
This wont be a problem, but for now i'm wondering if umbraco could be expanded to the following scenario:
The CMS will be used by customers to edit/create news articles, advertisements, sports etc. Each customer can only see his/her own articles and not those of somebody else
The customer starts creating a new piece of content by choosing one of the predefined templates (defined by the administrator) and then filling in the template.
Example of a template could be:
1st page: intro movie
2nd page: a background image & text block
3th page a background image & 2 text blocks
So for the 1st page he/she needs to select a movie from the media library (or upload one)
for the 2nd page he/she selects a background image and types in the news article
and the same for the 3th page
Offcourse all editting should be wysiwyg
When the template is filled in it can be saved to the cms.
Note that the customer only selects & fills in the content. Any presentation layout like font, colors, transitions etc are already predefined in the template. The user wont be able to change those.
Another user (which has the publisher role) checks regulary which items
are and approves/disapproves them. He/she can also make changes (e.g. fix spelling errors)
When approved he/she can shedule them for publication for example
-every morning between 10.00-11.00
-mon/wed/fri between 08.00-17.00
-from 1/3/2008-20/3/2008
Whenever something changes the CMS will publish the changes to a folder/networkshare.
Media like jpg, png, movies, mp3 are simply copied to (predefined) folders
and all content gets saved in XML files. The format of these XML files should be fully customizable to be able to adapt the CMS to all kinds of different players
>and how you currently accomplish it?
Currently we use a mixture of
- our own software which does the distribution to all players
- a so called 'CMS' specificly build for us by a 3th party (very bad piece of s/w)
- and a mixture of players we simply buy
>What kind of data are you sending to the screens (mpeg, wmv, mov, ppt, ???)?
Each screen runs an (embedded) player.
Think of these are powerpoint players (although there are not)
Each player has a 'script' These scripts are xml files and tells the player what should be shown, how, where and when
Besides the content they also contain stuff like defining what animations, transitions, fades etc to use.
At the moment we use the following media :mpeg 1-4, flash, mp3, text, png, jpg
>How is the data transferred to the screens or screen controllers (api, ftp upload, ???)?
We ftp the xml files and all media to the screens
If you need more info, please let me know
Erwin
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Rank: Umbracoholic
Joined: 9/8/2006
Posts: 1,831
Location: MA, USA
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Thanks for the clarification! This is a bit out of the ordinary, but nothing you've mentioned sounds like it would be a particular problem. You might want to have some custom controls and maybe add an actionhandler or two. But that's nothing special. Most of this can be done with the built-in abilities of umbraco and XSLT macros. I don't forsee insurmountable difficulties. Just grab the 3.0.4 binaries, install, and get started. cheers, doug.
MVP 2007-2009 - Percipient Studios
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