Newspaper & Mailroom
TOWNNEWS.COM TO RELEASE BLOX CMS
Thursday 05. March 2009 - Move over Gutenberg. Nearly 600 years since the invention of movable type, TownNews.com is releasing a new content management system that has drag-and-drop movable blocks of content for Internet sites.
BLOX CMS is being released for public viewing at the Newspaper Association of Americas MediaXchange, March 8-11, in Las Vegas.
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).
All the content is managed in a centralized database, and content can be easily shared between other newspapers on BLOX CMS.
The new CMS relies heavily on tagging, including content type, section, location, and relational. Each item – whether text, graphic, photo or video – is a separate item that can be tagged. TownNews.com has built an export mechanism that will allow tagged data to be fed to The Associated Press, Yahoo!, group news feeds, or other locations.
BLOX CMS contains its own word processor and photo editor that can be linked with commercial word processors and photo editors. On the drawing board are plans that would allow BLOX content to export to Adobe InDesign and other page design products.
Later this spring, TownNews.com plans to release an integrated social marketplace solution merging 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 will allow businesses and members of the public – if granted permission by the newspaper – to manage commenting, advertising, content and reviews on business profile pages.
BLOX CMS is a hosted software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution hosted at the TownNews.com data centers in New York City and Chicago. In addition, BLOX hosting utilizes the Akamai world-wide content delivery network. The BLOX project was headed up by Brad Ward, TownNews.coms vice president of technology, chief programmer Patrick OLone, and Christine Masters, lead product development manager.
“We are very proud of BLOX CMS,” said TownNews.com General Manager Marc Wilson. “We think BLOX and BLOX Social Marketplace will set the new standard for content management systems.”