Sunday, October 19, 2008

Newspaper architecture and video


A friend asked me a question and I thought I'd doodle something regarding setting up a site.

I admit it's basic and each segment warrants its own interogation, but hopefully if you're considering going down this path, it should set you on your merry way.

Front end
The front end team of designers and coders with an array of language skills should do you proud.

The chief designer or creative director should be able to translate editorial needs.

Many newspapers employ their own in house tech development to create css pages to hold the pages of their site together.

Most designers will speak css, ajax, html, xml, java Flash action scripting and lingo. In many cases a lot of what you might be looking for exists on the web and can be customised.

Middle Ware and back end - a good Server provider, with strong support. There are an endless number on the market. 1&1 is a favourite, whilst Fasthosts in the UK has strong support.

You might even think about setting up you own server, though you'll need to be on top of firewalls and setting up mysql databases.

If you're planning a beast of a site, tune loading and balancing servers, and or even streaming ones would be a good idea.

When it comes to video players the market's saturated with them.

From a couple of the newspapers I consult I've had some interesting conversations and the chief quip appears to be support. How much personal technical support can they give? How easy is their CMS for uploading and what's the look of he video?

There are other features to look for: viewing window size and web 2.0 apps, controls and of course costs.

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