Hybrid Publishing with InDesign 1

[CrazedWombat]

I work as an advisor to a high school newspaper. I would like to implement some form of a website for the paper for next year. I have years of experience building sites, so I am not worried about that part. I also can do the print layout stuff just fine.

However, what I would like to do is publish stories to the site every few days. Then, I would like to use InDesign to automate (as much as possible) the choosing of particular stories to compile into a monthly printed version.

There is no debate from an administrative level about simply dumping the print version all together. It's impossible for a variety of reasons.

So, any ideas on website management systems, or plugins, or technologies that might help me in this endeavor to combine a web news site with a printed piece done in InDesign?

 

[texasjoe]

I'm sorry to speak off topic, but speaking as a former member of a HS newspaper staff, are you really thinking of doing away with a printed newspaper?

Does every family in your school district have access to the Internet? In our area, I'd say less than 50% have Internet access at home.

I'm curious why you would want to get rid of the printed newspaper? Many people still prefer getting their news in this format.

As for your technical question, I don't have any good advice for you. My problem is just the opposite, I wish InDesign had an "export to web" option, that would automatically convert everything to web files ready for upload. There is an export to HTML function, but the conversion is less than acceptable.

 

[yoderman94]

When I was a full time Graduate Student at Appalachian State, I was a GA with the schools newspaper, Where we the Used Indesign. I found no fast way to automate the procedure, but there are several portal type systems out that will let you do what your wanting to do. I think the present wemaster is still doing the copy and paste thing, but one could look at something like postnuke, or mombo, or xoops as a portal system. Still have to do some copying and pasting, but it would still work better I think.

Chad

 

[CrazedWombat]

texasjoe - Notice this line in my original post: "There is no debate from an administrative level about simply dumping the print version all together. It's impossible for a variety of reasons."

So, no I am not going to get rid of the printed version. In fact, the whole point of my post was to ask how to more easily create the printed version from an online news site.

Even if I was, many of your questions do not apply as this is an upscale private boarding school and each and every family has internet access and uses the school's intranet and online grading and communication system on a daily basis.

Chad(yoderman94) - Thanks for the input. I think I will have to settle with some level of copy/paste, but any automation would be worth investigating.

 

[yoderman94]

I jsut thought about something else, if you are going from web to indesign, you might could use some kind of xml feed. I haven't investigated this, but it could be done. But the copy and pasting isnt too bad. At my peek, I could get a 8-12 page paper (broad sheet) done in about 1-3 hrs, most took about 2 and that included doing the photos and captions.

 

[jmgalvin]

One of the easiest things to do is simply save the Indesign version as a screen quality pdf and use that in place of the html for the web version. It's easier to retain all the formatting, and the pdf reader and browser plugin from Adobe are free - not placing any cost on the viewers.

With that workflow, you should have Acrobat as you can open the ID pdf in Acrobat and reduce the size considerably without losing quality - making for faster web downloads - especially with dialup connections.

ID exports a bunch of xml for GoLive, if you do want to compile into html/xml. If you get CReative Suite premium (educational price is cheap) you get Acrobat Pro, & Golive as well as ID, ILL and PS.

 

[CrazedWombat]

yoderman, I think that's good information about the time involved. Thanks!

jmgalvin - keep in mind that I am going from the web to the indesign and not the other way. So, the web stuff would be created first. Your last comment there about the XML that ID can export is intriguing. yoderman mentions it too. I will have to do some more investigation on that end of things.