Know a WP developer?
I’m working on a new project will require that I pull a select group of articles/photos and pull them into a layout editor (to create a ‘zine, for example).
Anyone know of any tools / plugins that would allow for this? Or a great developer for a project like this?
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I believe what you are looking for is a headless CMS so you can serve your content in multiple ways. You can use WordPress in a headless mode if that is what you are most comfortable with. There are also more powerful solutions.
The idea with a headless CMS is that you only manage your content in the CMS, then you manage the view in some other way. Usually we use it in conjunction with a static site generator (don't let the name fool you, we can do dynamic stuff in a static site). In your case, you can use the same tool or two different ones to generate the site and a PDF for example if that is what you need for print.
Of course, all this involves a fair amount of custom development but it might be cheaper than you think. And if the budget allows it, I think it is the best solution.
Hey, Daniel - Unless I’m misinterpreting what you mean by the word “pull,” what you need seems to be something that should be built into the theme you use.
(I am guessing that you do not expect code that automatically scrapes content from other sources and loads it into your site.)
This could possibly be accomplished by something off the shelf, although with most readymade themes you’ll have to fit your content into the theme designer’s boxes. This would be the least expensive option.
If you have the budget for custom development, then an experienced WP theme developer could design to your specific requirements.
Perhaps if you can explain more about your needs and your comfort level/experience with WP and coding, others can jump in and offer more helpful suggestions.
Super helpful! The idea is not to scrape, but to use WordPress as CMS and then to load my own articles into a layout tool for print publishing. I know WP quite well but nothing about coding or building a plugin or theme. The theme could be simple. I'm really wondering if there is a plug-in that would allow posts & photos to be designed for print. If you have any tips, or know of a plug-in, or a developer, it would be amazing. Thank you!
Getting something printable involves creating a good print style sheet. Unless we're talking actual magazine printing, with bleeds, margins, high DPI.
How do you envision this being printed?
It would need to be anything from a brochure to a multi-page newspaper broadsheet, so... you're exactly right. Do you think there's a solution for this in WP or another CMS?
I still don't have enough information to completely rule out a CMS solution, but it sounds like you are trying to solve two very different problems.
If you just wanted to print something on regular, letter sized printer paper, including print styles (i.e., CSS) alongside your regular WP style sheet would be the way to go.
Since you say you're needing multi-page layouts, you need to design those separately, for at least a few reasons. The biggest one being that the layouts you're describing typically have a fixed amount of space.
Web page content varies in length. If it was one, evergreen page or article that had to be printed a certain way, it would be doable with custom work. But if you tried to set up some kind of template, hoping to automatically format multiple articles, my guess is that it would fail or at least look bad because subsequent articles wouldn't be exactly alike.
Is there a specific reason you were wanting to use a web template for both types of content?
This is really helpful. Appreciate you helping to refine this idea (and problem/solution)!
The idea is a CMS (like WP) for digital (and social) publishing, while having the ability to bring stories into a layout editor to publish for print. Ideally keeping it as simple as possible. Any thoughts?
I'm not imagining a strict template, but a flexible structure that could allow for different story lengths.
There's also the task of image formatting to consider.
You don't want to print web images, or rely on WP or any CMS to handle the high-res images you'd need for printing. And you'll want large originals so you can do whatever is required for your print layout.
You need two different tools to do what you want without doing it poorly.
Web page content is flexible so it can adapt to different kinds of displays.
Content for print must be laid out for a fixed sheet of a specific size.
WordPress is the best CMS for most people and most content.
You can add a print style sheet to your website so your articles would look a certain way when printed. But for anything beyond simple layout and printing, InDesign is the best tool for the job. InDesign is what most graphic designers use to lay out magazines, brochures, etc.
InDesign does have a feature that allows you to export for the web, but the web pages it produces are not at all user friendly.
I suggest using the tool designed for the job (WordPress for your web content and InDesign for your printed content), but perhaps writing in a Google Doc that could be copied into either a WordPress post or flowed into an InDesign document.
Actually with InDesign you can import data from a TSV file (similar to CSV) which can be generated with data from GoogleDrive's Spreadsheet or any other language including a custom Wordpress plugin.
I saw some projects in which they manage designs and collections with GoogleDrive's Spreadsheets and then they generate these TSV files for importing them on InDesign. This allows them to fulfill InDesign templates with 20, 30, 40 designs at once.
If you have any doubts about this process just send me an email :)
Good to know, @paupenin.
With another little bit of software help, you can also use a Google Doc that syncs to the InDesign file, or push a Google Doc to WP for publishing.
But in any case it seems to me that the best solution @cousindanny could implement could not, by nature, be a two-way sync to two very different formats, or one that could automatically and accurately format for print.
Am I missing something here? (it's been awhile since I worked with print)
Print requires human tweaking in order for the content to look good in a fixed (i.e., size and dimensions) container. Unlike a web page, which just flows. If you do it right anyway.
But maybe the solutions you mention could be enough of a help that they're worth pursuing even if they don't get him 100% of the way.