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WordPress is currently becoming the most dominant CMS used on the internet.
WordPress is an open source blogging tool which is a dynamic CMS based on PHP and MySQL and is absolutely free. Its ceaseless list of features includes plugin architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by nearly 15 percent of Alexa Internet’s “top one million” websites.
WordPress known for its simplicity and intuitive design has limitation in managing editorial teams efficiently. Content companies that need to implement a proper editorial workflow which includes managing pitching, assigning writers, editing and paying contributors etc are finding it very hard to balance administrative and editorial tasks.
I have always been a firm believer in efficient newsroom, a concept bit new to online publishing. Lately there has been surge in deployment of editorial workflow platform by many small to large publishers. Many enterprise CMS vendors have launched a lot of exciting solutions. But publishers on WordPress also need not worry, as WordPress developers have come out with some brilliant solutions to achieve editorial efficiency nirvana. Below are a few WordPress solutions which are giving enterprise CMS vendors sleepless nights.
Content Cloud
Betaout’s ContentCloud is a highly evolved editorial team and content management SaaS solution for WordPress sites. I really liked Betaout’s sleek, user friendly and intuitive interface. The system offers a lot of flexibility to create and define custom workflows to enhance collaboration and resource sharing between your content team across multiple sites.
Newsroom dashboard gives a bird-eye view of all the content in production with a neat story path describing how an assignment passes from one team member to another. An ajaxified interface inspired from Outlook takes away the need of opening assignments in multiple tabs. You can just click on any assignment and will be shown in the right hand panel.
Another great feature is their seamless integration with WordPress sites. As soon as you plugin your WordPress sites, Betaout will make few default workflows based on the current set of users you have to give you a quick start. A lot of editorial project management systems I have tried in past have taken too much time to get used to their system before getting any real work done.
Newsflow
Newsflow was initially named as Hypernews. Newsflow is an editorial support plugin which allows content to be published on the website using various RSS feeds. The plugin not only fetches customized feeds from various sources at regular intervals but also publishes the feeds on the website or the blog in a time defined mechanism.
The plugin also makes a note along with the fetched feeds on its respective item row for future reference while readers and publishers can mark various feeds as read and favorites thereby earmarking the content in a systematic manner.
Role Scoper
Role Scoper plugin allows WordPress enabled websites to function as fully customized CMS websites by offering CMS like permissions for reading as well as editing and publishing content. Role Scoper plugin assigns restrictions and access to specific pages, posts and categories as suggested by the administrator while not altering core role administrative functionality.
Users of any one level can be upgraded or downgraded to read respective posts or categories as desired. Removing the role scoper plugin or deactivation makes sure that default functionality of all users gets resorted.
Post Revision Workflow
Post revision workflow is a newly introduced WordPress plugin that caters to the needs of revision of published content without altering the original published works. The plugin provides editing or revision options in its publish Meta box and all changes are saved as a revision text and posted without altering the workflow of the original write-up.
Post revision workflow plugin has inbuilt options of straightaway publishing the revised content to save revised changes without notification or saving revised content and sending notifications emails to admin and finally auto publication of the revised changes and bringing the changes in notice of the reviewer or publisher as per the workflow of the website concerned.
Approval Workflow
ApprovalWordPress plugin enhances the smooth workflow progress of multiple authored websites or blogs by verifying users for administrative as well publishing rights for their articles or posts. The plugin also sends a notification to the author having publishing rights after the submission of each post there by helping in cutting out any time discrepancies in submission and publication. Another very essential feature of the Approval workflow plugin is its feature to find for users with publication rights if the writer of the original piece does not have editing or publication rights.
The plugin hunts for the users with publication rights and informs them via email for each submission. The plugin not only helps in easing out the workflow of multiple authored websites but works equally well on WordPress multi site.
