BEdita - exploit your informative patrimony

BEdita

A system to manage and publish content,
a shared platform that will increase the
value of your informative patrimony

Christiano Presutti | ChannelWeb
ChannelWeb / Chialab | BEdita 1

The open system BEdita [bi'εdita] was created to publish,
archive, manage, look through content, that continuously
grow in number, breed and interconnect…

BEdita was made to manage web sites, printed
material, multimedia archives, interactive services,
weblogs, newsletters…

Technically, BEdita is a web development framework that comes with a full
featured CMS out-of-the-box.
Details about OS platform, 3rd party software and licensing are reported below, at the end.


Definitions

A development framework is a software base system that
may include support programs, code libraries or other
software glued together in a software project.
Various parts of the framework may be exposed through an
Application Program Interface.

A Content Management System (or CMS) is a collection of
procedures used to manage work flow in a collaborative
environment. CMSs are used for storing, controlling,
semantically enriching, and publishing.


Architecture

Two main elements:

a back–end web application: built to handle content and
semantic relations, with a modern/ergonomic User Interface,
featuring chromatic association between object types

a front–end API: services, specs, conventions to build Web,
desktop or mobile frontend applications, using the native
REST/XML interface.


Features

i18n: content and User Interface in every language
(ISO-693-3, gettext, custom structure and a dedicated
“Translations” module)

Object oriented design: every content can be tagged, geo–
tagged, categorized, translated, published on different nodes

Object evolution: possibility to create new object types, or
new custom properties for existing types

Modularity: BEdita implements modules to perform specific
tasks and to manage different object types


Features

free semantic relations between objects

authentication: internal or external (supporting LDAP, OpenID
and SSO systems)

native newsletter module

integrated statistics, on content and publications

web analytics: integration with external providers like Google
analytics, Piwik or generic logfile analyser

access granularity: users and groups (dynamic privileges)

XML/REST, JSON: native interface to access and publish data

nicknames: unique alphanumeric semantic ID for URLs/apps
(friendly URLs)


Standards

W3C web technologies standards

Dublin Core – metadata of objects/content

RSS / Atom – automatic feeds generation

Sitemap – automatic map generation (supporting the new sitemap protocol)

REST – webservices system

CMIS – Content Management Interoperability Services (OASIS
interop. standard in progress)

Import/export filters – XML (dublin core metadata standard), VCard (command
line), OpenDocument (in progress)

I18N related – ISO 639-3 (language abbreviations), Unicode UTF-8, …


BEdita is a comprehensive solution for…

editors
publishers
designers
media and communication industry

online marketeers authors

developers


How can I provide a flexible tool for so many different
different professionals?


> focusing on content and users’ needs


What matters is not the amount of information you can
store, but the ability to:

‣ find
‣ access
‣

‣
transfer
manage
IT
‣ re-use


Information should be structured, conveyed and organized.

Every bit of information should be encapsulated into a
semantic frame, through which move/translate content
to–and–from men and machines.


How did we build a semantic frame?


i) typing objects

Not only generic “content”, but defined objects.

documents comments

events
questionnaires

books
galleries

biographies publications


ii. every single object has got its own inner architecture


A powerful feature of BEdita

To easily create and manage specialized objects

game
bycicle work of
art

recipe
possum

Like staminal cells, they have the capacity to differentiate into specialized cell
types (semantic content) with characteristics consistent with a particular
tissue (information archive) and organ (project)


But specialized objects are not enough.

Relations between them create contest, interaction, value.

33

…and relations are not the same, they’re semantic
(every single connection between objects is meaningful)

author

review

source

illustrator price
description


The powerful features of BEdita:

1. easily create specialized objects

2. easily create semantic relations between objects

Easily create services
built upon objects and semantic relations that occur between them


Objects and relationships – through the open system
BEdita – together define the informative patrimony that will
be:

‣ published and presented to people
‣ shared through the network, indexed by SEs
‣ accessible to people working on it
‣ (re)used for existing services or new ones
‣ stored and saved

…


An example

How BEdita can support people in the editorial workflow:
designer, editor, publisher, developer


The designer

People dealing with presentation of complex information
can use semi-processed material, already catalogued, split
and documented

Think about the way you recycle

The designer will focus on appealing interfaces and clever
environments.


The editor (subeditor, copy,…)

Throughout a single application, featuring solid interface
logics and homogeneous paradigms, he/she will manage
every single information, promote activities, communicate
with co-workers, harvest data, publish and observe the
work-flow.

A unique interface for his/her job.

draft locked
noted
fixed
on sale
scheduled trashed

The publisher 1

Distribution: the same content will feed various projects, i.e.
manifold publications/websites at the same time

Optimization: the same editorial office will control services
and contents. One single tool to design and manage the
production chain

Training: training of people is long lasting, shared;
experience is easily conveyed or handed out, users gain
homogeneous skills


The publisher 2

Value of data: the informative patrimony is structured,
meaningful and ubiquitously accessible

Innovation: data defines not only the foundation of the
“information building”, but the whole architecture, interiors
and facilities.
The publisher will focus on his core job and plan brand new
tools and services

Sharing: easily transfer, share or sell content.


The developer

Background: he/she is provided with a flexible inter-
operating programming environment, based on the best and
most utilized development tools
(cakePHP, JQuery, Smarty templating, RSS/Atom,…)

Services: BEdita provides all major gears behind a website/
online service out-of-the-box

Innovation: freed from all common basic tasks, he can
invent new ways, create new objects, define new relations
between them.


An actual scenario:

a publisher manages 4 different websites, 2 paper
issues, 3 newsletters, several editions of the book, a
weblog, the releated e-commerce, the calendar of events,
subscriptions, possums etc.




 
 

 


   

Each service needs an editorial office, a production
environment, a software.

Environments are separated.

Content should be translated, adapted and checked
before the output phase.

Every time a person moves between these separated
environments he/she must adapt and learn, because of
the differences in tools, interfaces and rules.

?


A comprehensive view is difficult to achieve and every
single service is strictly dependent on the related
software.

Connections between different environments are normally
based on generic links.


BEdita provides the ability to manage mixed and valuable
services (e-commerce, subscriptions, FAQs, bookings) and
content, all in a single working environment.


BEdita was designed and released freely, under a open
source licence (AGPL v.3), in order to promote
hybridization and crossbreeding.
It follows standards and it’s built to interoperate with
other systems.

Now we wish that the character of diversity in its trunk…


…will affect its roots too.


More


Requirements

LAMP architecture – cross-platform components (Mac/Win/
UNIXes...) – Unix (Linux), Apache and MySQL recommended
on productions systems
MySQL5 with referential integrity, views, stored procedures (other RDBMS
supported) – PHP5: OO syntax, extensive use of exceptions

3rd party integrated software

CakePHP – web application development framework
(provides MVC, i18n/l10n, Unit Testing, DB migrations, security paradigms,
caching, data validation)

Smarty – PHP templating library (View in MVC scenario)

jQuery – unobtrusive Javascript library (provides AJAX, drag'n'drop,
DOM manipulation

phpThumb, TinyMCE and more


Licensing

Dual licensing business model:

Affero GPLv3 license – a relatively new license, created for
online software, in order to solve the ASP loophole problem

Proprietary – same software with a few vertical add–on
modules (“pre-print production” and “e-commerce”)


BEdita - exploit your informative patrimony

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