Al Arabiya News Channel: Publishing Articles At The Speed of Light

DD.MM.YYYY at Venue/Customer First Last, Role

Keeping the news giant Al Arabiya at the forefront of breaking news

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Davide Guzzetti, Consultant & Project Manager Tinext Date: 19.02.2014

!  About Al Arabiya news channel and AlArabiya.net

!  About Tinext

!  An overview of AlArabiya projects

!  Why Magnolia

!  Customizing Magnolia for fast article publishing

!  Editorial dashboard

!  Non-linear workflow

!  Revamping AlArabiya English

!  “The switch”

!  Key achievements

!  A few takeaways

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Agenda

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About TINEXT

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Tinext combines the latest digital marketing expertise together with the deep technical understanding of a seasoned enterprise systems integrator. !  Three core practices:

!  Digital marketing (IA, UX, mobile, social)

!  Systems integration (enterprise java devs, verticalized on Magnolia)

!  Managed Cloud Services (fully managed hosted Magnolia applications) Since 2001, our teams have conceived, delivered, deployed and maintained more than 500 successful projects, with clients including Al Arabiya News Channel, Royal Caribbean International, Whirlpool Europe, City of Lausanne, Generali Group and Swiss national broadcasters RSI.

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Who is Al Arabiya News Channel?

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnwXUR4SDVo

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Key facts about Al Arabiya and alarabiya.net

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+70 mio visitors/month

x10

= 10 times the population of Switzerland

4 languages arabic, english,

urdu, farsi

4 sites, +30 sections

23 mio potential viewers

160’000 webpages

Most visited website of the middle-east

+200 articles

published every day

40 editors

publishing 24/7

traffic peaks of

20’000

visitors per sec

2 channels all-news 24/7

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AlArabiya projects at a glance

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CMS REPLACEMENT ARABIC REVAMP

ENGLISH REVAMP

ONGOING MAINTENANCE

June 2012 March 2013 September 2013 November 2013 today

!  CMS Replacement

!  From a custom proprietary CMS to a bespoke Magnolia CMS implementation

!  AlArabiya English website revamp

!  New front-end (responsive layout) + additional features

!  AlArabiya Arabic website revamp

!  New front-end (responsive layout) + additional features

!  Ongoing maintenance

!  Fixing, new features, architectural changes

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Al Arabiya Projects at a glance /2

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MAGNOLIA CMS

!  From a custom proprietary CMS to a bespoke Magnolia CMS implementation

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CMS replacement

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Nuxeo DAM

CDN

Limelight video

repository

Reuters feed

Feeds for

MOBILE APPS

Newsletter iContact

SOLR search

TWC feeds

Live streaming

Legacy TV

systems

SOLR search

News letter

SOCIAL

!  Responsive HTML

!  New features and integrations, e.g. Video on Demand (VoD) section

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Front-end revamping

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The need

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cope with high traffic loads

fast article publishing

easiness of integrations

security against hackers’ attacks

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Advantages of Magnolia CMS

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cope with high traffic loads

fast article publishing

easiness of integrations

security against hackers’ attacks

scalability of the system

open source, easy to customize

seamless integration with

external systems and feeds

separation between author/public

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Most challenging requirement

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cope with high traffic loads

fast article publishing

easiness of integrations

security against hackers’ attacks

!  Articles to be entered in the system and published as fast as possible

!  Journalists, not webmasters

!  Different newsrooms and different roles within newsrooms

!  Huge amount of multimedia content (coming from the TV)

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Challenges

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How long are 3 minutes? The time for a coffee…

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…the Italian coffee

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What happens in 3 minutes

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NEWS ARRIVES

VIDEO/ IMAGES ADDED

NEWS IS EDITED

TEXT IS REVIEWED

NEWS ONLINE

NEWS UPDATED

OK FOR PUBLISHING

NEWS ASSIGNED

TO SECTIONS

3 minutes

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“We see hope everywhere”

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1.  Different work environments (repositories)

2.  In-line editing

3.  Hierarchical structure of content

4.  Linear workflow

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Quick article creation: areas of improvement

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Three different repositories

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DMS (assets)

INBOX (publication)

WEBSITE (content)

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Everything in one place: the editorial dashboard

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WEBSITE (content) DMS (assets) INBOX (publication)

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Direct upload to DMS

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Add files to the DMS by drag-and-drop Also supported while uploading:

Multilingual metadata Manual cropping/resizing adjustments

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Quick article creation: areas of improvement

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Single-step activation. Can occur:

!  From the editorial dashboard !  From the article’s page (custom toolbar in the in-line editing view)

One-click publication

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Non-linear collaboration

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!

Workflow status per each role

Users are notified at each step

!  Change in the presentation logic and business logic

!  Responsive HTML

!  New features and integrations, e.g. Video on Demand (VoD) section

!  Switch to be done while live

!  Redirection of traffic on another server not possible (core shared features with other

sites and article entry process)

!  No side-effects on the Arabic (most trafficked) website

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Al Arabiya English Revamp: Challenges

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!  The “switch” is a feature allowing to switch from a set of templates, components and

configurations to another one

!  Every site can define its own template file (and other settings) by simply adding a

suffix (e.g. “_en”) to a supported node or property

!  This is done with a runtime override of Magnolia component definition, done with

paragraphs and templates renderers.

!  This feature can be enabled/disabled by setting a configuration property as true/false

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“The Switch”

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!  Every site can

define its own

template file

(and other

settings) by

simply adding a

suffix (e.g.

“_en”) to a

supported node

or property

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“The Switch”: how it works

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!  This is done with a runtime override of Magnolia component definition, done with

paragraphs and templates renderers.

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“The Switch”: how it works /2

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!AARenderableDefinitionFactory.transformTemplateDefinition(definition, STKUtil.getSite().getTemplates().getPrototype(), content);!

!  The new set of templates/components/configuration can be enabled/disabled by

setting a configuration property as true/false

!  This is done at runtime with no need to stop the machines

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“The Switch”: how it works /3

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CONFIG/modules/aa-templating/config/siteBasedTemplating!

!  Live DEMO on CMS stage Alrabiya

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“The Switch” in action

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!  Immediate rollback in case of problems (5 seconds + cache)

!  No need to stop the machines, nothing to be deployed

!  No need for dual-entry

!  Author instance used for previewing new layout and features, while Public instances

still presenting old layout

!  No impacts on other websites

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Benefits of this approach

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Credits

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Senior Software Engineer Matteo Pelucco Technical lead of Alarabiya Project matteo.pelucco@tinext.com

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Key achievements

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articles are created in

<3 min with the previous

system where required 10-15 minutes

an article require

1 min to be live

only

2 steps for creating and

publishing a news

sections are created in

<20 min previously

was required 1 day

project completed in

11 months

English revamp completed in

3 months

change requests

10% of the overall project

+

2 public + 1 author

2 external repositories

(video / images)

100% CMS uptime

load time

3x faster

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Live traffic at the time of going live (lowest peak 3.3 K)

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A few takeaways

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There is no perfect product for you. Customizations are always needed. Being an open source, Magnolia is easy to be tailored to suite specific needs of your business. Select a partner with experience in customizing the product. Have a best-of-breed approach: take the best CMS (Magnolia) and then integrate it with the best products in their specific area (DAM, CRM, analytics, e-shop…)

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Feel free to take one!

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Thank you for your attention

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Davide Guzzetti Project Manager Tinext sa davide.guzzetti@tinext.com @ilguz

Digital marketing | Systems integration | Managed Cloud Services www.tinext.com