lab 1 – monarchpress product description robert o’donnell...

Running Head: LAB 1 – MONACHPRESS PRODUCT DESCRIPTION 1

Lab 1 – MonarchPress Product Description

Robert O’Donnell

Old Dominion University

CS411

Janet Brunelle

November 23, 2015

Version #3

LAB 1 – MONARCHPRESS PRODUCT DESCRIPTION 2

Table of Contents

1 Introduction............................................................................................................................3

2 MonarchPress Product Description........................................................................................4

2.1 Key Product Features and Capabilities.......................................................................4

2.2 Major Components (Hardware/Software)...................................................................6

3 Identification of Case Study...................................................................................................9

4 Product Prototype Description................................................................................................9

4.1 Prototype Architectures (Hardware/Software)..........................................................10

4.2 Prototype Features and Capabilities..........................................................................12

4.3 Prototype Development Challenges..........................................................................14

Glossary of Terms..........................................................................................................................15

References......................................................................................................................................17

List of Figures

Figure 1. Major functional component diagram..............................................................................7

Figure 2. Prototype major functional component diagram............................................................11

List of Tables

Table 1. User Permission Comparison.............................................................................................6

Table 2. Feature comparison between full product and prototype.................................................13


Lab 1 – MonarchPress Product Description

1 Introduction

Since the introduction of the Internet, Journalism has changed exponentially to better

serve the reader’s needs. The web has changed the way news can be displayed, changed, and

presented to the audience. When the news is printed, it cannot be updated without waiting for the

next release of the paper (Viner, 2013). The Internet allows for constant streams of updates on

news which can be viewed from anywhere (Viner, 2013). It allows for interesting ways to

demonstrate data with interactive graphs and creative visualization. Readers can locate exactly

what kind of news they want and can view it through their phones and computers.

The rise of digital journalism creates an issue for low budget news outlets. The demand for

more technical skills increases in order to provide special data visualizations and interactive

material for published articles. This problem occurs with journalists, including university

students, when they do not have all of the technical training in their required curriculum to

produce the special features. The training would add more pressure for the students to learn the

skills outside of their already stressful classwork. This problem makes it more difficult for the

low budget news outlets to compete with highly funded organizations because they cannot afford

to hire people with the all the needed skillsets. In order to solve the insufficient training issue, a

product that could remove the need for technical skills would allow journalist to spend more time

on their writing and publishing the news to the public and produce higher quality work.

MonarchPress’s purpose is to make it easier for the journalists and news organizations to

focus more on creating quality articles and not on the technical aspects of producing interesting

ways to demonstrate the data. MonarchPress is a plugin that is integrated with the current


implementation of WordPress. It will be free to use to allow low budget news outlets to have the

ability to compete for more readers and a bigger audience.

2 Product Description

MonarchPress is a plugin for the content management system, WordPress. It is open

source to allow for low-budget news organizations to put money towards other needed things

instead of spending it on employees capable of handling the technical parts of their articles. The

plugin will allow for the publication of dynamic news content since the news is constantly being

updated. MonarchPress will add more social integration with the articles to make the readers feel

more involved while browsing the stories and articles. The editors will be able to use a layout

tool which will allow for creativity on how the articles are displayed instead of using the basic

layout.

2.1 Key Product Features and Capabilities

The news is forever changing and certain articles will need to be updated based on new

research. With a newspaper, the information printed is permanent and cannot be changed until

the next issue of the newspaper is published. On the web, the news organization can actively

update the article if new information is released. MonarchPress makes the process easier and

more streamlined. The plugin will make creating articles and updating them later simple and help

the articles grow dynamically when new information is presented. As more data is developed, the


information can be added to the already published article instead of republishing the article or

story with just a few changes.

Articles that are more engaging to the users will keep their attention longer while reading.

MonarchPress makes it simpler to create graphs and maps that are interactive to place inside the

article. The graphs and maps will allow the reader to be more entertained while viewing the

content and will more likely prolong the time readers browse the articles and stories.

MonarchPress allows for integrating social media into its articles. As the Internet grows,

so does social media. Roughly 71% of adults that use the Internet belong to some form of social

media (Social Networking Fact Sheet, 2013). With the integration of social media, the plugin can

increase the volume of users who will view the article. The journalist can integrate twitter into

their articles by specifying a hashtag for a tweet to be shown next to the article. MonarchPress

can help get constant updates if the journalist is out researching the current article.

Making a layout for an article can require a specific set of skills that journalists might not

have. MonarchPress has the ability to create custom articles by dragging and dropping content in

place in the editor. The article can be created to a particular demand or can be edited later to add

a graph or map without needing to edit the code that requires a specific technical skill.

Similar content management systems provide great features but they do not cater to

everyone. MonarchPress is built specifically for the needs of student news organizations that

may not have a high budget. The plugin is designed to have features that are only necessary for

the news organization using it. MonarchPress is developed to be a single plugin to prevent

security and compatibility issues that may occur when if there are multiple plugins.


2.2 Major Components (Hardware/Software)

Figure 1 shows the major functional components of MonarchPress. Editors, journalists,

and guest contributors have to interact with MonarchPress before they publish articles and

stories. Table 1 displays the different access restrictions based on the type of user. The plugin

provides the layout engine, a data visualization framework, and the news aggregation algorithm.

End-User RegisteredReader

Social MediaModerator

Journalist Editor Admin

Read Article x x x x x x

Create Profile x x x x x

Tweet x x x x x

Contribute to FileDump

x x x

Create/Write Articles

x x x

Edit/Post Articles x x

Remove Users from Whitelist

x

Table 1. User Permission Comparison


Figure 1. Major functional component diagram


The drag and drop editing feature needs to display a blank article and have different

elements that can be inserted such as titles, paragraphs, and images. Editing engine would work

as a grid to align the elements on the page. The plugin allows the user to change and adjust the

different media elements on the article. The editor has an interface to select which hashtags for

the Twitter widget to display.

Databases will be required to store some of the aspects of the plugin. When the editor is

creating an article using the drag and drop editing, stored templates are available to be utilized.

MonarchPress can also store new templates created by the editor. To decrease unnecessary calls

to the API, the Twitter feeds will be stored in a local cache. This will prevent the server from

constantly needing to fetch the information.

Algorithms need to be created to make the drag and drop editing work. Dynamically

changing the flow of the text if an image is placed in the middle of the body of text requires

special methods. The different media elements need to be rendered correctly along with the

article content. The feed aggregation will also require an algorithm to retrieve the news sources

and articles with the needed parameters.

WordPress requires a specific stack to work. It needs a machine that has linux installed.

Apache needs to be installed to run the website’s language which is mosly PHP (version 5.2.4 or

higher). The database language being used is MySql (version 5.0 or higher).

The hardware requirements are minimal because the targeted user does not have much

traffic and will be sufficient even with an increase of traffic. It would need to be able to handle

8,700 unique monthly visitors. There would only be 25,000 monthly page views (WordPress

Hosting, n.d.).


3 Identification of Case Study

Mace and Crown is an Old Dominion University (ODU) student news organization that

has a very low budget. They currently have an issue with obtaining a large digital presence and

would like to improve on it. They lack the ability to do use creative data visualization and

interactive elements on their website to help retain reader’s attention. They want to be able to

connect information between global and local events and create more content rich articles that

can be continuously updated and changed.

MonarchPress can be used on any news organization’s webpage as long as they are using

WordPress. The plugin is mainly being developed to help organizations that have a very limited

budget for digital media.

4 Product Prototype Description

The prototype of MonarchPress shows how it will work in the real world. One of the goals

by prototyping is to provide basic functionality of the product to Mace and Crown. They can then

provide feedback and make sure the product is working the way they need it. Some of the

components of the website will have to be simulated because the live versions will not be

available for developing. Table 2 displays the differences between the real world product and the

prototype.


4.1 Prototype Architecture (Hardware/Software)

Figure 2 shows the major functional components of the MonarchPress prototype and how

they interact together. Figure 2 is similar to Figure 1 but removes the users from it and adds a test

harness to input mock data. Some of the features such as viewing other reader’s contact

information and tools for collaboration in the full product were eliminated in the prototype due to

the limited amount of time to for the team while developing.

[This space intentionally left blank]


Figure 2. Prototype major functional component diagram

The hardware required for the prototype will be the same as the full product for accurate

testing. It will need to support 8,700 unique visitors and 25,000 monthly page views. The


prototype will be stress-tested for average and peak loads. A tool such as Pylot can be used to

simulate the stress on the server.

A mock of the Mace and Crown’s website will test the prototype. A fake homepage, login

page, article page, and all the plugins they currently use will be added to the prototype.

MonarchPress will contain mock data in the database for articles and users information. The

prototype will be developed and presented on a virtual machine hosted by Old Dominion

University Computer Science Department. The virtual machine will use Linux with all of the

WordPress Dependencies, including Apache, MySql, and PHP.

4.2 Prototype Features and Capabilities

The functional goal of the prototype is to demonstrate the high priority features requested

from the case study. Table 2 display the features that will be developed for the prototype. The

layout and editing engine will be fully functional and provide the ability to build custom articles

from scratch or adding an existing template. The ability to edit an article that is already published

will allow for dynamic documents and the preview feature of the article before publishing will be

fully functional. The system to allow users to mark whether they would like to receive

notifications if the article or is story is updated with new information will be functional by

sending email’s to the user.

[This space intentionally left blank]


Table 2. Feature comparison between full product and prototype

Interactive and data visualization elements will be partially functional by allowing the

capability of adding already created graphs and maps. The user login will be functional but


missing the ability to save contact information. The Twitter feed aggregation will have some

functionality using the twitter Application Program Interface (API).

By using an agile development management, it will be easier to demonstrate different

functionality to the stakeholders, Mace and Crown as they are being developed. The prototype

will have the desired core functionality and be demonstrated to Mace and Crown for feedback

and concerns. By using this management style, it will be easier to keep the stakeholders involved

and make adjustments if needed.

4.3 Prototype Development Challenges

MonarchPress will have challenges that will be expected while developing the prototype.

One of the main issues will be the limitations of the WordPress API. While working with the

WordPress API, the development will have to accommodate the limiting issue as it develops.

Another challenge is the lack of expertise the team has in WordPress or any other web

development language required to create the prototype. The problem can be solved by studying

and constantly learning while the prototype is being developed.

Incompatibility with plugins that the organization already uses can cause issues. While

developing, constant testing of the functionality with the other plugins that are required to

prevent breaking of other functionality. By following best practices for WordPress and PHP

while developing will also help reduce compatibility issues.

Another issue that may arise is that testing on the virtual machine is not exactly like

testing on the hosting service that will be used with the full product. The best way to solve this

would be to make the development environment as close as to the production environment.


Glossary

Admin - a person that has the rights to do anything to the software or database.

Application Program Interface (API) - a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building

software applications. An API expresses a software component in terms of its operations,

inputs, outputs, and underlying types.

Content Aggregation - bringing together specific types of information from multiple online

sources.

Content Management System (CMS) - allows publishing, editing and modifying content,

organizing, deleting as well as maintenance from a central interface often used to run

websites containing blogs, news, and shopping.

Contributor - a person who sends in material to be published, whether through twitter or a

researcher. Not someone that is part of the news organization.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) - a simple mechanism for adding style to Web documents.

Digital Journalism - a contemporary form of journalism where editorial content is distributed

via the Internet as opposed to publishing via print or broadcast.

Disqus - is a blog comment hosting service for web sites and online communities that uses a

networked platform.

Editor - a person who is in charge of and determines the final content of a text, particularly a

newspaper or magazine.

Javascript - an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create

interactive effects within web browsers.


Journalist - a person who writes for newspapers or magazines or prepares news to be broadcast

on radio or television.

HTML - Hypertext Markup Language, a standardized system for tagging text files to achieve

font, color, graphic, and hyperlink effects on World Wide Web pages.

Living Document - dynamic document that is continually edited and updated.

Mace & Crown - A university news organization that is under a tight budget and looking for a

cheaper alternative to their current CMS with more customization and tools.

MySQL - Most widely used open-source RDBMS.

Open Source - denoting software for which the original source code is made freely available and

may be redistributed and modified.

PHP - is a server-side scripting language designed for web development.

Plugin - a software component that adds a specific feature to an existing software application.

Pylot - free open source tool for testing performance and scalability of web services

Reader - a person that reads and interacts with the articles posted by the news organization.

RDBMS - relational database management system.

UI/UX - the process of enhancing user satisfaction by improving the usability, ease of use, and

pleasure provided in the interaction between the user and the product.

Whitelisted - a list of people or products viewed with approval.

Wordpress - Most popular open source CMS based on PHP and MySQL.


References

Social Networking Fact Sheet. (2013, December 27). Retrieved September 20, 2015, from

http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/social-networking-fact-sheet/

Viner, K. (2013, October 9). The rise of the reader: Journalism in the age of the open web.

Retrieved September 21, 2015, from

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/09/the-rise-of-the-reader-katharine-

viner-an-smith-lecture

WordPress® hosting without the hassle GoDaddy Pro. (n.d.). Retrieved September 21, 2015,

from https://www.godaddy.com/pro/managed-wordpress-hosting

http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/social-networking-fact-sheet/

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/09/the-rise-of-the-reader-katharine-viner-an-smith-lecture

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/09/the-rise-of-the-reader-katharine-viner-an-smith-lecture

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