Corporate publishers, agencies and publishing houses usually have a tough time when it comes to converting content from digital platforms (e.g. web content management systems or databases) to print publications or high-quality PDFs. We’re putting a stop to that.
We’d like to tell you why we think our solution by the name of “tohoop” (Low German for “together”) can save many publishers a great deal of work. We firmly believe that “tohoop” enables really awesome print integration for digital publishing workflows – just what many publishers are missing.
Why we’re doing this
We’re constantly in touch with our customers – and we always think outside the box. That’s how we know exactly what bothers many publishers and what corporate publishers want for their publishing workflows. And these two points are often closely related – the WCMS should be at the heart of content production to lay the basis for real multi-channel publishing. Monolithic editorial systems are a thing of the past, as publishers are now using Drupal, WordPress or other free and open-source solutions as their central content platforms. However, if you ever want to create print products or PDFs in addition to digital content, these solutions rarely offer efficient workflows for converting content into printable documents. You’re then generally left with no choice but to copy and paste your content, and documents have to be constantly updated by hand. There’s also a lack of a clear planning tool and this method is susceptible to mistakes.
That’s why we’ve poured 35 years of printing experience into the development of an interface that enables InDesign, the number-one layout and production tool for print media, to be integrated into almost any WCMS. We also provide a clear, web-based planning tool for publications. “tohoop” might not be a full-fledged editorial system, but it TRANSFORMS open-source solutions such as Drupal or WordPress into impressive editorial systems with highly professional print integration.
How we’re doing this
Our planner, which forms an integral part of “tohoop”, is a browser-based planning tool that makes it incredibly easy to create and manage publications. Each page can be linked to an InDesign page layout that we provide as a template. Of course, we can also create different templates for different pages or documents. If the planner is linked to Drupal or WordPress using “tohoop”, we can easily find an article from the WCMS using the content search in the planner and then drag & drop it onto a page to mold it into the pre-defined layout. Our tool even transfers formatting from the CMS and intelligently converts it into InDesign formatting! And if you notice that a picture doesn’t look quite right or the text is too short and the heading is too long, this is where the specially developed features of “tohoop” come into play as a WCMS plug-in… The planner can be used to open the article in print layout view within the WCMS, allowing each individual line of text to be edited. And we don’t even have to open an InDesign client when making minor alterations to the layout, as we can do this in the planner itself using the “page layout” feature, which is a kind of slimmed-down version of InDesign. Needless to say, our tool also enables the fully free layout of all articles in InDesign.
Who uses our tool?
“tohoop” is a profitable tool for almost all your publishing needs. We soon realized how versatile it is. For example, the publishing house “nomos” is using “tohoop” to efficiently produce its academic journals. Its data is not even sourced from a WCMS, but a proprietary database. And that’s exactly what sets “tohoop” apart from other solutions – we can integrate it as a plug-in with a wide range of data sources. For example, another customer is using “tohoop” to produce daily newspapers in a digital open-source environment. And this video presents the benefits of “tohoop” for corporate publishers.
By the way: We often talk about “print media”, but we would like to stress once again that not all the content that we transform into professional, sophisticated documents with “tohoop” has to be printed. After all, “tohoop” can also be used to create digital PDFs and e-papers.
Want to know more? Check out our free webinar! We’ll show you even more details live and in color. Click here for our event page on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/events/printfromyourweb-cms-reversepub6829328788187316224/