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 3
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
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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
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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.
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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
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Figure 1. Major functional component diagram
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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.).
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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