This is an email I sent last night to Frank Worsley of ZinePal. Also copied on this email were Teri Lussier, Brad Coy, Cheryl Johnson, Brian Brady, Sean Purcell and Eric Blackwell, the folks who have been talking about ZinePal privately. I’m sharing this in the hopes that it will spark other ideas.
Frank Worsley: > Let me know if you have any feature requests or run into any problems and I’ll try to fix it for you.
Okay, Frank, you asked for it.
This is my wish list for ZinePal, but I’m copying these other good folks because we’ve all been playing with the software. We’re all affiliated with BloodhoundBlog.com, a real estate industry-focused weblog. We love ZinePal because we have huge and unending publishing needs.
Emphasize that: We love ZinePal. I’m going to ask for a lot of stuff, and the others here will chip in with their own ideas, but I don’t want you to despair in any way. We’re happy to help you make ZinePal better, if we can, but you’ve already kicked our teeth in and left us smiling about it. We’re in your debt, never doubt it.
My background: I was a typographer when that word meant something. Even so, I understand that the world has changed — and I have changed, too. I want a certain amount of typographic control, if I can get it, but I’m not prepared to jump out the window if I can’t have it.
Much more important to me is control over the copy. Typographers copyfit typographically. They have to follow the copy out the window. Editors copyfit by cutting and adding copy. Give me editorial control and I’ll solve my own typographic problems.
So:
1. I want control over the feeds. I need for a feed to be forgotten if I need to reimport it. I need for as many posts as I wish to come in with the feed. I can work-around this by using categories in WordPress, e.g,
http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/wp-rss2.php?cat=7
Category feeds seem to come in in their entirety.
2. But: Once I have the copy in ZinePal, I need to be able to edit it in place. If a headline is setting long, I need to be able to recast it within ZinePal. Likewise for the body copy. And likewise for images: I need to be able to move or cut images to get a decent balance on the columns.
3. What I’m asking for is an editor. For all of me, it doesn’t have to be WYSIWYG. I’d rather it weren’t to be frank. But I need to edit the copy to make the pages work my way.
4. The intro editor is decent, and it’s HTML-aware, which is also cool. I need a filler editor like that to be able to create resequencable filler copy within ZinePal, again to balance columns.
5. More fonts. Bread and butter fonts are fine — and frou-frou fonts will just invite time-wasting — but I need more.
6. I’d love to have tracking, at least in the headlines. Squeezing — variable set widths — would be nice, too. If you give me kerning, I’ll get nothing done, so don’t.
7. But: I would love to have the ability to import as many images as I want, sequencing them where I want. This would give esthetes like me that ability to create our own image-based headlines.
8. I would love to be able to import images as EPS files.
9. A fast dummy preview would be nice. I’m not going to edit for widows, in any case, but I want to see orphans if I have them. Mainly I need to see how headlines are breaking out, where images are landing and if I have any big holes in the balancing of columns.
10. I’d love to be able to save “styles” — reusable templates for recurring projects. I suppose I could do that with multiple accounts.
That’s ten items, in order of their priority to me.
Emphasize this: I can’t thank you enough for making such a wonderful tool. Please feel free to call upon me if I can help you in any way.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing, technology
Cheryl Johnson says:
I did get a chuckle out of Frank’s post on the zinepal.com blog expressing some surprise that “the majority of the new zinepal.com users are working in the real estate business”.
I second the request for reusable templates (or styles, or themes, or skins, or whatever you want to call them.)
In partciular, I would find a one column option handy for some of my how-to stuff that contains alot of screen shots. In a two column format, text and corresponding images tend to end up in unexpected places. 🙂
March 12, 2009 — 7:23 am
Greg Swann says:
> I second the request for reusable templates (or styles, or themes, or skins, or whatever you want to call them.)
I’m with you your way, but here’s what I was thinking:
If I do content for Bloodhound Realty, that will look a certain way. Content for Distinctive Phoenix will look very different. I want to be able to save my own unique set ups so that I can reuse them at will.
March 12, 2009 — 7:53 am
Eric Blackwell says:
Frank;
I haven’t been able to comment too much because I have been swamped with paying work, but thanks for a great product. And we do appreciate your efforts to improve it more.
Great tool. Nicely done. I will see if I can spread it to some other industries as well as RE 😉 We would not want you to get lopsided..hehe.
Best
Eric
March 12, 2009 — 3:34 pm
Chris Johnson says:
Asking Greg Swann For Feature Requests…is like asking Obama for more taxes.
March 12, 2009 — 4:27 pm
Thomas Johnson says:
@ Chris: a Bloodhound on the scent baying and drooling all over the place! Just follow until he finds the prize!
March 12, 2009 — 8:31 pm
Kevin Sandridge says:
Greg – saving “looks” or profile types would be a nice addition to the ZinePal product. Editorial control is also key – as the terms we work so hard to become known by may inadvertently get thrown out the window!
March 13, 2009 — 12:29 am