Publish online for professional use

[malarde]

Hello everyone,

One of my client wants to have a online and interactive version of his magazine. Do you think Publish Online is a good solution for this application ? Or is it problematic that the document depend of my adobe licence ? Do you know better options ? (freenium pdf displayer, CMS module...)

On Publish Online, I'm afraid the weight and number of files limit will end up being a problem. I'm also worried that if my Adobe subscription ends, all the files will be deleted. Does anyone have any experience on this subject?

Tkank you for reading me !

[BobLevine]

Personally, I'd never depend on it for anything mission-critical. There are far better solutions and quite frankly, less is more. Post the PDFs on the client site and be done with it.

[malarde]

Hello,

Thank you for your answer. 🙂

If I may digress a little from the Publish Online topic :

The site is a Drupal CMS, I didn't create it, and I don't know exactly how to integrate a PDF elegantly.

Do you know if an add-on is required? Paid, free?

I have almost no knowledge of web development.

Or is it more judicious to host the magazines on a specialized host (calaméo, isuu, etc.) and to use their integration code on the site?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Such a project will take considerable expertise in advanced web/online design and development. There are very few shortcuts or simple systems worth using if features and longevity/stability are desired.

[BobLevine]

I'm a Wordpress guy and there are many plugins for displaying PDFs. You can even just let the browser handle it.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Drupal's a bit more complex (and capable) than WP, and most add-ins/-ons are payware. it's also got something of a steeper developer/admin curve than WordPress.

Static PDFs shouldn't be a problem, but integrating them well, not just as stuck-on pages, takes good platform support.

[BobLevine]

I know...which is why I'm a WordPress guy. 🙂

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Oh, I use WP almost exclusively when I don't write code. Drupal is the choice of a lot of corporate clients, though, so I trudge through its oddly oriented structure as needed.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

The only reliable platform for such commercial/stable publishing is your own web hosting and a suitable platform for the material. Using proprietary services leaves your 'property' at the whim of the service operator, from keeping up with minor changes to having to rebuild for major changes to having the service simply stop.

[Dan Rodney]

When you are hosting with someone else's platform, they are in control, not you. They can change the service, put limits on it, or if you cancel your membership your content is no longer available. For the long term, you want something under your control, in a format that works for you. While PDF can work in some cases, it's not easy to read on various size devices, so publishing text content as native responsive webpages can be better. Publishing workflows can be very specific to your needs and may be complicated to setup. Having an interactive online magazine is not a trivial task. You'll need to explore options based on your budget and goals for the how the content should work and be accessible. InDesign is print/pdf oriented, and not the best solition for interactive online content.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

All true, but if Job One is a print magazine, getting an online edition out of ID is a shorter and more sensible path than completely rebuilding it in a more web-specific tool. No one's mentioned In5 yet, which does a pretty decent HTML/web export of InDesign pages. A bit pricey for a freelance or casual user, but may be the least expensive/most effective solution in this case. Still needs some web expertise to use well.,

[malarde]

Thank you very much for your answers which sincerely help me to better understand the subject!

Indeed it's a magazine initially intended for print. I'm not sure it's necessary to offer a responsive version in this case.

The goal is to have an online version, with a summary and clickable links... Adding a video to the pdf could possibly be interesting.

I don't know about in5 at all!

The most accessible solutions would therefore be (considering that I am not a web development ninja):

- host the pdfs on the site, and have a page with a link opening the pdf in a new browser window - subscribe to a paid module (like elfsight, commoninja ?) allowing you to integrate a PDF reader into a page of the site

I wish it was wordpress! 😅