Adobe DPS Folio Author tools for WordPress.

Folios Author is a plugin for WordPress that allows publishers to create HTML articles and folios directly from WordPress. Using this plugin, publishers can streamline the creation of their content on Digital Publishing Suite apps across multiple devices.


This plugin is not yet compatible with Wordpress 4. An Update is coming soon.
MIT Licensed - v1.0.0+ - December 13th, 2013

Having issues? Open a ticket on GIT.






Technical Requirements

• WordPress 3.5 +: PHP 5.2.4 or higher, MySQL 5.0 or higher, Apache or nginx recommended.

• Folio Author Plugin for WordPress: FTP access to the server to install the plugin.

Prerequisite knowledge

Experience with WordPress Content Management System and knowledge of the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite is required. This article also assumes you have access to a web server and have basic HTML/CSS knowledge.

Required Products

Adobe Digital Publishing Suite - Enterprise account (For Folio Producer Integration to publish folios)




Working with Articles

Folio Author organizes things a bit differently than Adobe’s Online Folio Producer Tools. The biggest change is the introduction of issues. While a folio is a collection of articles, an issue is a grouping of folios. Take for example a company wanting to publish a monthly edition to iPhone, iPad and a few Android devices. An issue would be the “December 2013 Issue” of the publication and inside that issue would be folio renditions for iPhone, iPad, and other devices. Grouping folios by issue allows the grouped folio renditions to share basic metadata that DPS uses to deliver the correct rendition to the targeted device.

Articles also have a hierarchy as well. The first time you create an article it becomes the original article. Whenever you add that article to a rendition, it’s duplicated and added to your rendition, giving the ability to make changes specific that particular rendition. If you ever make a significant change to the original article, you can always push those changes to child articles living in their respective renditions. Below is an example of issue / article / rendition hierarchy.



You don't have to make articles from scratch. Bring posts into Folio Author Plugin through any custom post type, using any filter option you'd like. Once installed, the plugin adds an option to the filter drop down menu from any post / custom post type page that allows you to select posts to import. There is also an option to associate those posts to an issue you've started.


When adding an article into your folio rendition, an article becomes an article rendition that can be edited specifically for the folio rendition on a specific device. For instance, if you’d like to change a headline to be shorter on a mobile device, you can click on the “edit article” icon on the right side of the article bar and then edit this article rendition without affecting any other renditions of the article.

Once inside of an article, you can begin working on your content. You can select a template for the article to bring in styles. You can also edit the article metadata on the right if you don’t plan to bring in a sidecar.xml to carry that metadata in.


After you've done your edits you can preview directly in your browser before pushing the article to the cloud to preview on your device.


Mercury has provided a basic template for creating articles. You can take these samples and make them your own by copying the dps-templates into your theme folder. From here you can make any changes to these templates to make them your own.





Working with Renditions



Click “create new issue” to bring up the box where you can enter all metadata to be shared among all renditions of that issues: Folio Name, Folio Number, Publication Name/Magazine Title, Folio Description, Publication Date, Cover Date, and Filters.


To the right of an issue, you can create folio renditions by clicking the + New Rendition button. As folios/renditions are specific per device, they hold advanced metadata about device size and have separate cover images for each device. Folios/renditions can all share articles, or, if desired, each folio rendition can hold a unique set of articles for its specific device. It is best to make your first rendition the biggest device you plan to publish to. (This is because you will be adding articles this folio rendition first, then pulling articles into other folio renditions from it for other devices. Smaller devices are likely to require certain articles to be split up or otherwise modified for mobile devices.)


Once articles are locked down they can be imported. Go into a folio rendition and click “add article” to add a rendition of the original article for this device’s folio rendition.


Once everything is ready in a folio rendition, you can push to the cloud by clicking on the “push rendition to the cloud” button that appears next to the folio rendition’s metadata. At any time after the folio rendition appears in the cloud, you can push individual article updates or whole folio updates back to the cloud





Installation


Requirements
● Wordpress needs to be installed in the root directory of the server.

Installation steps below:
● Upload 'adobe-folio-author-wp-plugin' to the '/wp-content/plugins/' directory in your WordPress instance
● Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress
● You will now see an icon for Folio Author in your admin menu on the left. From the plugin menu choose `Settings` to set up your credentials and any defaults for the plugin.

Navigate to settings tab under Folio Producer in the WordPress sidebar to set up Folio Author plugin. There are three main sections in the settings page: API Key/Secret entry, Folio Producer account setup and Device List.

Adobe API Key and Secret, DPS Login and Password
If you are a DPS Enterprise licensed publisher you can contact your Adobe representative to request a unique Folio Producer API Key and Secret. By enabling the Folio Author module to directly connect to the Folio Producer APIs, publishers can maintain a sync status with all article content published through WordPress. Publishing through the Folio Producer APIs will streamline the WordPress folio publishing workflow by uploading the article content directly to Folio Producer. You will also need to enter the login for the DPS account you wish to publish to, along with the corresponding password.

Presets
We include helpful tips on rollover to help get you acquainted with the plugin. You can turn off these tooltips by checking “disable tooltips around the plugin” You can also enable “automatically make a TOC preview image” which generates the TOC preview image using the first image in the body content. The plugin also allows you to pre-set a default template for new articles you create. You can also select an HTMLResources.zip file that will be included with every folio rendition that gets uploaded.

Device List
The device list holds a preset list of devices. You can select devices to which you will want to publish here, or add new devices by entering name, slug, dimensions, and device type (mobile/tablet), then clicking “add device to list.” The Folio Author plugin allows you to publish to any device that supports Adobe Digital Publishing Suite.

Where to go from here. Once the plugin is installed, configured, and tested, the next step would be to make it your own. The template provided are basic examples for creating a folio. The next step would be to copy the templates-dps folder out of the plugin folder and into your theme folder. This template can then be made your own by editing them and changing styles.







Help / Support






The Folio Author Plugin for WordPress was developed as a partnership between Mercury and Adobe.
The plugin was created in collaboration with Coffee and Code.



Mercury
Studio Mercury is a New York-based multimedia design firm offering services in film, photography, branding, print, interaction design, iPad, eBook and tablet application design. The Studio delivers media-rich experiences in entertainment, fine arts, design, education, advertising and publishing industries. Established in 2008, Studio Mercury has worked with Martha Stewart Living, Condé Nast and the Guggenheim Museum in creating a multitude of innovative multimedia projects.





Coffee and Code
Coffee & Code is a passionate, experienced, well-connected digital consultancy and development studio. In the past 8 years, we've helped startups succeed, built solutions for major players in the digital print industry, created web brands for new companies, and supported existing teams to get better results, faster.