Sportal 365 CMS 3.0: Faster, mobile-friendly, more functional

Performance and usability to a large extent define the scope of update 3.0. We reevaluated and optimized our architecture to make browsing the CMS effortless. We reduced load-time and redesigned the process of issue detection/resolution.

Optimized architecture

The enhanced architecture makes possible a few things that upgrade greatly the performance of the system:

• Download everything at application launch

This means that everything loads faster. Now, when you open the CMS and select a project, you download all the necessary information for this project (categories, statuses, types, permissions and so on) at the beginning of the application start. We then save it locally and make calls to the API only for the extra things you need.

Before, you had to ask the API to work harder and download the information for each action you wanted to perform in the system, which slowed it down.

• Lower overhead

The optimization process of the architecture strengthens the system’s performance by lowering the time for development and issue resolution.

• Works on all latest browsers

Now, the CMS can be used on all latest browsers, compared to before when it worked only on Chrome and Firefox.

Optimized for mobile devices

The content management system works and is responsive on all mobile devices, and is fully adapted to the fast-paced environment of sports media, where creators often have to update content from their phones.

To create a more enjoyable and effective content creation process, we introduce new features and improve all components of the CMS.

Categories

• Media

The Media tab is a new feature and allows you to upload single or multiple images to a certain category. This can be useful if you want to attach an image or a several images to enhance the design of your category and display those visual elements on your webpage. Also, you can choose an existing video, a gallery or embed a video as your main media.

• SEO and URL objects

The SEO and URL tabs have the same purpose and functionality as when used to create Articles. To learn more about what’s new, scroll down to Articles.

Tags

• Main media and improved SEO

Before, tags could be optimized for search engines. Now, we add Media and upgrade the SEO process to allow you to boost the quality of the content you create. Media is useful if you, say, cover transfer news and you want to put together a collage of pictures and optimize how it visually appears.

Banners

Banners is a new feature that makes the management of banner advertising inside your articles easier.

This new functionality lets you set different positions and include banners in the article’s body. It makes it easier for journalists to manipulate banners and automates the process.

When you create banners, you can:

• Pre-define multiple banner positions

• Specify a preferred banner

• Search and add a banner inside an article

For example, if you want to have a banner inside your article after the third paragraph, you simply select which banner position to include.

Lists

We redesigned lists manipulation.

Lists enable you to group several articles on a similar subject together, say, volleyball, and display them in different places on your website. If you are covering the World Volleyball Championship, you can create a Volleyball list and group the five most important articles about the tournament to reuse as a supporting material every time you write something related to the championship. List articles usually appear as Further reading at the end of an article.

When you edit a list, you can:

• Override list content

Change the title and image of an article in your list to make it catchier.

• Reorder article position in the list

Easily reorder the position of articles in your list by simply dragging them up and down.

• Add videos and galleries

Images

With the new version of the CMS, you can upload multiple images at once to your library instead of adding images one at a time.

Galleries

We introduced multiple image upload in Galleries as well and the ability to change the position of an image in a gallery by dragging it up and down.

Articles

As you will notice, we have slightly redesigned the interface inside Articles and refined every aspect of the article-creation process.

Draft when creating new articles

One of the first new things you will notice in Articles is that we have optimized the creation of articles. Now, when you start creating a new article–and for some reason, you exit your editing screen–we save a draft locally for you so that you can later continue where you left off.

Improved search

By optimizing the architecture of the system to download all necessary information when the CMS is launched, searching now delivers results and suggest content faster.

Article editing

• General tab

In the General tab you can now find only article properties. We removed the image that used to be displayed in the older version. Also, for better performance, you can now enjoy a much quicker and more intuitive search inside the different tabs.

• Media tab

Until now, you could only add one image as the main image in your news article. With this version of the CMS, we allow you to attach multiple media–a gallery, video or embedded video.

What is new:

1. The main image is cropped automatically with an area of interest.

2. You can upload multiple images.

3. Images are expandable and you can see them in full size.

4. Add Gallery, Video or Embed Video as your main media.

• Tags tab

Inside the Tags tab, you will notice that we introduce a separation between Tags and Football connections. This is a move to better accommodate your needs and allow you in the future to hide football features.

But shall you choose to tag with a Football connection, you can include information about past and upcoming matches between one, two, or three teams. Also, you can tag players.

• Related content tab

Tags and Related content complement each other. The way it works is simple. When you tag a team, you instantly get article suggestions in the Related content tab. You can select one or more article suggestions to include in your related content or use the search to add a specific article you are looking for.

Once you select the articles to include as related content, you can change their order. This allows content creators to adjust the position of a related article and place it wherever they think will generate more engagement.

• URLs tab

URLs is great tool for your advertising efforts. It is an existing feature that comes with improved performance and usability.

• SEO tab

With this release, we further improve the search engine optimization process. Unlike before when journalists had to manually type an SEO title, now we introduce Copy SEO title from main title. This allows creators to automatically generate an SEO title from the main title of their article.

Also, we automated the slug generation. With the selection of Generate automatically from SEO title, slugs can now mirror the SEO title text.

Moreover, we designed the SEO process with flexibility in mind and you can also have different titles for each section i.e. one for your article, another for your SEO title and one as a slug.

Preview

The preview feature is updated and now you can preview articles and widgets. You can preview all articles, regardless of their state. Before you could only do it for new, unpublished articles.

Blocky

Blocky is an important part of the content creation process and we constantly try to increase your experience with it. In this release, we update the design, but we also enhance its functionality.

The first thing you will notice is the change we made to the widgets.

• Widgets are no longer visible by default

We made the widgets to be on-demand, because they make many calls to the API and can slow the page down, as well as the overall operation of the CMS.

• Preview and edit widgets

There is no longer a need to display widgets, you can preview them.

Additionally, with this release we let you edit widgets. This is helpful when you want to change a bookmaker or a game. You don’t have to add a new widget anymore, because you can edit an existing one.

• No need to refresh Blocky when adding a widget

The reality before was that when you added a new widget, the whole Blocky refreshed and everything loaded slower. Now, only the block/widget you are using refreshes.

Paste from text is another new feature.

Very often journalists want to copy text from an outside source (e.g. a Word document) and paste it in the CMS. This, however, wasn’t easy with the old version, because creators couldn’t copy/paste their entire text into the Blocky.

Now, with the Paste from text feature, users can copy an entire article from an outside source and paste it in the Blocky, which automatically breaks it down into blocks.

Lastly, version 3.0 makes the editing of blocks easier and allows you to:

• Reorder blocks