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In this walkthrough we will demonstrate how to include display ads in your Reverse Publishing export for layout and pagination in Adobe InDesign.

From your website’s dashboard look for Reverse Publishing in the listing on the left. As you hover your mouse a submenu will appear then click on Reverse Publishing.

Here is where your website’s article content can be exported for a particular edition and filtered by category. In addition there is a checkbox labelled Include Ads. This will be the focus of our demonstration. Note that ads are not categorized and also cannot be exported without including article content.

Once you’ve selected the edition and filtered by category if needed, make sure the Include Ads checkbox is ticked and click the export button.

This export may take some time depending on the amount and number of articles and ads to be downloaded.

The export consists of a zip file containing all of the images and ads plus an XML file for import into InDesign.

Once the zip file is saved to you computer, extract it to a folder.

Open you InDesign template or create a new document. In this instance I’ve created a Marketplace Grid to layout the ads.

Under the File menu choose Import XML. In the window select the XML file in the folder extracted from the downloaded zip file. The default import options are fine for our demonstration.

Once the XML is imported the Structure pane will appear to the left of your document containing the Root tag. Click the small arrow to the left of the tag to reveal the contents of the XML import. You should see several tags, all beginning with “ad” followed by an ID number and the advertiser’s name.

Click the small arrow to the left of an ad tag to reveal the image associated with that ad. You can also Alt- or Option-click on one of the small arrows to open them all at once.

You can then simply drag the icon to the left of each image tag into a frame in your template for final layout.

Of course this last process will defer from publication to publication depending on the design of your template.

The post Exporting display ads for Reverse Publishing first appeared on Our-Hometown.

Reverse publishing at the basic level is the process of creating and managing all of your content directly on your website, including articles, blogs, galleries, advertising, e-editions and so forth. Any of this content can then be exported as needed for use in a page layout application, such as Adobe InDesign. This method uses common XML to structure and tag your content simplifying the import process.

From your website’s dashboard look for Reverse Publishing in the menu list on the left. As you hover your mouse a submenu will appear, then click on Reverse Publishing.

Here is where your website’s article content can be exported for a particular edition and filtered by category.

Select the edition date and either all categories or you can select a single category for export.

As a quick aside, you will want to input character and paragraph style names in the fields provided. These styles will be imported into InDesign with the XML data. Note IF the styles provided to the Reverse Publishing plugin are identical to those in your InDesign template, they will be mapped automatically on import. If the styles do not match, the styles from the XML file will be added with default settings. You will then need to specify style options manually, such as fonts, spacing, indentation etc.

Once you have made your selections, click on the Export button.

This will prompt you to save a zip file to your computer.

Click OK.

The plugin will compile a ZIP archive including the XML file with all the article content and individual images associated with each story.

Extract this zip file and we are now ready for import into InDesign.

We’ll first walk through the import process with a blank document and then discuss how to set up a template for future use.

Create a new blank document in InDesign. If you have page dimensions, they should be set at this step.

Go to the File menu and click Import XML.

Select the XML file in the folder extracted from the zip file download.

Make sure the Show XML Import Options button is ticked as well as Merge Content.

On the import options window leave the defaults, however the Create link option is very useful in that if you export updated content from your website and re-import the XML into InDesign, all your content will update automatically.

Once the XML is imported the Structure pane will appear to the left of your document containing the Root tag. Click the small arrow to the left of the tag to reveal the contents of the XML import.

Each story element contains the others: title, byline, body, image et al. plus any tag attributes, particularly character and text styles.

Notice that these styles have been imported along with the XML elements and are now appearing in the styles panels, although each simply contains the InDesign defaults.

Before bringing in any story content, lets establish the looks of our different tags by setting the font, size, and any indentation or spacing options for each. With these styles set we can now begin importing content.

Click and drag a story onto the blank page. By default this will place all the story elements into a single text frame, including the title, byline, body and images.

The images will import at their original sizes which will often be hidden in longer stories as they may fall outside of the text frame, but we will address this shortly.

In this case the image is visible and we will need to manually scale and position it as well as any caption.

To address this we will create a new empty graphic frame of the size desired in the final layout, along with a text field to hold the caption. We will also group these two frames so that we can set the text wrapping for the full graphic.

Even though the graphics have already been imported into the main story frame, you can still drag the individual nested tags into the layout, as InDesign will remove the element from its initial placement and re-insert it into the new target.

So click on the arrow next to the story tag, and then the graphic tag to reveal the image and caption. Drag the image tag into the empty graphic frame and the caption tag into the text frame respectively. Right-click or control-click on the image to set its fitting options and adjust the size of the caption frame so that no text is cut off. You can now drag the grouped image/caption into its final position in your layout and also adjust the text wrapping settings for the entire group.

Repeat this graphic frame / caption frame combination method to place any remaining images in the story.

This is the basic process for placing an article from the imported XML into your InDesign document.

To create a template from the settings we have established – in particular the now-matching paragraph and character styles, you can go to the structure pane and select the root tag, then click on the trash can at the top of the panel. This will remove the imported content but not any created content frames. Click in the document and select all then delete these frames.

At this point you can save this file as an InDesign template which can be used again (as long as the paragraph and character styles remain unchanged on the Reverse Publishing plugin.

Please reach out to us at ops@our-hometown.com with any questions about reverse publishing on your website!

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The post Reverse Publishing Overview first appeared on Our-Hometown.

Of course, before you can export any ads, you must first create any ads that were not already submitted by customers.

Creating Your Ads Online

1. From your WordPress Dashboard, find the link titled Classifieds and click Add New Classified.
2. Enter a title for the ad, and enter the ad copy itself into the large textbox.
3. Select a category and sub-category (if applicable) for your ad.
4. Enter address & location information (if required)
5. At the bottom of the right hand column is a box to upload attachments. Upload an image to display with your classified ad if you have one.
6. Click “Publish” to publish the ad.

Exporting for Reverse Publishing

Once your ads are all published online, it is time to export the whole batch for placement in the print edition.

1. From your WordPress Dashboard, find the link titled Classifieds Reverse Pub.
2. Click the Settings tab to make sure your export settings are correct.
   1. Show Last Level Categories Only – Only show the category that the ad is assigned to, not the parent category.
   2. Includes Titles In Export – Determines whether to include titles with each ad, or just the ad content.
   3. Include Category Only Once In File – Determines whether a category is included only once per file, or if it is included for each individual ad.
   4. Include Images – Determines whether your export will include images.
   5. Check Ads For Print – If you offer different options for placing classifieds online vs in print, you can check this option to make sure that only ads designated for the Print Edition are exported.
   6. Print Extras In Export – Enabling this option will export “Extra” features, such as whether the ad includes bold text or a box.
   7. Print Only Ads That Will Be Live At Selected Export Date – Checking this box will make sure that only ads that will be active at the selected date are exported. (Excludes ads that are active at time of export, but will expire before the selected date)
   8. Check if Photo Has printphoto checkbox – Used in special cases for customers who have a “include photo in print” option.
   9. Show Dates at the End of Ads  – Check this box to display the classified submission date at the end of the ad.
3. Once you’ve verified your settings, click back to the Preview tab.
4. Click the button to Generate Tab Classifieds.
5. You should now see a preview of the included ads, with each ad listed by title along with the filename of any included images.
6. Click Download Tab Zip Archive to download the export file.

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On your website dashboard, navigate to:

Reverse Publishing -> Settings:

If you do not have reverse publishing / digital prepress and are interested in testing it out or adding it to your paper, please email mcl@our-hometown.com 

First, select when you want to be notified of updates:

“Notify me of updates:” has 3 checkboxes:

• On the export screen
• When Articles are saved
• Every [#] Minutes

Then enter who to “Send notification e-mails to:”

Do not change anything else on this screen.  Click “Save Changes”.

Status Change Notifications

To receive notifications when any Article gets changed to a certain status:

• Navigate to your user profile
• Scroll down near the bottom to the “Article Notifications” section.
• Check the boxes next to whichever statuses you want to be notified for, then scroll to the bottom and click “Update Profile”

You will now receive email notifications when articles change to the selected status types.

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Create a new blank document in InDesign. If you have page dimensions, they should be set at this step.

Go to the File menu and click Import XML.

Select the XML file in the folder extracted from the zip file download.

Make sure the Show XML Import Options button is ticked as well as Merge Content.

On the import options window leave the defaults, however the Create link option is very useful in that if you export updated content from your website and re-import the XML into InDesign, all your content will update automatically.

Once the XML is imported the Structure pane will appear to the left of your document containing the Root tag. Click the small arrow to the left of the tag to reveal the contents of the XML import.

Each story element contains the others: title, byline, body, image et al. plus any tag attributes, particularly character and text styles.

Notice that these styles have been imported along with the XML elements and are now appearing in the styles panels, although each simply contains the InDesign defaults.

Before bringing in any story content, lets establish the looks of our different tags by setting the font, size, and any indentation or spacing options for each. With these styles set we can now begin importing content.

Click and drag a story onto the blank page. By default this will place all the story elements into a single text frame, including the title, byline, body and images.

The images will import at their original sizes which will often be hidden in longer stories as they may fall outside of the text frame, but we will address this shortly.

In this case the image is visible and we will need to manually scale and position it as well as any caption.

To address this we will create a new empty graphic frame of the size desired in the final layout, along with a text field to hold the caption. We will also group these two frames so that we can set the text wrapping for the full graphic.

Even though the graphics have already been imported into the main story frame, you can still drag the individual nested tags into the layout, as InDesign will remove the element from its initial placement and re-insert it into the new target.

So click on the arrow next to the story tag, and then the graphic tag to reveal the image and caption. Drag the image tag into the empty graphic frame and the caption tag into the text frame respectively. Right-click or control-click on the image to set its fitting options and adjust the size of the caption frame so that no text is cut off. You can now drag the grouped image/caption into its final position in your layout and also adjust the text wrapping settings for the entire group.

Repeat this graphic frame / caption frame combination method to place any remaining images in the story.

This is the basic process for placing an article from the imported XML into your InDesign document.

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