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Car Design News
Car Design News is the leading online magazine for automotive design industry professionals, transportation design students and design enthusiasts worldwide. Updated daily, Car Design News gives a global overview of the latest automotive design news, in-depth coverage of major autoshows and student design exhibitions, as well as design reviews by industry professionals, and feature articles covering the design process behind new concept and production vehicles. In addition to industry news, Car Design News provides resources for students and professional designers, including free online design portfolio space and design tutorials.
Background
Since Car Design News was founded in the year 2000, it has become the leading online resource for automotive design, providing professional designers, design students and enthusiasts with the information and inspiration they need. Based on extensive first hand design industry experience, Car Design News has been built specifically with automotive designers and those studying to become automotive designers in mind. This commitment and focus has made Car Design News the world's number one website for automotive design with more than half a million visits per month.
The site is an invaluable and authoritative source of free and premium content on every aspect of car design, including breaking news from automotive shows worldwide, design portfolios from professional and amateurs alike, photo galleries, forums, directories design vacancies and career advice.
Project Summary
The core objective of the new launch was to deliver a technology infrastructure that supports Car Design News' planned innovation and growth. The project adopted a phased approach, with phase one concentrating on replacing and improving existing site functionality.
"Unify has enabled us to increase the efficiency of content contribution and provide a platform that will enable us to deliver premium services and content to our members"
Sam Livingstone, Director, Car Design News
Phase one highlights:
- New subscription model for members
- Content managed model introduced so that content creation can be distributed across an international user base
- Better classification and management of content creation with taxonomy and metadata
- Dynamic publishing based on search
- The introduction of visual editing with content editable templates providing maximum ease of use for editors
- Improvements in the management of members
- Design improvements
- Introduction of Unify's DAPS server to better manage high-volume rich media content
- RSS feeds
Rich Media Management
Due to the highly visual nature of the content subject, the site incorporates thousands of high resolution images. Prior to the introduction of Unify these images were managed in an offline folder system, with had no associated metadata or taxonomic classification. The deployment of Unify's digital assets processing server (DAPS) has significantly improved the management of images, and has introduced a wide range of file services and transformations that are run on rich media content and images, automatically converting these files to different formats and sizes.
Throughout the site, every effort has been made to streamline the management of images. For instance the creation of online galleries is completed simply by uploading images to a web template, where the system select and formats the right size images automatically.
Management of the Content Contributor Process
Visual editing, a feature which is unique to Unify, enables editors to create content in a webpage template, streamlining the content creation process with an intuitive interface. The template provides an immediate preview of how the content looks on the page whilst still allowing advanced editing features. Content managers enter and edit content with the "WYSIWYG" editor, or type directly on the page template. Adding images and rich media content to the page is simplicity itself: the user simply browses the media library and when they pick the desired image, Unify takes care of placing and sizing the image automatically.
Taxonomy and Metadata
Unify automatically extracts embedded metadata from image and rich media files, which means, as images are uploaded any existing IPTC and EXIF data is read out and saved with the file, saving considerable time and allowing for meaningful searches on the image files from the moment they are uploaded. Taxonomy is used throughout the site, to classify and publish as well as restrict access to content.
Managing subscriptions with the Unify e-commerce Module
Prior to the re-launch of the site, the Car Design News subscription model was vulnerable to abuse, as membership details could be shared. The Unify e-commerce module has addressed this problem by allowing administrators to control how many concurrent logins are supported by each user's subscription.
The Unify e-commerce module manages and serves content to five different levels of subscription, which range from individual membership to large design studios. Content is also served based on a member and non member status, with access being restricted to paid for content. Premium content includes:
- Access to photo galleries featuring thousands of high quality photos from major international auto shows and design exhibitions.
- High-resolution (1600x1200) photo downloads in the auto show galleries.
- Auto show design reviews, color and materials analysis by industry experts.
- In-depth reports on the design development of new concept and production vehicles.
Car Design Portfolio's
Car Design News' library of portfolios is the largest collection of online transportation design portfolios, with over 1700 listed. This member's service provides budding and established car designers the opportunity to emonstrate their skills online by allowing them to create a profile and upload images of their designs. Unify automatically transforms the images into the correct format and size eliminating user error. The portfolio layout is also handled by the template ensuring consistency in look and feel. Within the section portfolios are highlighted on a number of criteria including: featured portfolios, which show a selection of recently updated ortfolios chosen by the Car Design News editorial team, most recently updated and member rating.
Next Steps
Phase two of the project is soon to commence and during this phase Car Design News will be concentrating on adding new services and features to members, such as a annual design competition, conference and paid portfolio services. In the future Car Design News also intend to add podcasts and video footage of shows enhancing the value of their content to members.
Visit the website: CarDesignNews.com
