How to set up a folio for your digital editions and articles
A folio is a collection of editions and/or articles that you would like your readers to have available in one place. For example, a folio can contain a continuation of editions, an archive of editions, periodical editions, or simply editions you think will be interesting to a specific group of readers.
Here is a nice example of one such Folio.
Start setting up your Folio
Every Edition Digital account already comes with a folio in place. To start setting up that folio first click Administration and the Folios from the main menu.
Adding editions and or articles to your folio can be done by clicking Add or Remove Editions at the bottom of each folio. This opens up a list of all editions and articles that were created within your account where you simply select the ones you want to include by clicking them once. Finalize by clicking Save & Close. To remove items from the folio, look for the X button that’s located on the far right of that edition.
When a folio contains only one digital edition, that edition will be opened by default when the folio link is used. A folio can also contain editions and articles that are not Live, but they will become visible to readers once you publish them.
Looking at the folio list from left to right, every folio is represented with its name, the number of digital editions and/or articles it contains, and its bespoke URL address where readers can explore the folio on a nicely designed and responsive landing page.
Of course, it’s also possible to create additional folios. If you require more than one folio get in touch and we will enable that for you. In this case, the folio page will also contain a Create new folio button that enables you to quickly provide the title and description of the folio and add it to the list.
Provide basic information for your Folio
On the far right of each folio entry, there is an EDIT folio button, which you can click to start customizing your folio. When you do so, a new window opens that’s very similar looking as the Workflow. That’s because, much like a single digital publication, a folio also consists of different aspects, which you can control, and these are nicely organized in individual tabs: General, Footer, Users.
The first tab from the left (GENERAL) is where you’ll need to provide a name and a description of the folio. These two bits of info are quite important because they give your folio its identity. Also, add a folio logo and you’re on the right track. The name, description, and logo will appear at the top of the folio page itself, but they are also displayed when a folio URL is shared on social networks, so make sure that you provide the share image as well.
Define the appearance of your Folio
In terms of styling the folio page, we've prepared an array of different themes, which you can quickly select in the Appearance section. Once you select a theme, click Save & Close at the bottom, and open the folio to see the theme in action.
If none of the available themes fit your brand identity and want to create a custom look, we also have you covered. You can use the Customization editor to provide your JavaScript code and CSS styles in and modify or add to the existing functionalities of the default design. Please check out our developer's documentation for more information and examples.
Enable search for your Folio
When the number of editions in your folio starts to grow, it will become a challenge for readers to find the edition, article, or specific content that they're interested in. No worries though, that is exactly why folios come with a search feature that looks at every title, description, and all text content inside every edition and article to match the readers’ search query. After searching is done, the folio will display only the editions and articles that match the readers’ search query - all the rest will be temporarily hidden. To enable search toggle the lever beside Show search box.
Assign a custom domain to your Folio
By default, every folio will be hosted using our - live.editiondigital.com. However, you can select which domain you want to assign to your folio, provided that at least one custom domain has been set up beforehand. In other words, if you’ve already set up a custom domain to use with your editions, that domain should be available in the Custom domain drop-down menu. In that case, you can simply select the domain and save the changes.
In case a custom domain has not been set up yet, that’s not a problem - the process is no rocket science and we are here to guide you through. First, contact our support team and let us know that you would like to use a custom domain. Our team will make sure that your subscription includes a custom domain.
After that’s all sorted, it’s time for you to choose a domain name. If you already own a domain for your website or blog, that’s great news - you can simply proceed with creating a subdomain. Presuming that your domain is called mymagazine.com, we suggest that you use a prefix that’s indicative of what it will contain like for example archive.mymagazine.com or digital.mymagazine.com. After that, assign a CNAME DNS record to your new subdomain with the value firestorm.editiondigital.com, which is the address of our server. If you’re not familiar with DNS settings just ask your web administrator and he/she will be able to help you very quickly. Just a heads up, DNS changes usually take from 24-48 hours to propagate across all DNS servers. We suggest that you check your Edition digital account.
When you don’t already own a domain, you will need to register a new one. We suggest that you use one of the most common providers like GoDaddy or namecheap. Once you registered your new domain or subdomain, assign a CNAME DNS record to your new domain or subdomain with the value firestorm.editiondigital.com. After 24 to 48 hours, when DNS changes have propagated across all DNS servers worldwide, you will be able to select and assign your custom domain to your folio from the Edition Digital system.
Enable a secure certificate for your folio
When you are required to use a secure connection, you can do so by enabling the Use HTTPS option. With this enabled, you will gain better SEO recognition (over time), a more secure connection, and the option to redistribute the edition's links within other HTTPS secure sites via iFrame. Just make sure that all pop-ups (shapes or images with a pop-up action) utilize an HTTPS secure address, which must also be used when embedding images from 3rd party servers into text blocks and mobile versions.
Add footer links to your folio
You will most likely want to provide a bit of context about your folio, perhaps some sort of privacy policy, or even an about us page. This is easily achieved in the Footer tab, where you can enable up to five footer menu links that will display the desired content when clicked. To do that select one of the Footer menu items on the left-hand side to reveal the corresponding options on the right-side. Next, flip the switch to Enable menu, provide the menu name, and, using the text editor, provide and style the content that you want to be displayed when that footer link is clicked.
Restrict access to your folio
You can also restrict access to your folio, which comes in pretty handy when the content is not intended for a wide audience: internal documents and whitepapers are just a couple of examples that come to mind. To do that locate the Restricted access section and flip the switch to enabled.
After that, the folio contents will be available only to verified users, which you have added using the Users tab, where you will find a user administration in a very basic form. Here you can create user accounts that will be able to access your folio and view containing editions. To do so, click Add user at the top and provide the required user info: first name, last name, username, email, and password. Then, click Add user and the user list will be updated with a new entry, as expected.
While adding new users to your folio you might also notice that some additional information can be provided for each user. This information is not required unless you are already using a 3rd party service for user authentication and would like to connect that service to Edition Digital via API. For more information on integrating 3rd party services please contact our support team via email support@editiondigital.com.
When a certain user doesn’t require access to your folio anymore, select that user and click Edit user at the top. The previously provided user information will appear in a popup where you can update the info and deselect the Active option to prevent further access to the folio.
Adding new users in bulk is also possible by importing a comma-separated .txt or .csv file. These files need to be formatted in a specific way, so the system knows how to interpret the containing information, but it's not complicated. First make sure that the first row of the file contains these labels: username, password, active, email, first_name, last_name. Then jump in the next row and provide the corresponding information for one user, whereby separating each bit with a comma, like so: johndoe(min. length 6), fjezh57fjd728(min. length 8), 1 (1 for active, 0 for inactive), johndoe@email.com, John, Doe. Do the same thing for all the rest of the users.
In addition to bulk importing users, exporting all users to a single .csv file is also possible in case you need to process the information locally or need to transfer the user data to an external mailing system for example. Please note that Edition Digital is a GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) compliant company. By exporting user data you assume the responsibility for further processing, storage, and protection of user information.
Once you’ve finished setting up your folio, all that’s left to do is grab the folio link from the list and share it with the world, or just specific people, depending on its purpose, of course.
