Product update: elevate your content strategy with FORGE

A strong and effective content strategy is – now more than ever – a ‘must-have’ for sports entities around world. The combination of creative skills and the right publishing tools ensure a seamless flow of information that can meet your audience’s thirst for content, both during live events and during periods of white space.

We built the reference publishing platform, FORGE, to perfectly respond to the needs of the sports ecosystem at various levels and help sports organizations make the most of each piece of content added to their calendar in a timely, smart, and relevant manner.

This new update, the second this year, adds layers of sophistication to the platform’s architecture while simplifying the operational workflows for non-technical staff. From improved editorial processes to enhancements of the translation functionalities, we rounded up the main new features for you.

Read on and learn how FORGE can help your organization to stand out from the crowd and win the ‘battle of content’.

#1. ‘Visual pickers’ make producers’ lives easier and faster

This product update introduces ‘visual pickers’ to the FORGE Presentation Manager. It’s a new addition that links the FORGE Presentation Manager to its Content Manager. A frictionless UI allows content makers to select the content they’d like to show straight from the backend via a simple-to-use visual interface.

They can select lists of content to prompt the end-user via an intuitive search functionality and assign it to specific modules of the page, all using the same filters and options available on the FORGE Content Manager.

Content producers can also define the taxonomy to be used to create lists of latest published content. FORGE tags (which are the same available in FORGE Content Manager) can be used to retrieve specific pieces and curate editorial selections of content. Think of a page used to display content relevant to a specific sporting event, like the World Cup, for instance. Editors can now easily filter all the content tagged ‘World Cup’ and cherry-pick the best pieces to add to a specific module.

We know how important ease of use and being as timely as possible are when making content available to audiences. The new release of FORGE enables producers and developers to reuse modules that are already part of different website sections, all in an easy and straightforward way. Think of an editorially curated list of pieces to be repurposed for a different page, for example. An improved toolbar on the graphical interface is the point of contact for editors – from here, they can pick modules (text, social media embedded content, galleries, etc.) from existing pages and copy/paste them to other destinations.

#2. Improved findability and SEO recommendations

As a publishing platform, FORGE is the right tool to manage the end-to-end content workflow – from idea inception to the distribution of the final piece. This latest release introduces Smart Editor, a powerful tool that helps to create compelling content by suggesting hints about how to improve crucial aspects for findability on search engines.

A new tab, available on the story detail, shows recommendations based on the content edited on the page. The system takes advantage of the SEO best practices, such as length of the title and headline, but also improves the customization of metadata for social previews and other aspects. Editorial teams now have a deeper understanding of what needs to be improved at a glance.

#3. Improved translation workflows

The new version of FORGE natively integrates the TRANSLATION TOOL, the standalone feature that enables management and outsourcing of translations to external agencies. Editors can create translated versions of the same piece of content by accessing the ‘Translations’ panel in the backend or by relying on external agencies to do so. Content producers and editors can see an overview of the status of their request, in turn, able to better monitor the work in progress.

Also, outsourced translations can be retrieved by the back office, enabling editors to own their creation directly in FORGE.

#4. Additional improvements

FORGE’s latest release also brings additional improvements from a development perspective. These changes include consolidating the maintenance mode of the product, ensuring that no actions within the infrastructure will allow any components to write any data during the process. Also, administrators now need to provide confirmations before running operations that may considerably impact the product in order to avoid any accidental activation of maintenance operations.

The integration with content delivery provider, Akamai, is also complete, which supports the Fast Purge API. Producers and developers can purge website URLs directly from the FORGE Build Manager by simply providing the URL. This will allow end-users to visualize the update version of the page within seconds.

Want to know more about FORGE and its features? Contact us, and join the conversation on Twitter or LinkedIn.