This guest post comes from Daniel Jacobson, Director of Application Development for NPR. Daniel leads NPR’s content management solutions, is the creator of the NPR API and is a frequent contributor to the Inside NPR.org blog.
The digital media world is in the process of dramatic change. For years, the Internet has been about web sites and browser-based experiences, and the systems that drove those sites generally matched those experiences. But now, the portable world is upon us and it is formidable. With the growing need and ability to be portable comes tremendous opportunity for content providers. But it also requires substantial changes to their thinking and their systems. It requires distribution platforms, API’s and other ways to get the content to where it needs to be. But having an API is not enough. In order for content providers to take full advantage of these new platforms, they will need to, first and foremost, embrace one simple philosophy: COPE (Create Once, Publish Everywhere).
The diagram above represents NPR’s content management pipeline and how it embraces these COPE principles. The basic principle is to have content producers and ingestion scripts funnel content into a single system (or series of closely tied systems). Once there, the distribution of all content can be handled identically, regardless of content type or its destinations (Click here for an enlargement of this diagram).
Through COPE, our systems have enabled incredible growth despite having a small staff and limited resources. Although the CMS is home-grown, COPE itself is agnostic as to the build or buy/integrate decision. Any system that adheres to these principles, whether it is a COTS product, home-grown, or anything in between, will see the benefits of content modularity and portability.
In this series of posts, I will be discussing these philosophies, as well as how NPR applied them and how we were able to do so much with so little (including our NPR API).
COPE is really a combination of several other closely related sub-philosophies, including:
These philosophies have a direct impact on API and distribution strategies as well. Creating an API on top of a COPE-less system will distribute the content, but there is still no guarantee that the content can actually live on any platform. COPE is dependent on these other philosophies to ensure that the content is truly portable.
COPE is the key difference between content management systems and web publishing tools, although these terms are often used interchangeably in our industry. The goal of any CMS should be to gather enough information to present the content on any platform, in any presentation, at any time. WPT’s capture content with the primary purpose of publishing web pages. As a result, they tend to manage the content in ways focused on delivering it to the web. Plug-ins are often available for distribution to other platforms, but applying tools on top of the native functions to manipulate the content for alternate destinations makes the system inherently unscalable. That is, for each new platform, WPT’s will need a new plug-in to tailor the presentation markup to that platform. CMS’s, on the other hand, store the content cleanly, enabling the presentation layers to worry about how to display the content not on how to transform the markup embedded within it.
True CMS’s are really just content capturing tools that are completely agnostic as to how or where the content will be viewed, whether it is a web page, mobile app, TV or radio display, etc. Additionally, platforms that don’t yet exist are able to be served by a true CMS in ways that WPT’s may not be able to (even with plug-ins). By applying COPE, NPR was able to quickly jump on advancements throughout the years like RSS, Podcasts, API’s and mobile platforms with relative ease. As an example, the public API took only about two developer months to create, and most of that time was spent on user and rights management.
This presentation shows the same NPR story displayed in a wide range of platforms. The content, through the principles of COPE, is pushed out to all of these destinations through the NPR API. Each destination, meanwhile, uses the appropriate content for that presentation layer.
Separating content from display is one of the key concepts supporting COPE. In the most basic form, this means that the presentation layer needs to be a series of templates that know how to pull in the content from the repository. This enables the presentation layer to care about how the content will look while the content can be display-agnostic, allowing it to appear on a web site, a mobile device, etc.
But to truly separate content from display, the content repository needs to also avoid storing “dirty” content. Dirty content is content that contains any presentation layer information embedded in it, including HTML, XML, character encodings, microformats, and any other markup or rich formatting information. This separation is achieved by the two other principles, content modularity and content portability
At a high level, many systems and organizations are applying the basics of COPE. They are able to distribute content to different platforms, separate content from display, etc. But to take some of these systems to the next level, enabling them to scale and adapt to our changing landscape, they will need to focus more on content modularity and portability. In my next post, I will go into more detail about NPR’s approach to content modularity and why our approach is more than just data normalization.
US National Public Radio
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78 Responses to “COPE: Create Once, Publish Everywhere”
at 9:24 am
Whoa! Awesome.
Any plans to release this as open source?
at 2:00 pm
@Todd: We have talked a lot about opening up our CMS to the community and it is in our long-term strategy. That said, converting our system into a truly portable product is a big undertaking. Despite the magnitude of the project, it is still something that we very much want to do and will be making strides towards over time.
at 9:19 pm
[...] COPE: Create Once, Publish Everywhere – Post a comment | Trackback URI [...]
at 11:08 am
[...] COPE: Create Once, Publish Everywhere, by Daniel Jacobson of NPR. See his related post. [...]
at 10:23 pm
[...] or COPE? A nice article and diagram on NPR’s Content Management System built on the principles of Create Once, Publish [...]
at 11:54 pm
[...] interesting post in the Programmable Web by Daniel Jacobson on Create Once, Publish Everywhere (COPE). Two big standouts for me are how it foregrounds portability (e.g., to mobile platforms) and [...]
at 1:30 am
[...] Jacobson wrote more about the NPR API at the Programmable [...]
at 12:25 pm
[...] discussed in my previous post, COPE (Create Once, Publish Everywhere) is a fundamental philosophy that drives NPR’s digital [...]
at 11:04 am
[...] Public Radio is well down this path. Their Create Once, Publish Anywhere system is a joy to use. Try their iphone/itouch [...]
at 1:02 pm
[...] για δημιουργία-μια φορά-δημοσιοποίηση-παντού, βλ. COPE [...]
at 9:14 am
[...] and execution in which we produce content independently of products, as NPR is doing in its Create Once, Publish Everywhere [...]
at 5:04 pm
[...] COPE: Create Once, Publish Everywhere This is so intense and impressive. (tags: npr syndication api mobile blogging) [...]
at 3:38 am
[...] Shared COPE: Create Once, Publish Everywhere. [...]
at 2:17 pm
[...] previous posts focused on COPE (Create Once, Publish Everywhere) and content modularity, the fundamentals for ensuring that content can be managed and distributed [...]
at 4:47 pm
[...] these concepts nicely in his recently coined acronym COPE, standing for their philosophy of “Create Once, Publish Everywhere,” and illustrates it by way of a diagram of their content management [...]
at 6:09 pm
[...] COPE: Create Once, Publish Everywhere Content Modularity: More Than Just Data Normalization Content Portability: Building an API is Not Enough [...]
at 5:17 pm
[...] COPECreate Once, Publish Everywhere [...]
at 6:28 am
[...] other people. They regularly contribute to the web as a whole – witness this article about their content management system, for example – or their discussion of their site redesign process. “Agree on [...]
at 9:20 am
[...] it’s too late to COPE I was just reading an interesting couple of posts by Daniel Jacobson on the content storage strategy they’ve adopted for the U.S National [...]
at 2:35 pm
[...] Production System” (CPS) and “Presentation Management System” (PMS), and in their COPE strategy NPR uses the terms “Content Management System” (CMS) and “Web Publishing [...]
at 8:12 am
[...] I can choose to just publish my thoughts 140 characters at a time. I live in a world where I can COPE (create once, publish [...]
at 11:29 pm
[...] This post first appeared on ProgrammableWeb.com. [...]
at 8:50 am
[...] back to COPE. NPR (National Public Radio) created a nice information and infrastructure abstraction of how they Cr… ESC certainly has a few more layers to piece together, but hopefully there will be great strides in [...]
at 12:02 pm
[...] Narrative is a crucial part of good journalism, but it’s not enough, not anymore. The news industry needs to start thinking about journalism in terms of information and the myriad ways in which we can present that information to our readers. Daniel Jacobson, director of application development over at NPR, sums it up as follows: build a content management system, not a web publishing tool. The goal of any CMS should be to gather enough information to present the content on any platform, in any presentation, at any time. WPT’s capture content with the primary purpose of publishing web pages. (Daniel Jacobson) [...]
at 2:03 pm
We see this content strategy problem all the time in managing our Web content for a Fortune 50 site. We confuse CMS with WTP and use our CMS to generate our very complex site navigation as well as content. The complex navigation files (that also include dynamic functionality by country and language) get consumed by another layer that controls the content display. I’ll do some digging and see if COPE can help in this area. We certainly need another layer of abstraction somewhere!
at 12:36 am
[...] 6. COPE – Create Once, Publish Everywhere. Another best practice in sharing content is to get the most out of everything you create. If you write a blog post, get interviewed on a podcast or create any other content, share it on appropriate social media sites. Similarly, if you work for an organization that produces content (such as white papers, cool ads or events), share that information with your networks to support the brand of your company. Learn more about the COPE concept here. [...]
at 3:24 pm
I agree that the name of the game is massive content massively distributed. The COPE concept seems interesting. Would love to find out how easily this is implemented and how practical this is for the layman.
at 4:18 pm
[...] blog.programmableweb.com/2009/10/13/cope-сrеаtе-once-publ… [...]
at 1:06 pm
[...] don’t really manage anything. They publish [...]
at 6:30 pm
[...] NPR’s Director of Application Development, has an excellent article on the philosophy of de-coupling the content management tier from the delivery tier. He calls this strategy COPE: Create Once Publish Everywhere. In particular, the diagram is [...]
at 3:04 pm
[...] The solution calls for product teams to adopt a mantra of Create Once Publish Everywhere (COPE as originally coined by Daniel Jacobson). To accommodate mobile, software architects for modern companies have a responsibility to ensure [...]
at 9:32 am
[...] are a quick path to having flexible content that embraces the idea of COPE that has been discussed here before. Building API’s allows content producers to be much more [...]
at 11:22 am
The NPR implementation seems to be based on the COPE-Enabled Media Publishing and Distribution System developed and published in 2000 written Douglas Heise and Johnathan Hornstein of iLX, Inc’s Digital Media and Broadband Solutions Group and sponsored by Cisco, Digital Island, EMC2 Oracle, and Sun.
at 10:42 am
[...] blog.programmableweb.com/2009/10/13/cope-create-once-publ… [...]
at 10:31 am
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at 11:38 am
[...] has done a fantastic thing by creating their COPE (Create Once, Publish Everywhere) system which allows other people to build on top of them and access their content. This means that there [...]
at 10:20 pm
[...] build systems out of media content. For NPR, this means following Daniel Jacobson’s idea of COPE (Create Once Publish Everywhere). This strategy was responsible for our team investing heavily in [...]
at 5:56 am
[...] COPE: Create Once, Publish Everywhere Daniel Jacobson of NPR (now at Netflix) describes NPR’s approach to content management and API development, which aims to separate content from display to ensure content modularity and portability. NPR credits its API with increasing page views by 80%, largely because they’re able to get their content onto a variety of mobile devices without custom programming. See also: Notes from NPR’s 2011 SxSW Session, by Scot Hacker [...]
at 10:04 pm
[...] COPE: Create Once, Publish Everywhere — NPR’s Director of Application Development, Daniel Jacobson, walks by how NPR separates calm from arrangement and uses a singular information source for all a apps, sites, APIs and feeds. A good instance of what Frost talks about per calm as a liquid thing. [...]
at 2:47 am
[...] COPE: Create Once, Publish Everywhere — NPR’s Director of Application Development, Daniel Jacobson, walks through how NPR separates content from display and uses a single data source for all its apps, sites, APIs and feeds. A great example of what Frost talks about regarding content as a fluid thing. [...]
at 1:18 pm
[...] COPE: Create Once, Publish Everywhere Share this:EmailRedditDiggStumbleUpon ← The Happiness Project Trendsmap – Real-time local Twitter trends → [...]
at 2:52 am
[...] blog.programmableweb.com/2009/10/13/cope-create-once-publ… Tweet Share Unknown source [...]
at 6:41 am
[...] COPE: Create Once, Publish Everywhere [...]
at 10:59 am
[...] the web has always been responsive, but was temporarily sidetracked by the fad of fixed-width sites.COPE: Create Once, Publish Everywhere — NPR’s Director of Application Development, Daniel Jacobson, walks through how NPR separates [...]
at 3:43 pm
[...] COPE: Create Once, Publish Everywhere — NPR’s Director of Application Development, Daniel Jacobson, walks through how NPR separates content from display and uses a single data source for all its apps, sites, APIs and feeds. A great example of what Frost talks about regarding content as a fluid thing. [...]
at 2:15 am
[...] to future-ready its CMS is National Public Radio. Back in 2009, NPR launched a methodology it calls Create Once, Publish Everywhere. With COPE, each story is entered into a set of discrete fields within the CMS, then made available [...]
at 6:56 pm
[...] have found one point where their viewpoint and mine match perfectly. I’ve been reading about their Content Management System which uses the COPE philosophy – Create Once, Publish [...]
at 8:15 am
[...] COPE: Create Once, Publish Everywhere — NPR’s Director of Application Development, Daniel Jacobson, walks through how NPR separates content from display and uses a single data source for all its apps, sites, APIs and feeds. A great example of what Frost talks about regarding content as a fluid thing. [...]
at 12:45 pm
[...] take me so much time,” you whine. Not so fast. NPR’s Daniel Jacobson sums it all up in COPE (create once, publish everywhere). Programs like Hootsuite can combine all your social media in one [...]
at 3:17 pm
[...] discusses how they are able to create content once and publish it everywhere (COPE – Create Once, Publish Everywhere). This is a powerful concept for web [...]
at 10:48 pm
There are a number of platform agnostic CMS around already. Content Control is a good example. http://www.contentcontrol.com
at 7:46 am
[...] more about COPE in NPR Director of Application Development Daniel Jacobson’s excellent post on programmableweb.com and see examples of COPE in action on [...]
at 8:49 am
[...] COPE (Create Once Publish Everywhere) от NPR стала олицетворением систем управления контентом следующего поколения, потому что она разделяет контент от представления, в результате чего он может чувствовать себя как дома в самых разных окружениях – хоть в вебе, хоть в нативном приложении, на любом экране. Хотя авторы по-прежнему могут писать разметку, система сохраняет контент в Не привязанном к определенному языку формате. Избегая сохранения «грязного» контента (с разметкой и оформительными стилями) и разделяя все на модули, система делает контент более переносимым и дает ему возможность быть представленным по-разному в зависимости от среды. NPR не нужно будет пересматривать всю свою систему даже когда появится огромное количество новых устройств. [...]
at 11:51 am
[...] powerful aspect of markdown is the role it can play in a bigger content workflow—the COPE (Create Once, Publish Everywhere) paradigm described by NPR’s Daniel [...]
at 6:06 am
[...] Event Apart in Seattle, discussed NPR’s approach to content publication, called COPE: “Create Once, Publish Everywhere.” This mindset has allowed NPR to have one of the most successful (and efficient) publication [...]
at 4:32 pm
[...] COPE: Create Once, Publish Everywhere [...]
at 8:16 am
[...] systems where content is created once and published to multiple platforms. I recommend studying the Create Once Publish Everywhere approach of NPR and the self-developed content management system (using Google docs and WordPress) [...]
at 11:12 am
[...] as “create once, publish everywhere”, a mantra that they turned into their system name: COPE. The intent of the system is to streamline the workflow to make sure that each piece of content is [...]
at 4:07 pm
[...] per il futuro è la National Public Radio. Nel 2009, la NPR lanciò una metodologia chiamata COPE: Create Once, Publish Everywhere [Crea una volta, Pubblica ovunque, ndt], usando la quale ogni storia viene inserita in un insieme [...]
at 11:58 am
[...] to future-ready its CMS is National Public Radio. Back in 2009, NPR launched a methodology it callsCreate Once, Publish Everywhere. With COPE, each story is entered into a set of discrete fields within the CMS, then made available [...]
at 5:31 am
[...] — is using a method they call COPE (Create once, publish everywhere), that allows content to be more flexible in how it’s combined and presented. It’s a [...]
at 5:28 pm
[...] We’re rethinking the CMS and taking more adaptable approaches. We’re even getting serious about flexible content that can be viewed, saved, and shared by people with an ever-widening array of devices and [...]
at 4:49 am
[...] ומכשירים שונים. אותו הבדל, הוא העומד מאחורי הקונספט של COPE – ראשי תיבות של "Create Once – Publish Everywhere" (עוד [...]
at 8:48 am
[...] Daniel Jacobsen described NPR’s Create Once Publish Everywhere (COPE) system, he talked about how most content management systems conflate the task of content management with [...]
at 12:03 pm
[...] COPE: Create Once Publish Everywhere [...]
at 11:58 am
[...] This is NPR’s approach to getting their content out onto a variety of different devices and platforms. They call it COPE – Create Once and Publish Everywhere. So what this means is that they have set up an API that allows them to take content from a variety of different providers. They can take content from content providers; text from a variety of different sources, from all their member stations. They can take music content from a variety of different providers. And what they do is they run that through an API, which allows them to have access to clean, well-structured content that then can be queried by these individual platforms. So what it lets them do is they can get their content out onto a wide variety of different devices and platforms very easily. [...]
at 8:12 am
[...] an experience that’s offered across a multitude of channels and devices. Brian used NPR’s COPE strategy as an [...]
at 3:44 pm
[...] that I know we are, we will include LinkedIn among the channels that we must COPE with – Create Once, Publish Everywhere – so that our lawyers and our brands both can benefit from the efforts involved in creating [...]
at 5:00 pm
[...] you can capitalise on? Make sure you understand the channels your audience prefer, and use the COPE principle: create once, publish [...]
at 12:56 am
[...] werden (Open Content) lässt sich schwer sagen. Manche sicherlich. Der Ansatz von npr “Create Once, Publish Everywhere” ist gut und richtig. Ich denke, dass nur die, die sich der Dynamik des Webs öffnen und [...]
at 7:15 am
[...] content strategy of Create Once Publish Everywhere (COPE) has become a model of efficiency for many in the mobile, content, design, and SEO [...]
at 10:40 am
[...] subject material technique of Produce Once Upload Almost just about all over the place (Handle) has developed into model of proficiency for many people in the cell, subject matter, style, as [...]
at 6:49 pm
[...] for a web that works for all devices. Experiences should be portable across channels. COPE – a design philosophy for responsive content management systems. Create Once, Publish [...]
at 12:56 am
[...] content strategy of Create Once Publish Everywhere (COPE) has become a model of efficiency for many in the mobile, content, design, and SEO [...]
at 5:12 am
[...] the evolving field of Content Strategy has produced a concepts, tools, and methodologies which have begun to shift people’s opinions on the importance of [...]
at 8:00 am
[...] mentions the Create Once, Publish Everywhere philosophy at NPR. For more on that: COPE: Create Once, Publish Everywhere article on programmable web. And OH LOOK OVER THERE: http://www.npr.org/api/index.php Oh, man. [...]
at 1:48 pm
[...] COPE: Create Once, Publish Everywhere. Share this:TwitterFacebookLike this:LikeBe the first to like this. Tags COPE, NPR Categories Content Strategy, Structured Content [...]
at 1:35 am
[...] http://blog.programmableweb.com/2009/10/13/cope-create-once-publish-everywhere/ [...]