Tizra Blog

Free Webinar: Friday, September 21 12-12:30 pm (ET) How to wrangle ALL your content types into one beautiful online hub… and get off the treadmill for good! It never lets up. First it was publications and conference materials. Then blogs and social media. Then webinars, infographics, podcasts and online courses. You keep cranking them out, but where do they all go? How can you keep your communications investment from evaporating at the speed of Twitter? Tizra lets you bring it all together into a great-looking, searchable, mobile-friendly website that delivers long-lasting value to your audience. In 30 minutes you will learn... How to broadcast and curate mixed media types for maximum impact. How to categorize content for ease of use and maintenance. How a well-tuned search can reveal hidden gems. REGISTER NOW!

They say you should "meet your customers where they are." Well, for Tizra 's 4th annual user conference we decided to take a chance and do the opposite. Instead of going to Chicago or DC, where Tizra customers are concentrated, we bet on hosting in our home town of Providence, RI. It's not that we don't love Chicago and DC, but we really felt we could do something special with the home field advantage. As it turns out, we were right. The Tizra user community is a silo-busting mix of creatives, technologists, content strategists and executives, who share the goal of building, engaging and generating value from audiences with digital content. For this crowd, we didn't want a sterile conference facility. We felt that by giving them a place they could really connect with, we'd help them connect with each other. Providence, with its vibrant tech and design scene, walkable downtown, and non-traditional venues, provided just the funky catalyst we were loo...

Tizra's new Einstein Papers search shows how researchers can pinpoint key passages across large numbers of complex documents. We're thrilled to announce that the new search feature we originally developed for the  Einstein Papers Project  has been named a finalist in the 2018 CODiE awards.  The CODiEs have been around for 30 years, and are the software and information industry's only peer-recognized awards program. It's wonderful to see all the hard work recognized in this way! Just as exciting this powerful new content discovery tool is now available for use on all kinds of documents--from scholarly and professional to scientific and technical--through Tizra's new QuickStart option.  Learn more .

Pre-designed templates are increasingly popular as a quick way to get new Tizra sites launched, or to refresh the design of an existing site.  A key driver in both cases is keeping up with increasingly high user expectations for ease of use and visual appeal, particularly on mobile devices. To address these needs, we’ve released a major upgrade to our Bootstrap-based responsive design template. The new version makes it much easier to customize with your own colors and logo, improves mobile interaction with the latest version of the Bootstrap framework, and adds numerous other visual and usability refinements. Existing Tizra customers can try it out now by selecting the “Bootstrap Responsive Template” in the PRESENTATION area. Or if you’d like to see a quick preview, take a look at this demo site… https://abedemo.tizrapublisher.com

Congrats to the American Payroll Association on their recent launch of XML-based publications on Tizra!  Thanks to this collaboration, APA's authoritative books for payroll professionals are now available in crisp, reflowable HTML, creating a user experience that feels like a truly digital native product, rather than a conversion from print. XML-based publishing also creates a better mobile reading experience, supports more precise search and navigation, and opens the door to better accessibility for users with low vision and other disabilities. Our partners at  Scribe  did a great job supporting APA through the process of producing the XML for loading into Tizra, and we’d definitely recommend them to anyone interested in such a transition. It’s hard to overstate what a big step forward this is for Tizra as a platform and a company. XML has long been planned for in the product's architecture, but now for the first time, we have a working example that demonstrates t...

The American Dental Association has been publishing books, brochures and other materials to help members stay current and manage their practices for more than a century, and now generates about $10 million in sales and licensing revenue from these products. The ADA migrated to Tizra this year after a rigorous RFP process, driven primarily by frustration with their previous digital publication solution, which relied on proprietary digital rights management (DRM) technology. Under the previous digital publication solution, users were required to download special software to view the publications, which caused user complaints, and the DRM solution was unable to handle video and other supplements that went along with the publications, meaning ADA had to rely on cumbersome delivery mechanisms like CD-ROMs and flash drives. Working with Tizra, ADA has not only eliminated these issues, they have gained the flexibility to pursue complex business models like group sales to large practice...

When the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein went live on Tizra a few years ago, it was a huge step forward. Suddenly, anyone anywhere could search and access the output of one of the 20th Century’s great minds…from love letters to breakthrough articles that changed how we think about the nature of time and space. But the project also showed the limits of traditional tools for searching within large, complex publications. These limits sparked a collaboration with Princeton University Press and Einstein Papers Project editors, which this year resulted in a dynamic new search interface, which we’ll be demonstrating in a  Webcast Friday, December 15 at 1pm ET . The interface not only makes it easier for Einstein researchers to home in on relevant content on both mobile devices and desktops, it points the way toward faster, better searching within a wide range of publication types, from reference books to periodicals, technical documentation and standards to textbooks. Click T...

Learn How Princeton University Press + Tizra Collaborated to Create a Revolutionary, Researcher-Friendly UI For Complex Online Publications!  Join us Friday, December 15 at 1pm ET for a quick, behind-the-scenes webinar tour of Tizra's new search technology developed for the Digital Einstein Papers and learn...  How hybrid search technology helps users find relevant content faster.  Deep search tools that uncover the value within large, complex publications.  How to manage the metadata within your publications.  This webcast focuses on  THE DIGITAL EINSTEIN PAPERS – a collaborative project powered by the Tizra platform that enables readers to experience the writings of Albert Einstein in unprecedented ways.  A newly developed search tool improves discoverability by allowing users to perform hybrid searches of full-text and structured metadata across volumes containing thousands of articles, letters, lectures and other writings, with eas...

Q+A with SEO expert Pam Long of True Digital We caught up with Pam Long and asked her to answer just a few SEO-related questions in advance of her upcoming webinar - Strategic SEO: Increasing Your Organization's Visibility . In this session, Pam will focus on the SEO challenges faced by association and mission-based publishers and organizations, and the Q+A below is just a small taste of the information she has to share, and she'll be taking your questions throughout the webinar! To register for this free webinar which takes place on Thursday, October 12 from 1pm ET - 2pm ET, click here . 1. What's the biggest SEO challenge facing association/mission-based publishers? You need to face the reality that there are organizations out there that have been generating content with the intent of being found far longer than many associations have had digital content available at all. You’re competing against the likes of Google Books and Amazon, who are very, very good ...

Join us on Thursday, October 12 for a free webinar that will help you control access to your valuable digital content, while optimizing discoverability. Your content is a valuable resource, not just for your existing customers, clients or members, but for reaching new audiences and increasing visibility for your organization. The key? Strategic SEO! In this session, Pam Long of True Digital will share insights on: Looking at content in a new light Gatekeeping in the age of Google Optimizing content for visibility Date: Thursday, Oct 12, 2017  Time: 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EDT Price: FREE To Register:  Click Here Pam Long, Senior Digital Strategist, True Digital Depending on who you ask, Pam is either a technical person who speaks marketing or a marketing person who speaks ‘geek’. It’s a combination of strengths that has served her well in her 15-year career in ad agencies and interactive shops, where she has worked with clients in the building ...

Did You Know? The average American spends nearly 3 hours a day on their smartphone? And that just ten apps control 98% of that time. Amazon now controls over 50% of all books sales and 85%+ of ebook sales. The resurgence of print is "wishful thinking rather than an understanding of what’s actually happening". Publishers should raise prices: there 's far more flexibility than publishers think. The merger of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) with the W3C will enable DRM-protected books in browsers. These are just a few of the many insights you'll learn from digital publishing expert Thad McIlroy in Tizra's free webinar  this Thursday . Thad has been on the cutting edge of technology trends for decades, authored or co-authored more than a dozen books, served as Program Director for the Seybold Seminars and written hundreds of articles and posts on subjects ranging from XML to metadata to marketing and publishing automation. The 5 Top...

This September Tizra is launching a new educational program for its association publishing clients and others interested in digital publication best practices. The free series of three monthly webinars led by publishing expert Thad McIlroy is directed to help you become a more effective publishing manager by examining best practices and new trends in online publishing. The first webinar in the series is " The 5 Top Issues Facing Association Publishing Management and How ToTackle Them! " and it takes place on Thursday, September 28 from 1pm - 2pm ET. Registration is free. Description: It’s never been a better time to be an association publisher. The tools, technologies and formats bring information and knowledge to members in record time and in multiple formats. There are challenges, but, as the saying goes, challenge brings opportunity. When Tizra talks with association publishing managers these are the top issues we hear about: 1. Enabling discovery via se...

At the  Bookseller's FutureBook blog , Molly Flatt does an excellent job of summing up the incredible advantages and opportunities that browser-based books offer over books as apps and ebooks. The post is definitely worth a read. In it, Flatt argues that books as apps lead to an unpleasant experience for readers, due to both the barrier of entry of downloading and the inconvenience and disruption of leaving the "walled garden" each time one clicks on a link. Tizra's publisher clients would most likely agree with Flatt that apps are equally if not more painful for publishers: "From a publisher’s point of view, producing and distributing content via an app is a total pain - from creating complex InDesign files to working with frustrating external shopfronts such as the Apple Store. And it’s useless for SEO."  Noting the advances by leaps and bounds that web design has made in recent years, Flatt states plainly that the web now "better cater...