Hey there fellow WordPress freaks! The information contained in this post isn’t necessarily about WordPress itself, or themes, or even plugins; but I had to share this with my readers because I’ve found it to be very useful and to have a very supportive community around it.
As referenced above, today’s post is about ResourceSpace, an Open Source Digital Asset Management application. Gulp! That’s a mouthful eh? Let’s cut to the chase…
Note: Make sure to read through to the end to read my personal experience with ResourceSpace and further support links.
What is it?
ResourceSpace is a web-based, open source digital asset management system which has been designed by Montala to give your content creators easy and fast access to print and web ready assets.
In other words, you can manage your images, pdfs, videos, documents, etc. in one location and it is searchable using the metadata contained in these files. It will also automatically create previews and different resolutions and make them available for download to whoever you choose.
What are the Benefits and Features?
Benefits
- Your users serve themselves so your internal workload is reduced.
- Resources are found easily and quickly.
- You can respond faster to external resource requests
- It’s much easier to send your resources to those that need them without using up your own bandwidth: suppliers receive links via e-mail so they can download the resources themselves directly from the system.
- Higher quality resources are promoted so use of your best resources is encouraged.
- A centralised and well organised repository encourages the re-use of purchased resources.
- Only a web browser is needed – no cumbersome client software installations.
- Collaboration is encouraged through the use of shared resource collections and searches.
- Discover and respond to trends by using the detailed reporting and statistics functionality.
Features
- Intuitive interface – a visually rich, user focused interface to support you in accessing and organising your resources
- Pure web interface – manage and share your resources through your browser, no application install required.
- Standards based – works with current browsers on all the popular platforms.
- Simple and advanced search – the main search panel is available on every page allowing quick and intuitive access to the resources while the comprehensive advanced search lets you to focus your search and you are looking for. Use the ‘search for similar’ options to find other resources based on those you have selected.
- Intelligent search ordering – resources are scored against each keyword using user search activity
- Resources – detailed resource information, thumbnails and visual previews help you find the best and most relevant resources.
- Organisation, collaboration and distribution – tools to organise your resources, share with colleagues on projects and distribute to others; no longer any need to e-mail large files.
- Direct access to resource files – resources can be downloaded to your computer in a variety of sizes so your users can choose if they require high quality print files or lower quality screen / web resolution files.
- Themes – pre-selected groups of the best resources.
- Permissions – set resource access level by user group.
- Research services – allows specific requests to be made to a central resources team.
- Archiving – resources can be archived and are then not visible in the main search.
- User contributions – allow your users to submit resources directly, which can then be processed by a central team before being made available to other users. Ideal for remote-working photographers.
- Multilingual – the application is multilingual capable with most major European languages supported.
- Batch file editing means it’s easy to work with the metadata for large groups of resources.
- Batch file upload using SWFupload – upload large resource sets using nothing but your browser.
- Automatic thumbnail creation for hundreds of image and document types including JPEG, GIF, PNG, PDF, TIFF Photoshop PSD, InDesign, OpenOffice using ImageMagick. Support for most digital camera raw formats using dcraw (view full list)
- Automatic video thumbnails and Flash video previews for most video file types using FFmpeg.
- Page by page browsing of PDF files using Ghostscript.
- Automatic EXIF/IPTC/XMP header import and export using ExifTool.
- Minimal hosting requirements – uses PHP/MySQL technology which is supported by all major hosting providers.
- Plugin support – third party developers can create plugins to extend functionality.
- Open source – released under a BSD style license and is therefore completely free of charge, and you are free to develop the product further without any restrictions.
Are you starting to see why this could be useful?
I decided to post here about ResourceSpace for several reasons:
- This software solved a need for a client of mine, and saved them thousands of dollars
- The developers and community around this software have proved to be very helpful and patient with someone new to this type of functionality, and were willing to help me out one on one in order for me to move forward.
- I believe this software will become the default open source DAM (digital asset management) because of the two reasons above, and as more people learn of it, hopefully more and more developers will contribute.
- Lastly, because the ResourceSpace group asked for satisfied users to help spread the word;)
No Open Source software is without it downfalls. Can you give us the inside scoop on your experience?
Sure. First of all, it’s different from what you may be used to with WP; in functionality, server requirements, configuration, and theming. I had a hard time breaking out of the WP way of thinking when working with this software. It took a few days and several posts to the group to understand both what some things were for, and how to configure them. It was only after working with it for many hours that I started to realize the full potential, and I’m pretty sure I have much more to discover.
There are two themes available with the initial download, and again, when I say themes, you’ll have to break out of the WP thinking. I found the themes to be somewhat difficult for me to create, as I am not a Photoshop expert and much of the changes involved editing the existing images used. I would prefer to be able to edit and create a theme using pure CSS, and maybe that’s possible, but not in the time frame my client had in mind. Having said that, the two themes provided proved to be configurable enough for me to use for the purpose I needed.
If you would like to learn more about ResourceSpace, you can visit the main site here, or the online documentation wiki here, or the Google group here. Make sure to comment here if you’re already using ResourceSpace, if you’re new to it, or with any questions you may have.
