Publishing systems are a dime-a-dozen these days as new ones seem to crop up every single day. Honestly, it can be completely exhausting as I’m generally fatigued to see what I consider a remix of a remix of a remix.
In other words, it seems that everything is a remix and very little comes out to be fundamentally new. Sure, there’s a crowd and market for all of these remixes but I wonder what good they ultimately do to the overall publishing landscape as we see it plainly.
Certainly a few of these remixes of remixes push the ball forward in terms of innovation, a tad, but when was the last time you really saw something that held your attention more than just minutes to walk through yet another 90-second marketing video?
Exactly.
So when I saw Readymag, a “elegant, simple, and powerful publishing platform” I was not exactly enthused to explore another one but the screenshots of what they were proposing drew me in.
Thankfully, one of our editors here at WP Daily had BETA access and let me borrow it for a test-drive. I’ll spare you much of my overall commentary and let you visually take a look at what Readymag has to offer as much of this is very self-explanatory.
See for yourself:
Blocked! Luckily Jared had access.
The landing page. You can see that it’s graphically-intense and centric. Options for admin and creation on the bottom.
I jumped into the first “mag” to see what I could see.
Multiple viewing options available.
Full screen also available:
And yes, of course, you can “heart” it and share it:
And then I went and explored a few more.
Then I tried to going to settings. Slick.
Now it was time to try out the publishing environment.
What to do, what to do…
Adding content was easy, although not intuitive.
Options for layout were available.
Ready to go I suppose!
Formatting options within the post:
And even colors and backgrounds.
Hey, even a few filters.
Let’s see what it looks like?
Add shapes, video, and more!
And there she is:
And that’s most of the features as available today.
Ultimately this platform is intense and very hands-on in terms of requirements to make it look nice. In fact, it’s too complicated for someone like me who just wants to publish. I know it’s made for someone who wants to make a “real” digital magazine but I think it’s too complex and not as intuitive as it needs to be to reach critical usage and mass.
But I do like a few features that make it quite nice on the eyes. Perhaps that’s what it is, eye candy, although I won’t be returning for a second look.
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