Story Builder is a web application that allows users to build mixed-media stories that can then be shared with the world. You can try Story Builder out for yourself on our test site.
The idea for this application came after viewing this New York Times story. We wanted to be able to create stories like this without having to start from scratch for every story. We wanted to be able to quickly put interactive, mixed-media stories together without having to require a lot of designer or developer time. That is the goal of this application.
Story Builder is similar to a blog editor like wordpress or tumblr, but at this point is still a little rustic. In essence, Story Builder allows you to add content, images, and/or videos into sections in a story that can be ordered however you want.
Right now there are two types of sections that can be created: Content and Full-Screen Media.
- Content: Simple text with a rich-text editor like Word of Google Docs.
- Full-Screen Media: This can be a combination of images and/or videos that will appear on the screen in a vertical slider format, one after the other. The media is stretched to fill the users entire window and a small caption text can appear ontop of the media.
Aside from entering the story into the sections, you also have the ability to:
- re-arrange the sections in the story
- clone a story as the beginning of a new story
- export a story so you can host it on any website
- add share links to the published stories
- create a more wizard like process for entering the content
- add ability to drop and drop section for re-arranging
- allow users to follow other users and receive notifications when new stories are published
- add categories to stories
- add search/filter/sort for published stories
- each user has a page to show their published works
- users can create organizations and have their own page to show their published works
- add horizontal image gallery
- add ability to include online videos (embed youtube, vimeo, etc)
- add ability to create one story in multiple languages
- ability to log in with something other than facebook
- be able to embed published stories
- store the media on Amazon S3 cloud
- have multiple themes to select from
- be able to edit colors, fonts, etc
- select from different transitions between sections
- add ability to include interactive maps
- add ability to include charts
- add ability to include data tables
- create a more appealing landing page
- applied user authorization
- ability to clone a story so it can be used as the start of a new story
- ability to export a story so it can be hosted on any website
- can assign users to edit your story
TBD