Distribution Overview - What is the Distribution Service?

The Pugpig Distribution Service predominantly takes content from your Content Management System (whether this is hosted by us or by you) and pushes that content to your apps. You create the content in your CMS but the Distribution Service handles the rest.

It's a fully hosted and managed content distribution service. The Pugpig Distribution Service means you don’t need to look after any consumer facing infrastructure. In the event of an infrastructure failure, your consumer’s access to content is unaffected. It’s Kaldor’s responsibility to ensure the Availability Service Levels detailed in the terms and conditions are met.

Indexed content. The Pugpig Distribution Service allows your content to be indexed by Google for the web reader making your content more discoverable online. Tell us if you want Google to index your content, or if you want it all protected.

We have a Global Content Delivery Network (CDN) using Fastly. This gives you faster content delivery and high availability for your users. Fastly is trusted by clients such as Github, The Guardian, Yammer, Gov.uk and Twitter.

Your content is protected content on the CDN and helps avoid content being accessed by hackers and third parties. Many clients choose not to protect their content due to its difficulty, but with the new Pugpig Distribution Service we take care of this for you.

Dashboard:

We've consolidated the different components revolving around your app to give you basic information such as the latest edition processed, monthly bandwidth allowance usage and App Store ratings.

Google Analytics:

Our analytics overview dashboard gives you a high level overview of your Google Analytics directly from this dashboard. If you provide us with an app Google Analytics key and the information listed here, we will configure the rest for you if you wish.

The 'Scorecard' tab in particular gives you monthly snapshots of your app performance. This section shows you how many users use the app, how many of those them are new and how much time they spend in the app.

Content Sources:

The Pugpig Distribution Service pulls content directly from your Pugpig-enabled Content Management System (CMS). You create the content in the CMS, everything else is handled by the Distribution Service. The Distribution Service will poll each of the CMS’s or content source checking for changes based on date and time.

You can have several content feeds. There are several actions on this page but the most important ones are:

• Update Content: If the distribution service finds an edition/update in a CMS with a later date/time than the last edition/update in the distribution module, it will pull the new edition/update across. This is what you would typically expect select in order to push your latest content to your live app(s).
• Force Update Content: Use with caution as this will force all editions to be entirely refreshed from the source content. Typically something you don't need to press. If unsure contact support first!
• Cancel Job: stops whatever update you are currently processing.
• Complete Early:  if you are processing a large number of editions (but the ones you want have already been processed) this will complete those editions and ignore the rest until you choose to update the content again.

The editions within the content source are also listed on this page. You can see relevant information such as: the issue date, whether it is paid or free, draft/published etc. You can choose to Update/Force Update particular editions only if you do not want to affect other editions.

Promotional Slots:

This is the interface where you add promotional slots to your app. 

More information can be found HERE.

Push Notifications:

You have the ability to send push notifications using Urban Airship or Firebase directly from the Distribution Service, previously you would have had to log into the vendors own dashboard.

If you do need to access the provider's console you can access their website from this page too.

Third Party Subscriptions:

If we integrated with a third party subscription system for your app, you can use our test form to input login details and see the responses you get.

This is particularly useful if you want to check whether users have active or expired subscriptions. In cases where you might offer different types of subscriptions (e.g. access only to weekend editions) you can use the form to see what editions a user gets.