Yooba: A Web CMS for Flash Content

By Barb Mosher (@barbmosher) May 28, 2009

4 comments

You see a lot of Flash content on websites today. Sometimes the entire website is done in Flash, sometimes it's just a portion of it, or maybe just a microsite. Most people in the Flash game have either an experienced Flash developer or a design agency developing that content for you.

But if Yooba's claims are true, one can now do much of this Flash content development oneself — without knowing the ins and outs of Flash development. You just need Yooba, a SaaS-based Flash Web Content Management System.

Intrigued but skeptical, we spoke with Sven Miller, Sales Manager for Yooba, to get the scoop on this new solution.

Yooba, the Company

Yooba, based in Norrköping, Sweden, originally started out as an agency that designed a lot of Flash content for customers. Like most agencies, they were often manually repeating operations and content management functions, in what they considered a non-efficient manner. Realizing this, they decided to do something about it.

A 20 person company, Yooba released Yooba Studio in beta in May of last year. That version only supported campaign sites and had no Web CMS integration.

Four years in the making, the Yooba, Flash-based web content management system is just about set for public release, and we have to say…it's a pretty cool solution to use.

Yooba, the Studio

Let's start by making it clear that Yooba is not a replacement for your more traditional web content management system. Instead, Miller says it is designed to complement it.

Yooba is a hosted solution that will let you easily build Flash content. You don't need to be an expert Flash developer to use it, but you do need to have some creative talent and design knowledge.

Yooba Studio — Dashboard

Creating a Project

The interface is a cross between Powerpoint and Adobe CS. There's no programming involved, just a lot of point and click, drag and drop and settings. You start by creating master scenes — similar to Powerpoint templates — for the background and foreground.

Yooba Studio - New Project

You can do just about anything in Yooba Studio. Create any number of scenes, add your own images or choose from a variety supplied by Yooba, create text, transitions, animation, insert sounds and videos and a whole lot more. You can even customize the loading scene.

In addition, you may want some functionality like Forms. This is easily done by selecting one of several form templates or building your own. Your form can have lists, drop downs, combo boxes, textboxes, checkboxes, radio buttons and textareas.

Yooba Studio — Forms Generation

Add-On Components

There are a few add-ons for Yooba including a Quiz, Form Validation and Touch Screen Mode. There's also an Email Response Add-On that lets you send a user a custom rich text email or text message when they submit a form.

Yooba Studio — Custom Email Response Editor

Managing and Publishing Projects

This is a hosted solution, not just for the creation of the Flash content, but also for the delivery of the Flash content. What you do is purchase slots, which are live areas that your projects exist in when they are ready to be published.

Yooba Studio — Slots

You can have as many projects created as you like, but you must have a slot for each published project. Actually, you have several projects in a single slot, with only one being live at a time. You can schedule start and end dates when particular projects should go live within that slot. This is a good way to have microsites or campaigns running at different times.