Managing distributors
Use the Distributors page in Global Settings to create and manage your distributors within Arc XP. A distributor is the source of an article, image, video, or gallery. It specifies where the content came from—whether it’s your organization (like The Washington Post), a third party (such as The Associated Press), or an individual (like a photographer).
Each distributor has:
a name, for example, Associated Press or Staff Photographer
a category, like staff, freelance, wire, or stock
an optional subcategory for more detail
Distributors help:
keep content organized and searchable in Arc XP applications.
ensure content follows licensing rules (for example, blocking content from appearing on unauthorized websites).
standardize data across the system (for example, preventing variations like AP versus Associated Press).
Optionally, you can associate a website restriction with a distributor. A restriction lets you restrict content from specific websites or website groups. See Managing website restrictions.
When adding content in Arc XP application, you select a pre-configured distributor to ensure consistency and proper content management.
A digital editor at The Washington Post is working on breaking news coverage and needs to pull in content from various sources. As part of the coverage, the editor finds a relevant wire story from The Associated Press and decides to include it.
When creating the article in Composer, Arc XP’s authoring tool, the editor selects Associated Press as the distributor. Because the distributor has a website restriction associated with it, the system ensures the article doesn’t appear on partner websites that lack a syndication agreement with AP. This step prevents legal issues while keeping content distribution in check.
Later, another editor is looking for wire stories to supplement coverage and opens WebSked, Arc XP’s newsroom planning tool. By filtering content using the distributor category wire, they quickly locate the AP article without having to search through unrelated content.
Procedures
You can create a new distributor or edit the properties of an existing distributor.
Note
Changes you make to distributors that are already applied to live content can take up to four hours to affect viewers on your website.
Navigate to Global Settings.
Click Distributors. The Distributors page opens.
Click New Distributor to create a distributor or click the name of an existing distributor to edit. The New Distributor or Edit Distributor pane opens.
Complete or update the following fields:
Distributor Name - enter a name for the distributor. Choose a name that clearly identifies the source so your users can easily choose the correct distributor.
Description - optionally, enter a description about this distributor is for. This description appears only in the Edit Distributor pane for administrators to view.
Distributor Provides - choose from the list of tags—image, story video—to define what content elements this distributor controls.
Category - choose the relevant category for this distributor.
Subcategory - optionally, enter a subcategory to to define this distributor further. We recommend aligning with your team to ensure you use subcategories consistently.
Allow on all websites - select this option to be able to use this distributor on all websites you manage in Arc XP. If you're a single-site organization, leave this field selected. If you clear this option, the Restrictions field appears.
Restrictions - optionally, choose websites to restrict this distributor to. The distributor applies to only the websites you enter here. If you selected the Allow on all websites option, this field does not appear.
Click Create (or Save if editing a distributor).
If you no longer need a distributor, you can archive the distributor so it no longer appears as an option for your users. The distributor is not deleted. Instead, it appears in the Archived Distributors list, and you can restore it, if needed.
Navigate to Global Settings.
Click Distributors. The Distributors page opens.
Either click
> Archive on the distributor you want to archive, or click the distributor name and click Archive. The system confirms the distributor is archived.
The archived distributor now appears in the Archived Distributors list. Choose Archived Distributors from the view menu to review your list of archived distributors.
You can restore inactive distributors to use them again in Arc XP.
Navigate to Global Settings.
Click Distributors. The Distributors page opens.
Select Archived Distributors from the view drop-down menu. The Archived Distributors page opens.
Either click
> Restore on the distributor you want to restore, or click the distributor name and click Restore. The system restores the archived distributor.
The distributor now appears in the Active Distributors list.