How To Create A Magazine Newsstand App – Part 1

In the last article we took a look at three popular web services that allow people to create Apple newsstand apps. But now it’s time to move on to creating our own.
So the first thing you have to do when creating any type of application is work out how it’s going to look and work. This is exactly what we’re going to do starting right here.

Newsstand App Design

If you take a look at newsstand apps they nearly all follow a similar design. You have the first screen that lists all the individual issues of the magazine/publication along with links and buttons that allow the user to select which issue they would like to view. I am going to follow the same route and go through the front screen design in the video that follows. So please watch the video as it will give you an idea of the design I am aiming for.

So there we have the basic design of the front page. It’s simple but it will be an effective interface to allow our publication readers and subscribers to navigate the app in an easy fashion without seeing anything too complicated.

The Service To Build Newsstand Apps

Now let’s move on and start to build this first screen and it’s at this point I will introduce the service I am going to use which is Create Cool Apps (As far as I am aware the only way to register with them is through the sales page on the warrior forum). This service is run by a lady called Amber Chief the CEO and Founder of dime-consultants (Direct Internet Marketing Executive Consultants). I have been in touch with Amber and we will be discussing the service in detail in a few weeks time when she joins me on a new podcast I have planned (more on that later)

Hmm, Looks Familiar!

If anybody is familiar with creating apps through some online services there is a good chance you will recognize the interface and this is because Create Cool Apps is a white label (publisher account) of Seattle Clouds. Now here’s the good thing, it costs absolutely nothing to sign up to Seattle Clouds so you can follow along with my tutorials to build yourself a newsstand app without incurring any costs at all.

I will add though, you can only get so far on the free account because once you are at the stage of building the app and submitting it to Apple that’s when you to upgrade to a paid account, which is fair enough. They have to make a living too 🙂

The minimum subscription price for creating newsstand apps with them is currently $49.99 and you also have to pay and $99 one-time account setup fee. When you think about it, this is pretty damn cheap because you can create 5 apps of your choice which works out to be around $10 per app per month. If you go for the next package up, the Business Account, then you can build unlimited apps which can bring the cost per app down even further.

We Can Do It For Less

Even though Seattle Clouds prices are great, we can do even better. This is where Create Cool Apps comes in.

Amber has priced the product very competitively and as such I think just about anybody should be able to afford the membership which currently runs at $17 a month for unlimited personal apps and $37 a month for a full business account. Awesome value in my opinion.

Enough Already – Let’s Get Started

In the video below I go through some of the basics to get started with our newsstand app.

• An overview of the interface
• How to create an app
• A look at the templates available
• Selecting the best a template to use for a Newsstand App
• How to download your app files to work off-line and upload to test in the browser.
• Testing the app on the iPad.

So there we have it. We have we chosen the template for our newsstand and we are all set to create our first screen. You’ve seen the design already so let’s take a look at how we create our Newsstand Interface.

Now we have our template designed we can move on and see how we can link together the front-end “magazine shelf” with the individual issues of the magazine. This is coming up in the next article together with the instructions for how we are going to do the basic linking to get the app working as it should. Once it works we can then move onto creating the In-App Subscription product in iTunesConnect.

Tell me what you think so far in the comments below.

Cheers,
Pete