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Laughter is the Sun that Drives Winter from the Human Face. Please Spread It Around...
Good Morning All! "How Do You Build a Danny's Daily's Issue?"
Dear Danny, I never thought I'd write but recently I joined the Inner Circle and have now had the opportunity to view the Members editions of "Danny's Daily's" first hand. Wow is all I can say! I have a question: How long does building an issue take? I see that the members issues are an expansion of the free ones. You essentially double the size and you do this twice a week? That's four issues a week! How do you do it? Are the graphics on the Members pages ever rotated to the free issues? Do you proof the final product? If so, how many times? Just curious. Jennifer
Dear Jenny, These are good questions and I'm asked these many times. How do I do it? Pretty damned well if I do say so myself. LOL I'm not really sure as to specifics as it's really automatic. I watched myself on this last issue just to be able to answer this: Indeed, the Members issues are built from the free ones. Once the free issue is pretty much finalized, I copy it and all it's graphics over to the pay side and start all over again. The graphics added to the Members issues are never shown on the free issues. All the individual parts of each issue are archived and the Jokes themselves are deleted. I try very hard not to repeat, but obviously this isn't possible, my memory is only so good. And, as you've seen, all members issues are archived directly to the site. So, they are never lost and can be viewed anytime by a member. All the way to the very first one ever published on the web! Actually building the issues is the shortest part: The graphics take about two hours to format and the issues themselves take about another three. Then the hard part: The Proofing... As you probably know, I'm a nut case: I try to have everything just perfect. Since perfection isn't possible, I have to draw a line. The trouble is, I never draw it. Today's January 10th edition took 20 proofs of the free page and around 30 for the Members page. The "Reflections 2002" page took well over 150! The first series of proofs are to check coding and try to get that right. The second series is to make sure I've bastardized the English language just perfectly and to correct spelling. Spelling is a biggie because I'm a terrible speller. The next phase is to check the flow, I rearrange things during this phase. Then next; recheck the coding and the music is added. After these are all done and I'm convinced it's perfect: I upload them to the web and start all over. It takes at least another 5 to 10 proofs each to finalize the issue. For some reason, even though I preview them here through my browser; when they hit the web, it's never the same. This is where coding problems show up and there are a lot of them. Lines that should have spaces between them that don't: Gaps, broken text lines, wrong fonts and the list goes on and on. Sometime I can't believe how bad it has to look here, to make it look good there. I never figured out why... After all this is done, I have to recode the cover pages on my site to reflect the new issues being there and proof them to make sure they work. You'd be surprised how often they don't... That's the one thing about the Internet, URL addresses have to be letter perfect and are capital sensitive. I hate that. LOL Next, I have to delete the old rotating out free issue and add the rotating out members issue to the archive. Then I have to recode the archives page on the server to reflect the addition of the new archived issue. Wheeww.... None of this includes the research for the Jokes, Toons, Animations etc. etc. etc. Yes, this happens twice a week. Then; let's add today's "Reader Mail," the New "Awards" page and all the site recoding to reflect the addition of them. This was all done before today's issues even went out. And there's still one more! A wonderful picture came across my desk. I just had to produce a really precious "Priceless Moment" out of it and include it on both issues. (the deer eating the carrot from the snowman) It was included less then an hour ago. And Still It's Not Done! Next is the mailers! I have to open each of the sites into AOL to save in the AOL Favorite Places. Then I open a new email, put the cover letter together and transfer the links to it. Then I send it out to the first group on the mailing list. I do this FOUR more times to get it out to all of you! And yes, it's a lot of work. Thank me very much... But, you know what they say; "suicide is painless..." Hope I didn't confuse you. This is just a small part of what's involved in doing what I do. Worth 15 bucks a year? You're kidding right?! Dan Daily |
