Dan Knight
- 2002.04.23
I've been saying it for months, but I finally sat down and
started to do it. We're automating site updates.
Yes, I've been doing all the updates manually for over last five
years. I've simplified parts of the process using Server Side
Includes and Cascading Style Sheets, but until last Friday, all of
the content on Low End Mac has been put there manually.
The Plan
I have several projects to work on and a good idea of the order
I want to do them in. All involve a fair bit of programming and
should be feasible using PHP, one of the hottest programming
languages on the Internet:
- Automate new links on home page and other indexes.
- Overhaul our mailing lists.
- Create a system where writers can submit articles online -
maybe even write and edit.
There may be other projects, but these are the ones that are
most important to Low End Mac. I've
been giving a lot of thought to them; preplanning is an important
part of programming.
Automatic Content
Right now we have our Mac of the day, email list of the day, and
deal of the day. I manually added these Monday through Friday.
Right now the Mac of the day and email list of the day are
automated. I've created a database for each, and the server
automatically updates them every morning (at 4:00 a.m. Eastern
time). That's the first project, and I still have to set things up
for the deal of the day.
The second project will be automating the new LEM content links
and the "recent" section that appears with our editorial content.
It shouldn't be too hard, but I want to go beyond that and
eventually have the program track how many times each link is
clicked - and then sort links according to date and popularity.
This will be a bit more of a challenge. We may also ask for
feedback later on.
The third project in automating the home page will handle the
"Around the Web" section. This should be easier than the second
project, but it's not as high a priority. I'd like to eventually
expand this section so other LEM staffers could add links, then set
up a cookie-based system where subscribers could choose which kind
of links they do and don't wish to see. Eventually I'd like to
track clicks and feedback, which could help us decide on precedence
of new links based on their author and the site publishing
them.
The Email Lists
I'm very grateful to Maclaunch.com for hosting our 30+ email
lists, but the current system has some limitations. Once I've
automated home page and link updates on the site, I want to address
these limitations by creating a program to run the lists. Here's my
brief feature list:
- A single subscriber database. You have no idea how many times I
receive "unsubscribe" or "please switch me to digest" messages with
no indication of which list(s) the subscriber receives. A unified
subscriber database would solve this. It could even store a
subscriber preference for single message mode vs. digest as well as
alternate versions of email addresses.
- More secure archives. I want to make sure that if/when spiders
search the archives they won't be able to harvest email
addresses.
- Better threading. Each posting on each list will be numbered,
making it easier to figure out which specific message someone is
replying to.
- More user friendly. Right now we block HTML email, but PHP
includes a command that can automatically strip HTML. Instead of
sending such messages back as unacceptable, the server could clean
them up. We could also clean up so-called smart quotes and other
symbols that aren't strict ASCII.
- Better filtering. Not only would such a program be able to
filter based on words or phrases, it could also be set to remove
things like the automatic footers some email services append to
messages.
- Online management. Each subscriber would be mailed a password
and allowed to change their subscriptions using a Web browser or
turn vacation mode on and off.
Overall, I'm very excited at the prospect of having a lot more
control over the way the lists operate.
Resources
My biggest resources are probably my two middle sons, both of
whom are already doing a lot of programming in PHP. I'll also be
borrowing their PHP 4 Bible and PHP (from the Visual
"Read Less, Learn More" series).
I'll share what I learn as we go along.
Online Resources
