Presenting — Your Web Master!
Pearl River Publishing has put up a new section, the 1st chapters of books. We’re hoping readers, and book dealers will take the time to sit down and read the 1st chapter of our books, and then decide to buy them 
Other than that, as your web master, my job is pretty quiet now, I’m waiting for the next storm. Or at least the next feature idea.
So I ran across this new technology, called cellblock. It’s very slick, and allows you to create a place on your web page where you can upload photos, and you do it via sending it to a personally set up email address. Here’s an example:
| You can set up your own at http://www.cellblock.com |
The contracts and policies and administrivia finally got done, so the web site is officially live!
Of course at the same time, there’s been an update to wordpress. I’m going to have to see if it’s safe to upgrade. I’ll try it somewhere else first.
Now the test truly comes. We’re going after two different markets:
It’s not clear whether we can be competitive in either of these markets, but it should be an interesting ride.
That’s about it for web development at least for a time. There may be some minor changes I make to the web site over time (in particular, I’m not happy with the file uploads area), but that can occur later.
It’s been several days since I’ve posted anything here, as we’re waiting for some final management level decisions with respect to PRP before things moved forward. However, someone was having problems with changing fonts in Google docs, and I thought I’d post an article here”
Or is that 9 1/2 bells? It’s 9:30 pm east coast time.
So pricing pages are done, everything with respect to services we provide is now up. We stil don’t have the author contracts available online, but rumors abound they should be coming soon.
Now the question is, will local authors use this service? I think it’s a great idea. I haven’t run the “numbers” yet, but those “in the know” believe this will work.
I need to think about a site map, but it can wait, the site is relatively small (maybe 30 pages total), and almost everything is navigable from the home page either through the right or top navigation menu.
We probably need to eventually get zen-cart up and running, however that’s for a later project.
I’ve been noticing a lot of web sites are using either Wordpress(tm) or Joomla(tm) for their web sites. I do have to admit, it’s been a lot easier than using traditional methods. I’ve also figure out how to grab the header from Wordpress and use it in non Wordpress pages. It was a bit of a challenge (and required some frames manipulation to get full use of the page), but it seems to work.
So, it looks like we’re ready for the Holiday season….. On with the sales!
So, yesterday was a day off for me as the Federal Government was on liberal leave, so I decided I’d become a liberal, and just take leave.
But, today we’re hard away back at work. I spoke with El Presidente on the phone this morning (he was away on personal travel last weekend), we concluded that most of the “stuff” was done. I’ve decided to forego a site map for now, we may include one in the future, if we see the need.
Contracts still aren’t ready, waiting for them to come back.
Did an update to the pdf catalog. Nothing substantial.
Supposedly those responsible for the substantive text of the web site will be making changes rsn.
I expect by the holidays, we’ll be looking for authors to sign….
Well, maybe not. My wife dropped me off at the train (which was only running the typical 5-10 minutes late) and she started to make her way to work. ….. 2 1/2 hours later she got to work. It’s normally 30 minutes….
There’s something about Washington D.C. and snow. Any snow at all and traffic comes to a complete standstill.
Now this isn’t Miami, or L.A., we get snow, not like Wisconsin or Colorado, but snow is not a complete foreign concept.
I was pretty amazed to find out that snow trucks don’t seem to be running, at all. I guess that Maryland Budget cut included no snow removal or salt for this year.
Well the nice thing is, you’re here, at PRP. We’re hard away at work, getting the site all spiffied up. (My work is done, it’s now in the hands of a few people making what I hope are minor changes).
Oh, and want to know what traffic looks like during snowfall in D.C.? The picture below says it all:
So I was up at 7:30 am Saturday Morning, hard away at work. That’s so NOT me. I’m normally asleep until at least 9am on weekend, and even on weekdays, I’m barely conscious at 7:30 am. (the nice advantage of riding a train in to work every day).
The Sitemap here still isn’t done, but I got good comments on the beta version (and no, don’t ask where the beta is as).
El Presidente is off to another city this weekend, so I’m spending some time devoted to other projects. I have 3 books I’m working on writing (yes, three) and never seem to get the time and/or incentive to finish them.
Someone asked me about Wiki Administration the other day, so I created an “Introduction to Wiki Administration” class at http://learning.mohnkern.com. That’s another one of my gloriously unpaid pet projects.
On the technical front, the latest ubuntu update hosed the wireless network card on my laptop. The wired still works, so other than working in the Dining room, I’m pretty set. Plus, for the weekend, I’m sticking with my desktop machine with a 22″ monitor.
I wish someone would get a good wireless configuration utility for Linux. Still hasn’t happened, but it will, eventually.
Sunday, if everything stays quiet, I’ll get back to working on the site map. It’ll likely be up on monday.
So the Webmaster’s job is done…. for now
— Your Webmaster
Yup, we’re just about ready to go live, it’s pretty scary.
Yesterday and this morning I worked on our “price sheet.” Doing tables in Wordpress is extremely problematic, to say the least, but I got it done. There’s debate going on about whether to charge by the page, or by the word for editing services. But that’s not my issue.
Catalog is done. Okay, it’s not a nice folderover catalog, it’s a set of 8 1/2 X 11 pdfs, but its pretty. I haven’t done the sitemap yet, but I’ll probably get to it this weekend, though other projects also need attention.
So now its test time. Is this a conceptually sound idea? While I write (and may finish one of the three books I’m writing eventually) a lot, I don’t have any sense of this particular market, if there’s any market at all.
Well, we’re just about to officially announce ourselves as live. I’m still waiting on a pricing sheet so we can put up that page, but everything else is ready to go. Well, other than the site map (always the last thing) and the blog request form, which will go quick.
Found out today that email from our site to comcast (and several other domains) is being blocked. We’re trying to get a resolution, but haven’t gotten one yet. That’s always fun.
Spent significant time yesterday working on the print version of the catalog. Guess that “liberal arts” sense of asthetics finally kicked in, as el presidente had a very boring old price list, and little more. I ended up giving it some basic graphics, which made it better. We’ll eventually go to a 4 X 5 catalog, when we get more authors.
So emails should probably go out sometime later this afternoon, or maybe tomorrow, and we’ll see how it goes from there.
More later…..
Your Webmaster