HELP GET SCHNEWS ON-LINE EVERY WEEK!

Written late on a Saturday night with Jo Makepeace, her laptop, and a couple of beers.

We need help getting SchNEWS on-line each week. Every Friday, Jo collects the SchNEWS DTP file from the office, takes it home, and spends three hours at some point during the day converting it to HTML and Adobe PDF for the Web site, and ASCII text for the email list. She still enjoys the buzz of knowing she's helping several thousand readers around the world read SchNEWS, but she's fed up with having to do it every week. She's looking for a couple of people who can help ensure SchNEWS gets online every week, preferably on the Friday.

There are several other people around the country, as a well as a nice chap in Australia, that help out with arching very old SchNEWSes, and programming the database and so on, but the most urgent and important thing is getting SchNEWS out on time.

WHAT'S ON THE SITE?

The current issue of SchNEWS, along with every issue since January 1997 (that's 130 issues, and there are still 100 earlier issues to go). Recent issues are available as Adobe PDF format, so users can print out SchNEWS exactly as it looks on paper, and distribute it locally. We know of several groups that do that in the UK, mostly at Universities. There's also the contacts database, with over 500 organisations listed, including e-mail and Web addresses. The articles in the archive are cross-referenced with each other, and increasingly with entries in the contacts database.

WHO USES THE SITE?

The site is aimed at activists, students, journalists and academics. It gets about 1000 page impressions a day, and that's rising rising steadily. Our email list, SCHNEWS-L, has over 1500 subscribers, and we're getting about 50 new subscribers a week since we put the little form on the front page of the Web site. At a rough guess, this means about 4,000 people get SchNEWS on-line each week. Most of our on-line readers are in the UK, but we get hits from over 40 countries. Most UK radical sites, and hundreds worldwide link to the SchNEWS site as a primary source of reliable direct action news from the UK and beyond. People copy articles, and sometimes whole issues to include in their own publications, both on paper and on-line. Hey, we're even listed on Yahoo! next to Brighton's Evening Argus…

WHAT'S INVOLVED?

Most of the time Jo spends on the site involves converting the PageMaker DTP file into HTML, fitting it into the appropriate template, and uploading it onto the site. This is what he does:

collects the PageMaker file from the DTP machine in the office (onto a floppy disk)
at home, copies and pastes each article into Microsoft Word
edits the Word file to match the site style guidelines, and marks up links using special codes
saves as an RTF file, and converts this to a basic HTML page using RtfToHtml
copies this into an HTML template
checks all the Web links work, and adds cross-references into the archive where appropriate
rejigs his site mirror, moving the previous issue into the archive
upload the files via FTP

Next, to prepare the Adobe PDF file, she needs to drop the graphics into the PageMaker file, since they're still pasted with scissors and glue, even though we now have a decent scanner in the office:

scans in the graphics, and pastes them into the PageMaker file
prints the PageMaker file to a Postscript file, and distills it into Adobe PDF using Acrobat Distiller
loads the PDF file into Acrobat Exchange, crops all the pages tightly, and saves the file
uploads the file to the site via FTP

Finally, there's the email version to send out. This just involves saving the HTML file as ASCII text, tidying it up a little, fitting into ta template, and sending it to the special email address that means GreenNet's Listproc server passes it onto all the subscribers.

DO YOU HAVE EVERYTHING I NEED TO DO IT IN THE OFFICE?

We do, but we've never done it in the office, because we've only just caught up with the 1900's as far as processor power goes. If you do it at home you'll need a computer (we use PCs, but a Mac would be fine, and would probably crash less often), a modem, internet connection software (you can use our PPP account), PageMaker (6.5 or later), Acrobat (not just the reader), a text editor, email and FTP programs, and some software to generate decent, valid (3.2 or 4.0 Transitional) HTML code.

WILL YOU TRAIN ME?

Sure, but you'll need some experience doing Web sites already. The whole process is thoroughly documented (so Jo can do it when she's tired, drunk, angry, sad, bored, whatever), and it's all cut down to the bare minimum. She'd rather not have to teach you how to use your PC and surf the Net, to write HTML and to use a word-processor. But he'd be more than happy to show you round PageMaker, Acrobat, and the HTML conversion software he uses.

I'D LOVE TO HELP! WHAT DO I DO NEXT?

Send an enthusiastic email to webmaster@schnews.org.uk and cancel a few Friday breakfast meetings.

Last updated 18 September 1999

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SchNEWS Web Team (webmaster@schnews.org.uk)