What Does it Take to Do a Page on CSR?

Let us know what you think about the site - what we're doing right or wrong, what you'd like to see, and any questions you might have. We'll toss some of our own thoughts and opinions in as well, including notes on the Weekly Updates at the main site.
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web-ed
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What Does it Take to Do a Page on CSR?

Post by web-ed »

O.K., this is not intended as an “everybody feel sorry for Web-Ed because he works so hard” sympathy piece, but I do want readers to understand what goes into the weekly production of one of more updates per week here. Of course the amount of effort varies depending on the source material. Most of Doctor Cylon’s stuff, for example, is fairly easy to do because the finished art itself is at my fingertips, although I do usually see if I can try to locate the original art he started with. The only thing remaining is the actual page coding. Let’s take a look at a more difficult case - what it takes to bring forth a new (i.e. hitherto unknown in the spanko community) comic-book spanking.

Step 1 – Find the spanking! While these occasionally turn up during routine internet searches, usually they’re not that easy. Sometimes tiny clues in old catalogues or even critical articles lead us to suspect there might be a spanking in a comic book, in which case we usually have to find and purchase a hard copy of the book. In this case, we turned up a fine spanking in the romance comic Lovers’ Lane #29 by going over a digital scan of the book page by page, allowing only two seconds per page. At the present time, we check 3000 – 7000 pages per month this way, depending on the availability of new scans and how much time we have.

Step 2 – Fix the Scans. This involves resizing the full pages, cropping the spanking panel since it will be presented separately on the finished page, and creating a thumbnail image of the spanking panel for the index page of Comics Gallery 2 (it’s necessary to use smaller-size images here so that the index page will load in a reasonable amount of time). I use ACDSee most of the time for these operations. Image

Step 3 – Do the Background Research. Sometimes the scans themselves contain information, as here where the artist signed his work. Sometimes the collector provides his own notes as to who he believes drew a particular story (JVJ often does so). Other times I may turn to a standard reference such as The Grand Comics Data Base, Steranko’s History of Comics, etc. Finally, I may analyze the art myself, although thankfully I’ve only had to rely on doing so a handful of times. Even with all that, readers will notice that sometimes we just don’t know who drew something, and the writers are even harder to identify.

Step 4 – Code the New Page. This includes the actual writing (composition) which takes place at the same time the HTML code is being written. I don’t use modern web page creation tools because I hate machine-generated code (it’s ugly and hard to maintain); instead, I write HTML the old-fashioned way, with an improved text-editor called Arachnophilia. The length of time it takes to create a new page (based on my existing templates) varies from about 15 minutes in simple cases to several hours if there are many images or lots of historical background to write about.
Image

Step 5 – Add the Thumbnail Image to the Gallery Index. This is easy but important – it only takes a few minutes, unless I’m having trouble deciding whether to build a new row or not. I am rather fussy about trying to keep like things together where possible.
Image

Step 6 – Update the Home Page. This involves adding the links to the current week’s updates, manually revising the “Last Updated” date, and a few other changes.

Step 7 – Upload the Files Using FTP (File Transfer Protocol). This is a fairly simply process if you have the appropriate software. The only difficulties are remembering to include all the files a particular page needs, including any picture files, and uploading them to the right directory on CSR’s web server.
Image

Step 8 – Don’t Forget to Test! The slightest error, such as a typo in the name of a picture file, will cause the picture not to appear on the page. A typo in the page name means the entire page will fail to show up. Another kind of error occurs if you FTP the files to the wrong location: for example, loading a comic spanking into the Humor Page directory will not put the page into the Humor Gallery, it will simply disappear altogether. Small errors are, alas, rather common. Recode, reload, and re-test!

Repeat every week for 520 weeks, and here we are :lol: !
-- Web-Ed
sunflower309
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Re: What Does it Take to Do a Page on CSR?

Post by sunflower309 »

hi web-ed!

all I can say is WOW! and thanks for all your hard work!

sunflower
web-ed
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Re: What Does it Take to Do a Page on CSR?

Post by web-ed »

sunflower wrote:hi web-ed!

all I can say is WOW! and thanks for all your hard work!
You're welcome, my dear! :)
-- Web-Ed
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overbarrel49
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Re: What Does it Take to Do a Page on CSR?

Post by overbarrel49 »

hi web-ed,

you mentioned a lot of things here that you have to do to keep CSR going and those updates coming. many of the things you mentioned, i wouldn't have any idea how to do...................such as writing the HTML code yourself. one thing you didn't mention was how much work it was and how much time it took for you to learn how to do all this before you could even get started. i am really impressed with your knowledge of how to accomplish all these tasks. i am hoping that all of this is a labor of love for you but in any case, just know that we greatly appreciate your efforts. thanks, phil
web-ed
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Re: What Does it Take to Do a Page on CSR?

Post by web-ed »

overbarrel49 wrote:hi web-ed,

you mentioned a lot of things here that you have to do to keep CSR going and those updates coming. many of the things you mentioned, i wouldn't have any idea how to do...................such as writing the HTML code yourself. one thing you didn't mention was how much work it was and how much time it took for you to learn how to do all this before you could even get started. i am really impressed with your knowledge of how to accomplish all these tasks. i am hoping that all of this is a labor of love for you but in any case, just know that we greatly appreciate your efforts. thanks, phil
Thanks, Phil! It's good to know my efforts are appreciated. As to how I acquired the necessary skills, like writing HTML, I just got myself one book, sat down, and started doing it. I'm a very quick study and as it happens I have certain talents along these lines, so I can't say I found writing ordinary HTML very difficult. I also taught myself some Java and enough Javascript to do the "Spank Wonder Woman" and "Spank Batgirl" interactive game pages, and MySQL and PHP scripting to do the Comics Spanking Data Base and the Humorama Spanking Cartoon Data Base. (Java isn't used much on webpages any more, but Javascript is everywhere). You know what my biggest problem was? The texts I chose were no good! I had to read them over and over to get the essential concepts extracted, but once I did that, it was pretty smooth sailing. Java and Javascript both partake of a certain needless obscurity that I find common among so-called Object Oriented programming languages. Anyway, I designed and built both data bases without too much trouble, although the code that does the SQL queries and builds the HTML for the pages was more difficult.

I'm fortunate in that these things aren't too difficult for me, but of course they do take up a lot of time. The only complaint I have is that I can't market these skills in any way to make a living; Information Technology is a much more difficult field to get work in than it was ten or fifteen years ago, and IT management seems to be getting dumber all the time... :geek:
-- Web-Ed
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