ComicCritique.Com: Changelog

changelog

Pronounciation:  chAnj log

Definition:  A programmer/software developer term for a document in which changes to a given project are recorded.

ComicCritique.Com Home

21 December 2005
Wow, I'm actually updating the changelog! Well, lots of changes have been made since the last entry on 24 sept 2005, but I haven't even taken the time to reflect them here! And I don't have time to go back and note them, even. Anyway, this log is mostly to assist me when I'm doing more complex site updates.

Today's update was to adjust the perl script that generates the newsfeed. Instead of basing the script on the frontpage var I based it on a newer variable that tracks the "above the fold" items on the new-and-improved front page. This will make for a much, much smaller rss file, and it'll be easier --- I hope --- for rss readers to see the new data.

One thing that's tough about the way I'm doing rss is that items that special items have to be manually inserted, but I don't have a method for changing that just now. One for the future.

Also mulling the possibility of having the contributors insert their own reviews in the database, then the editors would edit and make the review live. Not sure how much time it would actually save, but it could save some. Some issues off the bat are:

• security -- I not only have to protect the "insert" page from non CCdC contributors, but also other records from CCdC personnel. Might be that apache + linux file security will be enough to protect the page from non CCdC folks, but for the rest I'd really have to study MySQL. MySQL might not even be capable of the kind of security I'm thinking here, but we'll see.
• How much can I automate? Can I automate generation of a paragraph? Can I automate pull quotes? Can I automate insertion of graphics? These are things that are pretty time consuming when it comes to actually doing ccdc work. I've considered devising some sort of markup scheme that would help, and I haven't entirely released that idea yet. It would involve marking up an ascii file, running a processor on it that makes it HTML, and then doing a command-line insertion into the database. That's still attractive to me so we'll consider it.

...

Downloaded a free app (nagware) called SQLyog. Like it. It makes some table operations very fast, like changing a batch full of records where new=1 to new=0.

Solved a problem on the reviews.html page where several horizontal rules were being generated without there being any reviews between them. This was a result of having new=0 but front_page=1. Set front_page=0 on those records and regenerated the page and all was right with the world. At least a tiny, infinitesmal part of the world.

24 September 2005

Wrote a couple of simple perl programs to automate generation of the Cottage Three pages. Two scripts, one generates the current page and the other generates the previous page. (Previous page needs regeneration to insert the "next" link below the strip.) Seems to be working fine. Learned a little more about perl and about bash in the process.

08 September 2005

Had email from someone who runs a robot that the "changelog" link on the get_review.pl?id=147 review was broken. Of course this means all the changelog links on all the review pages are broken. I also noticed that the "contact" link was broken on the review pages. I regenerated all the static reviews with the corrected links, and corrected the dynamic link as well in the get_review.pl perl program.

I can't help but notice that nobody seemed to care that these links were broken from the review pages. The links worked fine on the home page, so that's something. (And I can tell they get hits from the web logs.) I don't often review the web logs for error hits, which might have revealed the broken links. I'll look at those more often now.

02 September 2005

Gave the Katrina info its own page, katrina.html, and put a "How to Help Katrina Victims" link front and center on the home page.

30 August 2005

• Added some contact info re: Hurricane Katrina assistance
• Added a "button" for JenFest 2005. This is to help an old friend whose niece was paralyzed in a car accident. Click the link on the home page or visit friendsofjen.com for more information.
• Completed a fairly major update to the search routine. Instead of only the title field, searches now check for writer, artist, reviewer, and publisher too. See the search page for more details.

23 August 2005

Per a suggestion from John L., I've added two links to the bottom of certain reviews. The links read 'previous review' and 'next review.' Only reviews on the front page (test true for front_page=1) will have these. The most recent review will still have a 'next' review link, but it will fail and send the reader to the home page.

22 August 2005

Just to help the casual reader along, when one hovers the mouse pointer over the title under the "Current Reviews" section an underline will appear, indicating it's a link. Maybe not necessary, but I guess I hate to take intuitiveness for granted. Does that even make sense? Anyway. Underlines appear when you point at current review links. Neat.

21 August 2005

Ah. Just realized that the search page still references the dynamic version of reviews. It's not the worst thing in the world, but I might as well point them at the static versions like everything else does. Hopefully I'll get to that today. Might also try adding a full text search at the same time.

20 August 2005

Been a while since I updated this file, despite a few minor tweaks I've made to the site. Today's tweak was not so minor. As of a few minutes ago I made "live" some adjustments to allow for more data on the page. We've picked up another writer (welcome to Matt Yocum), which is excellent. CCdC writers are generating a lot of great content, and the challenge for me (in addition to getting the durn things posted) is keeping as much of it as possible on the front page. With that in mind, here are the changes that went into place today (not in any particular order):

• Removed the "summary" line associated with new reviews, reclaiming some space
• Removed the "Read the full review" line at the end of each review entry. Now the entire entry is a link to the full review.
• Increased the width of the left column to 25% from 20%.
• Added to the left column all those reviews that live on the front page but aren't marked "new." This puts more content "above the fold."
• Speaking of which, removed the red [new] tag that lived next to just-posted reviews. Everything under "Current Reviews" will be considered "new" and the reviews in the left column/sidebar thing will be considered "recent." Everything older will be accessible either via the Search routine or the Archives link.
• Not a space issue, but I updated the logo graphic. It's actually a little bigger. Not sure if I like it yet, but there it is. The graphic has not been updated on the review pages.
• Changed the width of the main table to 950 from 800.

Next step: actually posting stuff! Woo hoo!

12 July 2005

Well, the mysql.sock error was still in effect this morning, I'm not surprised to say. So I phoned tech support and the young lady on the other end had the issue resolved in minutes. Moral: call tech support instead of using the web-based support request system.

11 July 2005

Trying to do some quickie postings and am getting the old mysql.sock error. Perhaps mysql.sock has been lost in mysql.dryer. This is not the first time this has happened. The on-line ticket database for my provider shows that I've opened three prior tickets on this same issue, and I remember calling to have it fixed once. At least once, maybe twice. The exact error message:

ERROR 2002:  Can't connect to local MySQL server through 
socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (111) 

I noted the other ticket numbers and included them with this ticket so hopefully it won't be long before the thing is fixed. I simply don't have privs to do it myself, which is probably appropriate if it requires restarting the mysql daemon or something.

What's interseting when this happens is that the CGI/web interface works fine, I just can't create static pages from the command line (or via shell script). So I have the option of manually updating the home page and referencing the cgi script or waiting out tech support and just running things as normal. Since I can still insert reviews, I'll continue to do that for a bit.

14:17
I've resent my request for assistance, which I'm allowed to do after 4+ hours without a response from tech support. Realized just now that a command line failure of MySQL also breaks the search routine, because it clobbers the index file. Whoops. I've added the index file to the "CYA" routine, which backs up key files each time an update is made. I have five or six reviews ready to go live, and I've decided not to install them manually. Not sure it's worth the time and effort. The scripts save a lot of time, that's why they exist.

26 June 2005

Put in some cosmetic changes today and yesterday. Added smaller shots of selected cover images to the front page. These are just the same 240xWhatever images used in the review pages themselves, just set with the img command to width=100. I tried putting it in for every single review that has an image associated with it, but the page came out looking wonky. I'd have to recode each line item to be in its own field in a table, and I don't want to mess with that. I like the selected images as well. I had to add a logical field to the database that allows me to basically say "yes, if there's a cover image include it on the front page." Seems to be working fine.

Also, moved a handful of static links (changelog, contact us, rss/news feeds, colophon) to the bottom of the home page (and to the review pages as well) in preparation for other more dynamic content that will live in the left column. Added a couple of standard links (search, archive) to the review pages, along with an ad for CritiqueWear apparel.

Adjusted the header on the review pages to match the home page: the McGhee quote is at 12pt now, decreased the leading between the header logo and the horizontal rule.

Regenned the review pages.

23 June 2005

I updated the helpdesk ticket at 05:40 EDT saying the issue had not been fixed, and begged for help. At 10:00 EDT I forwarded the ticket to quality assurance. Just now, at 10:35, I received a note that the problem has been corrected and a quick test showed that was indeed the case. I remain unclear on what the problem was or why it occurred in the first place, but my education on the inner workings of web servers isn't that great. I'll be studying said workings in short order, however.

22 June 2005

Shoot. Just realized (14:28) that the perl scripts are not feeding correctly to my firefox browser. Off to test with IE on Windows, though I expect the same result. ...Yeah, it's all CGI stuff that's failing. I did run a backup this morning via tar, doubt that would have had an impact, however. Static pages seem to be working fine, in general. Home page is static, that's one way to tell. Also search page comes up without a problem.

...Just shot an "emergency" labeled note over to the help desk, asking them to at minimum restart the httpd service. They make it clear that they won't help with CGI scripts, but since all my scripts are failing at once it doesn't really seem like a scripting problem, more like a server problem. Hope they get that. Also restored the backup I did this morning, no change in result. Parent dir already seems to have the proper privs on it, and the scripts are actually working fine --- I can execute them from the command line without a problem, so gotta be the server. Gotta be.

I had a plan not too long ago to make all the pages static; maybe this is an indicator that I should do that; it would take some effort, but it would also greatly increase the perceived response time of the site.

15:24
I don't expect this to be back up within the next hour, so I left a note in both the rss feed and on the home page that we're aware of the problem and are working to correct it.

16:18
I still haven't heard back from the hosting provider. This is why we don't send emails to 911, I guess. Anyway, I was able to take advantage of the groundwork I laid a couple of weeks ago and we're back up in completely "static" mode now. Pages load very quickly, much faster than before. Only thing that's not working is the Search page. The page will load, but since the routine itself is a perl script it'll fail with an internal server error. In the meantime, we're up.

17:43
Still no word from the hosting provider, but I remembered to adjust the .rss file (the newsfeed) and it should have working links now. Still the only thing not working is search CGI.

18:53
Finally heard back from the helpdesk who said that the server would restart automatically at midnight, so I'm glad I didn't wait for them to help me. I imagine that will help the cgi processing, so hopefully search.html will work again in the morning.

In the meantime, I remembered to create static versions of all the features listed on the home page, so now every link should work.

6 June 2005

My brother pointed out that I had broken the link in the "This is my secret identity" ad link. Ah well, that's me fussing with the products on the CafeePress.com side. Fixed it now.

26 May 2005

I can't remember if this has happened before now, but Yahoo and Google are ranking CCdC much higher these days. A search for "review olympus" at yahoo.com returns a bunch of camera info. Whoops. A search for "review olympus humanoids" at yahoo.com returns our CCdC review as the number one hit. The same search at google.com returns the same review as hit number 9 (second from bottom, first page of search results). I realize these things can change daily, but it's very good to be on the radar.

22 May 2005

The site was inaccessible for over an hour this morning. A phone call to tech support said that the server on which comicritique.com lives was down and that disk checks were being run, and the server would come back up within the hour. Although the server was indeed back up in the promised time it's the third outage (that I'm aware of) since May 10. (Yesterday's issue was not an outage but rather a software glitch with my account only and that was corrected by one of the helpdesk folks.) I've dropped a note to the sales folks at the hosting provider seeking a person/address to whom I can communicate my concerns regarding the availability of the site. They guarantee 99.9% uptime, but that's not a useful statistic — over the course of the entire hosting relationship with comiccritique.com, the site may well have been up 99.9% of the time. So, we'll see what happens. I don't relish moving the site to a new provider, but I will if this sort of thing continues.

21 May 2005

Database broken!
Although I get frustrated sometimes by their unexplained server outages, my hosting provider does pretty well. Just after Noon I was making an update or two and suddenly all my Perl scripts began to fail with a MySQL error. I'm on the phone with tech support now (I rarely need to call), and the young lady at the other end of the phone is attempting to correct the issue. I've had to call tech support before, and I've never been disappointed with their responsiveness. …Okay, the tech accidentally hung up on me, but when I tried to generate the home page it worked immediately, so no points lost.

18 may 2005

Added the gif file sent to me by Wayne at gamingreport.com. It's on the left side of the page at the bottom under the creatively-titled section "links." I haven't yet provided him a similarly-sized button for CCdC, but I'll do that in short order and send it over.

I'm continually fussing with the layout of the review page. I've changed it once again to its simplest form, which I tend to think is the best.

16 may 2005

Egads, I finally have time to post some reviews. I've just posted one for Amelia Rules that I did myself (good book, btw) and have a handful from John D. to post as well.

Neat news: Pete at Nova Comics continues to hip our site to his customers (thanks Pete). One result of this is that a comic reader who edits and writes for a gaming sitehas offered to swap links. He appropriately notes that there's a good deal of crossover in the fan base of both comics and games, so swapping links seems only natural. He's sent me his .gif image already, I'll see what he has space for and send him either Matt's nifty banner ad or simply the ccdc logo from the front page.

16 april 2005

Added Matt's review to the DC Countdown page. Unfortunately the in-page links seem to not work terribly well in Firefox (just upgraded to 1.0.3 or something), but work fine in IE. Updated the rss file and the index as well to indicate the update to the Countdown page. Have two other reviews to post from JL, hopefully will get to them today.

13 april 2005

Pete at Nova Comics reminded me, somewhat pointedly, that Free Comic Book Day is coming. "Ah," I said. "I should probably put that on the site." So there's a link and a graphic, front and center. It was good to do that; I have no real place in the current layout for ads, so I'll have to figure out a place to do that kinda thing.

07 april 2005

I've been fussing a bit with the layout of the review pages. Although it seems straightforward, getting an HTML page to do exactly what you want is like expecting traffic do exactly what you want. Or the weather. The truth is that HTML was designed to allow the end-user (specifically the user's web browser) to make many display decisions. It's actually possible to set the browser to completely ignore settings from the web page and simply use whatever fonts and font sizes the user has chosen. With this in mind, HTML page layout becomes something akin to my bowling skill: I roll the ball down the lane and hope for the best. My real design goal with this site is that it is easy on the eyes and easy to read. I think I've been doing okay so far.

One thing I've been uncomfortable with is the width of the text in the review/feature pages. I think a piece is more difficult to read if the lines are too long. It's easier for a reader to lose his place when his eyes have to travel too far a distance back to the left side of the page to find the next line. So, on the review pages I've inserted an empty column on the right side of the page that decreases the width of the text column by a good inch on every browser/computer I've used to test. It's an improvement.

Another change I've made is I've added a line to the database to accommodate an extra "rating comment" near the image of the rating stars. John L. often includes such a comment with his pieces and although I like them they haven't fit in the database or the layout. So that's in there now, just to see how it feels. If the writer doesn't include such a comment, that's fine.

Last note for today: Occasionally book titles use the ampersand character (“&”). Using that character in the title field of the database breaks the newsfeed file (www.comiccritique.com/ccdc.rss). A little Googling revealed that this is a common problem with RSS and the only way around it is to either not use that character or to use the HTML character code equivalent, which happens to be &. Pretty soon I'll end up coding some sort of filter to insert such codes automatically. I've been using the EMACS search and replace routine to do it, but it's still a pretty manual process. Right now I'm manually inserting the following characters:

• “ for "left double quote"
• ” for "right double quote"
• … for "ellipsis"
• — for "m-dash"
• – for "n-dash" (not terribly common)

05 April 2005

It appears that last night's maintenance went smoothly. I did test the site at 11pm EDT and it was indeed unavailable, as promised. Although committed to the site, I chose to not rise at 4am EDT to test that it had come back online.

Added Matt's review of Sin City. With this latest feature piece the Current Reviews section was getting pushed down off the visible section of the front page. I mulled putting in-page links in place so visitors could click a "Current Reviews" link which would simply scroll down the page about fifty percent, but instead I put the features in their own right-aligned text box. Seems to be working out okay.

04 April 2005

Interesting. I hit the site a few times today as I played with the width of the right margin in the get_review.pl app, and when I hit the site around 5pm I found that the index.html page was coming up, but it's supposed to immediately redirect to index2.html. That redirect wasn't working. I was on my way out the door so I couldn't test the redirect with IE, only with Firefox. Instead of troubleshooting I just copied index2.html to index.html. I originally had the notion that index.html could be a dynamic page of some sort and that index2.html would always be the real home page. That hasn't really happened, so for the time being I'll just support both files automatically, index.html and index2.html.

12 March 2005

As I'm getting more confident with my perl coding and db administration I thought it might be good to add a line of text under each book title on the front page. It's in small type and lists the writer, artist, and publisher in that order. I like the additional information right on the front page and I imagine those readers that like to know the creators' names will like it too. It's an abbreviated listing, just the primary writer and the primary artist. The reader will have to look at the full review to get the list of the rest of the creative team.

05 March 2005

The beta search page is up: http://www.comiccritique.com/search.html

Very basic, but pretty durn functional. I'll put a link on the home page but leave the "beta" tag on the page for the time being. Eventually I'll plug the search field directly into the sidebar on the home page.

I don't do a lot of error checking here, but I've noticed some differences between how IE and Firefox deal with non-alphanumeric characters like '&' or '+'. IE is (for once) actually nicer: it treats the character as a literal and will simply check the database for character matches for a plus or an ampersand. Firefox, however, translates the special character to its CGI code equivalent (probably not the proper way to refer to it) and the search will likely not get any hits. So that'll be beta version 2: do more processing on the user input and translate wacky characters so they can either be used or discarded.

Also surprising (along with liking IE's behavior) is that MSN Search seems to be our friend. That engine returns hits on ComicCritique.Com like crazy. Try searching on "review runaways comic" and as of this writing we're on the first page of results.

Yahoo comes in second, and Google... Google doesn't yet know we exist unless we type in "comiccritique.com," and so what's the point? Eventually Google will return hits for us, but I bet it'll be a few more months.

04 March 2005

I switch between Linux and Windows the way some people change channels while watching television, which is to say I switch all the time, between programs and between thoughts. One result of this is that as I copy and paste text from one operating system to another there are times when quote characters don't translate. Instead they show up as "?" on Windows systems, and possibly look fine on Linux, I can't remember. Anyway, I just noticed this was the case for Joe's Black Widow review. The solution is to just go in the database and manually delete and retype each single and double quote character. Goes quickly, so it's done now. Also I added in some italics that I should have put in before for book titles.

Also: I updated the CCdC Style Guide with an entry on footnotes.

Finally, I've started work on a simple search routine for the site. We have a bunch of reviews and I think it's worthwhile to have a field on the home page to allow a visitor to search for a review. For the time being it'll be a title only search, possibly I'll add the ability to search for writers and artists. I'll leave a full text search until later.

01 March 2005

I'm busily posting all the excellent reviews I received this week. Of note is Joe D.'s lesson in reading and pronouncing Cyrillic lettering in the footnote of his Black Widow review. Somehow I suspect we are the only comics review site on the planet sporting such information, which I think makes us extremely cool.

As I go through the editing process I often come across an instance where I must research the proper punctuation or capitalization for a word or phrase. I've opted to start a "style" page to basically note the editing choices I made so I can make them consistently. Right now there is only a single entry, but I expect it will grow. There will be some entries that are specific to comicdom, of course, and some will simply be general but relevant entries. The link to the page is http://www.comiccritique.com/ccdc_style.html. I'll begin including the link in the weekly emailings for reference, with the expectation that I'll be adding to it as I go so it will actually become useful.

19 feb 2005

Small but appropriate update. Added two date fields, one for "book released" and other for "review posted." Not only that, I actually wrote a review myself. Superman: Strength #2 has been out for a couple of weeks, but I really wanted to comment on it, so there it is.

15 feb 2005

Whoops, realized that since I've been working with a test perl script I still had not adjusted the script that generates the home page. Had to set the query that extracts reviews to not extract those stories where feature = 1. The single feature I'd put in was showing at the top of the reviews list, broken rating image and all.

14 feb 2005

Took a while, but I finally figured out a workable way to store "features" (as in "feature stories") in the database alongside reviews. I'll ultimately be able to use the same method for news items as well. I had to edit the perl scripts that generate both the review archives and the home page, but I'm at a point now where I can pretty much edit/insert a feature story and have it appear on the home page under the Features heading.

Adding the features section and possibly a news section later might call for an adjustment to the page layout, but one thing at a time.

7 feb 2005

Posted two reviews so far, one from Matt and one from Joe. Sneaking in two more from John in just a few...

2 feb 2005

Just posted the following message to the front page and also to the RSS feed as its own story:

We're Back. After a few weeks' hiatus, CCdC is up and running again. Such is the pain of sites like this; personal events impact the timeliness of the site. New reviews and reviews that were written and turned in over the last three weeks will be posted over the next several days. The newest, most relevant reviews will get posted first, in deference to our readers. Best regards, and thanks for reading and writing. Louis Vitela Editor, ComicCritique.Com

It has been an amazingly difficult few weeks. Get your violin, it's actually a pretty good story. Grandma's death came just as we were packing to move to our new home, the first my wife and I have purchased together. I already had time off of work so we could pack up the old apartment, but now my attention was diverted to the family and the funeral services. I had the honor of speaking at Grandma's graveside service, by the way. While a funeral is never a happy circumstance, it was a very respectful and even uplifting service. Anyway, upon my return, the whole lot of us fell ill with the stomach flu, including our toddler. We were behind in packing and I rescheduled the move for Monday (it had been scheduled for the Friday following the funeral). On the weekend we packed in earnest and it seemed our flu had all but gone. Then on Sunday night my flu resurfaced with a vengeance. I was so weak and tired on Monday (moving day) that we decided I would spend the day convalescing in a hotel, the baby would spend her last day at day care, and my wife would manage the move by herself. So that's what we did. My wife was her usual amazing self and got the job done with flying colors. As of right now we're all moved in (and more importantly, all moved out of the old place), we have high-speed internet connected and working, and there's chips in the cupboard and salsa in the refrigerator. Pretty much all of life's necessities. So that was the tough couple of weeks. Not tsunami-victim tough, but difficult nonetheless. Violins can now be stowed.

16 jan 2005

Some personal news.

My grandmother, Minna Zagoren, passed away in her sleep last night. I'm actually not sure how old she was. Maybe eighty-five. We made a point of visiting them at least once a year at Thanksgiving, and in 2004 we were able to visit twice so our daughter Alejandra could visit her great-grandparents. Here's a photo from our last visit around Thanskgiving 2004, taken poolside at their home.

So long, Grandma.

love, louis, tammy, and ali.

10 jan 2005

08 jan 2005

...Okay, I see it. I ran a query from within a perl script to view all the records in order of entry and spotted record id 56 inserted just after record 49. Not sure why that happened, but at least it's there and editable. I'll research a little more. I'm sure it won't let me overwrite another record with the same ID (I tried).

21 dec 2004

Agh. Just realized that some characters mess up RSS and I neglected to check for them in some recently-posted reviews. The big one is the ampersand (&) which prints fine in HTML, but XML/RSS seem to take exception to it, darnit. Also some "smart quotes" didn't get interpreted correctly when I cut/paste them into the summary field for "Trigger #1," so I corrected that too. Might have to code an extra level of preprocessing for the .rss file, stripping out unknown characters. Or it might be more expedient to just have the RSS feedvalidator at feedvalidator.org just check the thing out for me regularly. Maybe it's possible to automate that. Or I can simply remember to check it manually after every update. There would be almost no coding involved in just using my head.

13 dec 2004

I just tried to insert a review. Did not check the database beforehand so I'm not entirely certain if a change I made caused the error. It does seem to be with the database itself since both the archive and the review perl scripts are failing with the same error.

Off to attempt to run it from the shell prompt...

...Yup, it was me. When I ran the script at the shell prompt it said, "nope, password's wrong you dork." (slight paraphrase.) I had indeed changed the password, but neglected to realized I'd have to adjust the scripts as well. Oh well, all fixed now with minimal downtime.

11 dec 2004

Code update: Added a bit of code to the perl program that generates the main page. It simply slaps a date below the "Changelog" link along with the word "Updated." This is an improvement over me leaving the word "updated" there perpetually but only actually doing changelog updates a few times a month. If a review is added but the changelog is has not been updated, the "Updated" label will be removed altogether.

Idea: I'd like to add a "sign up for our email list" option. I'll simply send out a notification that the site has been updated, a review has been added, or a feature has been added. This will require a privacy policy. It'll read something like this:

This is a privately funded and privately run web publication. Your email will only ever be used by us to send announcements that you personally have requested. We will not sell your email information or allow the list to fall into unsavory non-comic-geek hands. Exception: the day someone comes along and offers to buy ComicCritique.Com for several hundred thousand dollars i'll be SELLING OUT on a moment's notice. When this happens (slightly before world hunger has been cured and slightly after world peace has been attained), my commitment to you is that I'll give you an opportunity to have your email address removed from our list before such a sale completes. How's that for a privacy policy?

2 dec 2004

• Cover image supplied by publisher
  IDW Publishing and Warpton have each offered to send cover images. Nice when the publisher does this because the image often won't have the bar code on it like my scans will. A legal note will appear at the bottom of the review page in red, stating, "Cover image supplied by publisher."
• Cover image used with permission of the publisher
  Devil's Due Publishing (along with their Aftermath imprint) have given us permission to use scanned covers. A legal note will appear at the bottom of the review page in red, stating, "Cover image used with permission of the publisher."
• Cover image used without permission.
  Right now, pretty much everyone else falls under this category. A legal note will appear at the bottom of the review page in red, stating, "Cover image used without permission in accordance with the 'Fair Use' provision of US copyright law."

The final note is that we'll use only scans that we do ourselves. I might even mark the scan with "ComicCritique.Com" somehow to keep it from being used elsewhere. I'm concerned that using images taken from publishers' sites without explicit permission is a different can of copyright worms, so I'm leaving that one alone.

15 nov 2004

Still have a review from John to post still, hopefully will get to that tonight.

6 nov 2004

Let's see, what's a good explanation of syndication? From the user perspective, it allows one to use a program (called an aggregator or a news reader) to read material from any number of sites in one window. In order to be viewed by an aggregator, the web site must provide a specially-formatted RSS file. (I use a Perl script to generate a new one each time the ComicCritique.Com home page is updated.) Although I personally haven't been using news aggregators regularly, they're starting to grow on me. On any given day I like to consult six or seven news sites, which means hitting each one's page and sifting through to find the latest stories. By linking those sites' RSS files to my aggregator I can see all the latest headlines literally at a glance.

In Windows I've been using FeedReader, and in Linux I've been using Liferea. If nothing else it's an interesting exercise from a user standpoint, and I do think it'll generate more traffic for CCdC, so I'm for it.

2 nov 2004

Still haven't heard from the big guys at Marvel or DC, but I likely didn't contact the correct people.

1 nov 2004

Not bad.

To generate more traffic I'm still regularly updating the RSS file in the hopes that Syndic8 will pick us up (which is looking good right now).

I've not heard back from DMOZ (dmoz.org) so it doesn't feel like we'll get a link there.

Now that the pages are being mostly generated, I can probably generate "mobile-only" pages and shop the site to search engines that cater to users who surf via cell phone or handheld computer.

31 oct 2004

Alrighty. Inserted 4 new reviews and it went very very quickly. At this point the home page (index2.html) is being generated by a perl script, but it's done at the command line on the server rather than "dynamically" directly from the perl script to the httpd server. Slightly recoded that program to generate an updated RSS file, saving even more time. Nifty side effect of all this coding: the Archives link is up to date 100 percent of the time, because it's a "SELECT *" query, sorted on the book's title.

I'm at a point now where all I ahve to do is write reviews and insert reviews and the site will be updated in very short order. Cool.

30 oct 2004

Whew!

Okay, we're up and running on a Perl/MySQL thingamabob. Gotta say I don't understand the Perl code a hundred percent, but it's working. My forte has been in the similar (but no longer as widely used) awk. The similarities were enough to see me through the necessary Perl code. And I relied quite heavily on web-based resources for assistance with the Perl DBI database interface module. But it's done, for the most part. (The home page hasn't been completely updated with the Perl links yet, but once the new reviews are posted I'll do that update.)

Improvements:

1. New reviews can be inserted into the database via the web interface my web host provides. It'll accept HTML code. Now I can post a review in probably half the time it took me before.
2. All the review pages have the same "decorations," meaning the same navigation panel and header and colors. This is because all the pages are generated from a single source rather than being manually coded each time.
3. It's darn good to have all the reviews in a database. This will allow for hefty manipulation and queries: "show me all reviews by this reviewer," or "show me all Superman reviews." The new Archive page is a broad query to the database, returning everything and sorting it alphabetically by title.

Some observations:

1. The generated pages definitely come up a little more slowly than just a plain old HTML file. This shouldn't be a surprise, i suppose. The static HTML file is simply there, waiting to be called by a browser. Now when a link is clicked there seems to be a pause while the database is accessed and the HTML page is generated. Not awful, but I certainly notice it.
2. ... that's all I can think of, but it's late.

Imagine I'll bang out a review or three tomorrow.

24 oct 2004

The obvious changes:

1. Added a "star" icon group as a visual aid to the rating system. The stars will be displayed on both the home page and on the review page itself.
2. Added a [new] tag to new review entries on the front page and will leave older reviews on that page for a longer period of time before moving them to the archive page.
3. Probably not as obvious, but added a "CC" icon (for "Comic Critique") that will display in the URL field of web browsers. This was done because many (if not all) browsers hunt for a file called favicon.ico in the root folder of all web sites. since I didn't have this file I was getting a gazillion errors in my web server logs saying "file not found, favicon.ico." so I made one.

20 oct 2004

Still fussing with the look of the site, but I'm slowly coming to something I like. The pain is going back and redoing all the older pages with the new look. Once I settle down with my adjustments I'll go back and fix the older pages.

Adjusted the logo, made it slightly smaller and made "comicbook" into one compound word.

Started recoding the front page. I currently have lots of embedded tables and they're a real pain to read, much less to make adjustments to. In the recode I'll rely much more heavily on the .css file and will be able to reduce the page to three tables, one to hold the header info (logo + quote), one to hold the data (navigation panel on the left and content on the right), and one to hold the footer info (copyright info, feedback email address).

17 oct 2004

Posted the new reviews with the exception of Astro City. Although I have a draft and notes, I jumped in with The Confessional instead. Moved the older reviews to the Reviews Archive page. Will begin sorting them in a few days.

16 oct 2004

Interesting. Just noticed this very page didn't display in IE, but worked fine in Firefox. I spotted a missing <title/> tag in short order. Once added, IE worked just fine. Other changes:

1. Went ahead and changed the css style to use a more standard sans serif (verdana) instead of comc sans ms for the book titles. My own humble opinion, but the simpler style seems to work better.
2. Moved the "it's alive" introductory text and animation to its own page, its_alive.html. The comiccritique.com home page now redirects directly index2.html. I'll likely leave index2.html as the true homepage in anticipation of using the "front door" for messages and the like.
3. Changed the border color of the front page to red. Doesn't look to bad and seems to give the page a more defined space.
4. Changed the table height in the main table definition to 50% from 100%. I might ultimately attempt to code it so the tables stay the same size from page to page.
5. Made a "contacts" page, moved the text that was in the left sidebar to this page.
6. Created a "reviews archive" page but it's still empty. Will work on that today, time permitting.
7. Quickly coded up some awk routines to generate pages for me. Not complete really, but very helpful. Currently they'll generate an entire static page into which I can paste the material that goes in the right column (main body) of the page. I have no plans to create dynamic pages; there's no real need. What I'll eventually do is have a body of html-tagged text (without header/footer/column info) and then run a command like this, if it's a review:
   make_page  type=review  output=flash_214.html
   Along with that I have configuration files that get called by the make_page script. These contain some variables for the given page. I'll be able to replace the contents of the title tag, for example.
8. Finally, while not a change I did begin researching XHTML, which happens to be the current standard for HTML coding as supported by the w3c standards body. The little research I've done suggests that by migrating this site to XHTML will allow it to be more easily viewed on mobile web surfing devices like PDAs and cell phones without me having to maintain an entirely different set of files. Since I'm actually generating the pages now, beginning a migration shouldn't be all that difficult. I'll continue my investigation to see if the migration is truly worthwhile.

13 oct 2004

Added the "It's Alive" animation to the RSS feed, just for fun. Also threw in a "coming reviews" page and added it to the RSS feed.

12 oct 2004

Hacked up an RSS feed, validated it, and submitted it to Syndic8 (http://www.syndic8.com). Also, placed the "RSS Validated" image on the left column of the home page (index2.html) which links to the validator cgi at www.feedvalidator.org. Neat. Oh, feed ID on Syndic8 is 206087. Could be several hours before it's accepted, and i'm not sure acceptance is guaranteed, but it's certainly worth a try. The xml file is http://www.comiccritique.com/ccdc.rss and I'll update it manually when the site is updated.

Next step: make a mobile version of each page. Shouldn't be too hard. I'll be able to automate that before too long, once I know what I'm doing.

11 oct 2004

Added a short colophon page.

10 oct 2004

9:45pm
Just fiddling a bit with the page. Tweaks here and there. I adjusted the style to do away with the "Trebuchet MS" font. Shouldn't have too many different fonts on a single page. Now it's just verdana and comic sans ms.

3:06pm
Live! Good thing too, time to run and get started with the day.

1:18pm
I've missed my Noon deadline but still making good progress. About to post the updated index2.html and this changelog. Still have to format the actual reviews.

10:54am
Agh. The baby's up from her nap. We'll see if ye olde "Baby Einstein" video can keep her distracted long enough for me to finish this stuff.

10:25am EDT
Trying like heck to get this up and going before we get too far into the afternoon. At this time I've settled on the format for the home page (called index2.html) and for the reviews. There will almost certainly be adjustments to both as we go, but we're in a good starting place.

Also, in a fit of creativity and amusement I threw together the "it's alive" animation to provide a little comicbookish fanfare for the site. To do: add a "skip this stuff" link to the bottom of each of those pages.

To do list as of right now:

1. Add the "skip" link to the "it's alive" pages
2. Add a lengthier "welcome" note under the "it's alive" header on the home page.
3. Post at least the three reviews I have from the writers (will post a few more tonight)
4. When ready, redirect the home page (index.html) to the first "it's alive" page. That's the very last thing, indicating we're officially up.
5. It's Sunday --- some on-line stores (like midtowncomics) should have the list of stuff that will be out on Wednesday, can already see if there will be anything worth reviewing.

Longer-term to do list:

1. Determine CCdC "house style." I like Joe's assertion that perhaps "comicbook" is preferable over "comic book." This sort of thing is important; a serious publication should have good, consistent standards even on such details.
2. Install a perl calendar for comic release dates, esp. of those we might want to review. Also will be interesting to include dates of local comic cons (there's a show today that i won't be able to attend, for example).