Web presence for a print magazine

[nakebrown]

I am a small publisher of a business magazine and interested in having a strong online presence where I can attract fresh audience to my print publication.

I know there are lots of self-publishing solutions out there in the market and need to find out the right solution that will help me enhance my current presence. Probably a service which includes creating a great website with current theme of my magazine and also drive traffic from other online sources like search engines etc

That's it so far! I'm sure I'll have a ton of questions later on, but this forum is so helpful, I'm sure I'll find my answers.
Thank you

[crystalwizard]

Hi . If you didn't already do so, please post a hello thread in the introduce yourself forum. Then take a look through the publisher forums. There are several of us that have magazines which you might want to look at for inspiration.

New content added on a regular basis.

Visit Abandoned Towers at
http://cyberwizardproductions.com/AbandonedTowers

[Jordan Lapp]

My advice is to get wordpress on a self-hosted site. You will need a little technical expertise either way.

Jordan Lapp
Managing Editor, Every Day Fiction
First Place Winner, Writers of the Future Q3 2008
Visit my blog, Without Really Trying

[billygibson]

If you?re planning to make your print magazine as a digital magazine, then the best delivery method I would suggest you to outsource to a company like http://www.pressmart.net , their digital applications simply convert printed magazines - into identical digital versions for online use.

[lin]

I agree with the blog idea. A blog script can be adapted to do almost anything a regular site can do and once set up is much easier to add to...as easy as posting on this forum.

Jordan Lapp's personal site above is a great example

Wordpress is the king of the blogs, but I find it hard to work with. I use Nucleus, which does all I want it to in the way I want to do things.

There are hundreds of skins and templates for it, allowing you to customize it easily.

See these blogs on my sites are all running off the same copy of nucleus with different skins, which I customized pretty easily. Click 'Home' from the first two and notice that they are customized to present the same appearance the rest of the site

linrobinson.com/linrob.php


adorobooks.com/bulletins/adoro.php

slang101.com/nucleus/

These were for a project that never got of the ground
Notice that the second one is a blog adapted to serve as site search engine


linrobinson.com/blog.php


linrobinson.com/prayer.php

LINTON ROBINSON.com</font>

MAKE YOUR OWN BOOK PROMO VIDEOS FOR FREE</font>

[lin]

Choosing skins, by the way, is a lot of the thing with blogs. You're not looking for the ones that looks nice because you will change the colors and graphics later.

The main thing you're looking for is your target configuration. I think the ones that run down the center of the page look lame, so I go for a full page setup because it's a lot of trouble to change that.

Also, know what you are going to do in advance and you can pick a wide or narrow header, and two, three or four column set up. This makes it much easier.
For instance the blog on my site linrobinson.com above uses this Nucleus skin:

skins.nucleuscms.org/browser/1024px
I picked it for it's simplicity, hackability and logical 2 column layout.

Nucleus has support forums where you can ask questions and get tips. I assume wordpress does also.

In your position, I think I would get the blog skin and setup I want, carefully choose categories to accomplish my purpose, then design a 'splash page' for the magazine based on the blog appearance: it's much easier to match a page to a blog than vice versa. A a regular html or php page whose navigation links lead to various categories of blog listings. And is the anchor for your links, directory registrations, etc.

I would design that splash page in horizontal format, like a computer screen. I can't BELEIVE how many eZines slavishly imitate print magazines with vertical page format. And seem to think they are stuck with words and pictures, when they could be having flash and videos and all sorts of cool stuff.

Anyway,

Good luck

LINTON ROBINSON.com</font>

MAKE YOUR OWN BOOK PROMO VIDEOS FOR FREE</font>

[lin]

BTW
If you are doing an online business magazine I would strongly suggest that you haunt this UK forum for awhile if you don't already know it.

forums.internetbusiness.co.uk/

Great info on business/SEO/site design/etc from pros who know their onions.

The owner, Brian, also has a very cool SF site called Chronicles. And I say that even though they banned me for no other reason the being a jerk.
www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/index.php


Us jerks need love, too, dammit.

LINTON ROBINSON.com</font>

MAKE YOUR OWN BOOK PROMO VIDEOS FOR FREE</font>