Online Magazines as Websites

[Menard]

Well, it certainly isn't a new type of website. It is basically just another website, but with the pages setup like parts of a magazine (articles, editorial, classifieds, etc.).

My original idea for an online magazine was http://fue7.com (I recently discovered that I need to correct the home links on all subsequent pages as I originally had a different homepage, then renamed the file but forgot to update the links.

The Fue7 site is an online car magazine, the same as http://carfixdaily.com (I explained in another thread as to how duplicate sites came about) except that Fue7 still needs some work to get some of the features up and running.

The advantages I perceived to setting up a site as an online magazine were primarily in having regularly updated content. Feeds are available for a variety of content including articles, comics, news, and even classified ads. Weekly, or even daily, a visitor can find fresh content on the magazine.


My next magazine is Photography Bench; seems fitting .

I already have a resource of my own photography articles. Amazines offers a service where you can have a regular feed of articles from their site, and selectable by topic.

I don't know about an editorial for it yet. I could use a blog script with an option for readers to reply; kind of like letters to the editor.

The classifieds is the more difficult feed to find. Though I can easily find remote classifieds, having dealt with several of them already for the Fue7 site I have discovered most of them want to take the reader off the site, rather than opening a new page.


Some of the advantages I perceive a magazine oriented site to offer:

1) As mentioned, fresh content on a weekly to daily basis.

2) You can choose to fully automate the site or add your own content if you choose.

3) Navigation is user friendly as most everybody reads magazines and knows what editorial, classifieds, articles, buyer's guide, and so on, mean.

4) You don't have to be an expert on the subject to have an online magazine about it. I am not an expert on cars, but I have an online magazine about cars. Of course, the photography magazine is different as I am an expert on that.

5) The time involved in building an online magazine is not that much; one can be completed in a matter of hours, if even that much.


There are two reasons why I started considering orienting sites to be online magazines. One is that I deal with magazines on a regular basis as a merchandiser who stocks them (the dang things haunt me in my sleep ). The other, and more pervasive, is with my heavy work schedule I have not been able to commit much time to my regular projects, and when I do get a little time, pounding at the same project is wearing. Developing a new site, but one which does not take a lot of work, offers something different, and feels like some sort of accomplishment actually completing a project, and in a short time.


These online magazine sites like what I am working on are not anything new, and really not anything different; a basic site fed by remote content and perhaps some interactive content as well. The main difference is, I guess, from my perspective as a webmaster and using the idea of a magazine as a concept for a site; it's more in how it aids in the development of a site than it is in the site itself.


There is a magazine site I have for a future project, but it is going to be quite different as I am writing all of the content for it, and it will be more focused toward its subject (I will not comment on the subject). That one really doesn't count in my magazine sites as I am building it as a fan of a particular type of magazine I had collected over the years.


Really don't know what the purpose of this thread was (I heard that).