Publishing An Internet Magazine:
Controlled Circulation Publications In An Uncontrolled Medium
by
Michael Hayward
B.Sc., University of British Columbia, 1976
Table of Contents
Part 1 - Publishing on the Internet
1.1 - Introduction
1.2 - The World Wide Web as publication medium
1.2.1 - From products to services
1.2.2 - Demographics of the World Wide Web
1.3 - Webzines within the Internet marketplace
1.3.1 - The marketplace without a means of exchange
1.3.2 - Advertising models on the World Wide Web
1.3.3 - "Other" sources of revenue
1.4 - Conclusions
Part 2 - A case study - Hip Communications and the
Hip Webzine
2.1 - The role of the
Hip Webzine
within the company
2.2 - Areas of responsibility during the internship
2.2.1 -
Hip Webzine
production
2.2.1.1 - Rationalizing the
Webzine
production process
2.2.1.2 - HTML markup of
Webzine
material
2.2.1.3 - Restructuring the Focus catalog
2.2.2 - Analysis of Web server logfile data
2.3 - The components of the
Hip Webzine
2.3.1 - The cover page
2.3.2 - The page of information on Hip
2.3.3 - The
Webzine
"tour"
2.3.4 - The
Webzine
's mailing list
2.3.5 - The Hip persona
2.3.6 -
Webzine
departments
2.3.7 -
Webzine
articles, columns and columnists
2.3.8 - Sponsorship and advertising on the
Webzine
2.4 - The extraction and analysis of
Webzine
logfile data
2.4.1 - Extraction of relevant data
2.4.1.1 - The "sessions.pl" script
2.4.1.2 - The "transit.pl" script
2.4.1.3 - The "hipstats.pl" script
2.4.2 - Limiting assumptions and conditions
2.4.3 - Analysis and interpretation of the data
2.4.4 - Hypotheses
2.5 - The future of the
Webzine
2.6 - Conclusions
2.7 - List of References
Appendix A - Production of the
Hip Webzine
Appendix B - Perl scripts for WWW logfile analysis
The "sessions.pl" script
The "transit.pl" script
The "hipstats.pl" script
Appendix C - Sample logfile records
Appendix D - Sample output from the Perl scripts
A sample of the ".ssn" output file, generated by the "sessions.pl" script
A sample of the ".pgs" output file, generated by the "sessions.pl" script
A sample of the ".trs" output file, generated by the "transit.pl" script
A sample of the reports generated by the "hipstats.pl" script
Appendix E - A Rationale for WWW Server Metrics Gathering
Assumptions
Recommendations
Suggested metrics to be gathered by Hip's WWW server
Page-based metrics
Session-based metrics
Link-based metrics
User-based metrics
Appendix F - To Be (Hip), or Not To Be?
Pros
Cons
General recommendations
Production recommendations
Figures
Figure 1 - The Real Estate Weekly home page
Figure 2 - A simple HTML example
Figure 3 - A
Webzine
page after layout redesign
Figure 4 - Diagram showing the structure of the
Hip Webzine
Figure 5 - Part 1 of the
Hip Webzine
cover page
Figure 6 - Part 2 of the
Hip Webzine
cover page
Figure 7 - Part 3 of the
Hip Webzine
cover page
Figure 8 - Part 4 of the
Hip Webzine
cover page
Figure 9 - The original topology of the
Webzine
tour pages
Figure 10 - Graph of
Webzine
newÐsubscription requests
Figure 11 - Sample message from "Jane" announcing Issue 8 of the
Hip Webzine
Figure 12 - Graph of average total page hits per day on Hip's Web server
Figure 13 - Graph of the number of sessions per day on Hip's Web server
Figure 14 - Graph showing average session length: duration and number of pages
Figure 15 - Graph of hits on the
Webzine
cover page and the first page of the
Webzine
tour
Figure 16 - Graph showing hits on the various
Webzine
tour pages
Figure 17 - Graph comparing hits on the
Webzine
cover and the two most popular columns
Tables
Table 1 - Links on the first
Webzine
tour page
Table 2 -
Webzine
subscription activity, from "Majordomo" reports
Table 3 - Table of selected Hip Web server logfile statistics
M. Pub Project Report. Copyright December, 1995 Michael Hayward
