Newsletter Changes: Imminent

I can't imaging what my life would be like if I didn't know how to program in PERL.

Side note: PERL stands for Practical Extraction and Reporting Language, and is a robust programming language frequently used for creating programs that run on web servers. (Source: wmo.ch) Perl's elaborate support for regular expression matching and substitution has made it the language of choice for tasks involving string manipulation. The language's highly flexible syntax and concise regular expression operators, make densely written PERL code indecipherable to the uninitiated. The syntax is, however, really quite simple and powerful and, once the basics have been mastered, a joy to write. (Source: hyperdictionary.com)

RE: Newsletter article conversion: 99% complete

I spent the greater part of my weekend sitting in front of the computer making changes to my "newsletter converter" program. I am essentially finished the project, except I need to iron out a few bugs so that I can export the changes into a template file. Unless I run into major complications, this shouldn't take any more than the rest of today to complete.

After that, I'll need to adjust the "newsletter delivery" program so that it can read and parse the new newsletter layout (in HTML format). I'll also need to write another program to search and replace old newsletter link references in the new layout, as it wouldn't make sense to have visitors clicking links to reference old newsletters.

When it's all said and done, I think you'll find the new layout extremely appealing. One of the changes I made to the layout (over the weekend) was to extract the top 3 keyword references from the article and create a keyword link to our search engine, so that users can research related topics of interest on our site.

RE: More changes ... soon?

With the advent of the new layout, I'm really tempted at this point to push forward with the "visitor comments" program that will allow Readers to respond publicly to articles -- but I've also got other projects on the burner (such as the "affiliate click-tracker" program I started a few weeks ago).

I guess we'll just have to wait and see, as it seems that I don't have much time for anything these days. I will certainly keep everyone posted!