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Starting and running a club magazine in the digital age - options? thoughts?


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I want to resurrect my club's newsletter  .... it fell out of use when a weekly club email gave all the hard news..... so this will be more of a amagzine ainmed at club members rather than a NEWSletter.

 

So there is virtually no budget as this will be internet based rather than being printed and distributed/posted.

 

So it seems ther are two possible routes ...

 

1. Email it out as an attachment but this limits its size ....... is it 15kb?    

 

2. Post it on a site that people can visit with a code.

 

I think route 1 limits the size of photos so that if anyone did want to print it off as a hard copy the photos would be awful.

 

I want something that can be 'done' easily and quickly as I have no experience/skill in producing newsletter and I have very little time .... any thoughts?

 

 

Paul

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Your email attachment will be able to be much larger than 15kb. You should get away with up to about 10mb. If you select your photos carefully and make them a sensible size this should be fine. I would also suggest saving as a pdf. 

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Depending on the e-mail provider the limit on size of attachment is likely to be at least 5Mb rather than 15kb. Therefore there shouldn't be any problem about e-mailing it.

 

The other approach is something like the new Brighton Circle electronic Modellers' Digest. See http://www.lbscr.org/models/journal/index.html 

 

There is plenty of cheap software for producing things like this. The HMRS uses Serif Page Plus. I suspect that you could use Microsoft Publisher but I have not hard good reports of it. Or you could perhaps do it in Powerpoint if you don't want to buy anty software.

 

There are plenty of free website providers if you want to do it that way. I am not sure about making it closed circulation as I have never wanted to, but unless you publicise the address you are not likely to get many people finding it. I ran a free website for students when I was working abroad. I used www.webs.com.

 

Jonathan

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I think you will find that the 10MB file size (or is it 15MB) is the total - so, if you have five photos, they can be only 2 or 3MB each.  Still quite good for printing but you would need to leave a small amount of space for narrative etc.  I regularly send photos by email to a magazine publisher (not related to model railways) and have to send them 2 or 3 at a time.

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Your email attachment will be able to be much larger than 15kb. You should get away with up to about 10mb. If you select your photos carefully and make them a sensible size this should be fine. I would also suggest saving as a pdf. 

 

Sorry, I meant 15mb not 15kb .... you can tell I'm not technical !!

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Paul.

 

Having published my club's newsletter for the last few years perhaps I can offer a few pointers.
 
Software
I started by using Serif Pageplus SE [starter Edition] which is free, but has a 5 page limit. Generally this wasn't an issue, but it did cause a problem with one edition and I now use Scribus which is an open source program and also free.

 

Format & Publishing

I send out our newsletter by email as a pdf and also put a copy on the member's section of the club's website. Pageplus SE cannot output pdfs and I used to 'print' them using another free program Primopdf. Scribus can, however, export a pdf. Our Newsletter is usually two A4 sides and as a pdf gives a file size of between 700 - 2000kb depending on photographs and whether you optimise for print or screen and I haven't had any problem emailing this file size. In addition to the email version I also have to print off a number of copies for those members without computers.

 

I don't want to discourage you, but unless you intend to write the whole thing yourself, you will find the hardest job is getting content from other people; I wish you well.

 

Jeremy

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If the pdf ends up larger than comfortable for emailing, you can upload the file to a file sharing site. I use 'box' which is free up to a certain data allowance. You then email the link to your members to download at their leisure. A useful backup/archive too.

 

C6T.

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Create it as a PDF, post it to your club's website and e-mail the link. It gets around the size problem so you can make it as big as you like, PDFs always look the same whatever they are viewed on and can be easily printed, and as has been mentioned you get an automatic archive on the club website. Good luck in getting members to send you content!

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I use Serif Pageplus for compiling our club magazine and then convert it to a .pdf file in the save feature. There are various options when saving including quality, such that colour photos can be saved at anywhere between 96dpi and 600dpi the former producing quite a reasonable size file. For example the latest edition of the magazine which included a lot of photos was 12 pages and came out as 3.8mb file for emailing (150dpi). The same file for paper printout (300dpi, high quality) was a much bigger 18.4mb file.

 

The latest version of Pageplus is designated X8, cost about £85 but earlier versions are more than adequate and can be found much cheaper (or even free!).

 

Mal

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The latest version of Pageplus is designated X8, cost about £85 but earlier versions are more than adequate and can be found much cheaper (or even free!).

 

Mal

As noted in post #6, Scribus will do pretty much everything Page plus will do and is free all the time.

Regards

Keith

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