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25th September 2017

ZineDB: Instructions

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABOUT ZINEDB

About ZineDB

Like Ebay, many websites let people sell items to each other. They have no inventory.

In this category ZineDB is a magazine trading website. We aim to make magazine sales liquid, easily sold and bought, and at the same time build up a much-needed magazine database. (If you've been on Amazon, you'll see that putting in a magazine name plus the word 'magazine', simply fails to find anything remotely magazine-ey. This is because though books have a centralised database, magazines don't).

We're not talking just magazines from the past 5 years, but all general periodical publications since the 18th century. Typically 'legal' or 'A4' size.

We won't let you sell books, however. There are plenty of websites to let you do that.

Now to describe how it all works...

Database

Basically, there is a database. If you list (or 'sell') an issue, you are asked for data about that issue, and that data goes in the database. However, you can voluntarily submit data to the database.

We want to build up a database of the following tables:

Articles These are magazine articles
Authors The writers of articles
Issues Individual issues of magazines
Magazines Data about a magazine, which is published by a publisher, and comprises a number of issues. This is called a 'Title' internally, but you see it referred to as 'Magazine'.
Pages Data about individual pages
Publishers Data about the companies that sell magazines

Buyers and Sellers

There are 2 roles: Seller and Buyer. A Seller lists items and sets the price. The Buyer searches for the magazines they want to find. If they find an item and like the price, there is a sale from the Seller to the Buyer. Payment by Paypal or Bitcoin. One clever idea is that of specifying countries in your listings. Someone in Sweden posting a magazine to Sweden, is obviously cheaper than from Sweden to Britain.

Listing Fees

There are no listing fees. This is because if we charged 10% commission, if you sell the magazine 10 times, it becomes worthless. We prefer to leave these items as forever valuable.

Fixed Shipping

Shipping costs are estimated by the ZineDB founder taking a generic magazine to the post office and getting it weighed, from the United Kingdom to within the United Kingdom. This is then fixed as the price of shipping a magazine within the UK.

Say the generic cost of UK to UK is £1.50. The seller thus cannot charge more or less - for posting 1 issue - than £1.50.

This means you don't get scammed on shipping: There is neither free postage nor high-cost postage.

Mobile Support

We have made sure the site is usable on mobile devices and screen readers (or old browsers).

The menu at the top can be turned into a list menu by clicking here.

When submitting an issue, you can take a photo of the magazine's front cover with your phone, and upload it to the website, no trouble!

Finally, all forms and search results can be simply scrolled left or right. If you switch the aspect ratio to landscape, it almost all fits horizontally.

USERNAMES & LOGGING IN

When you register for an account on ZineDB - which allows you to submit data and sell magazines - You give us a username and password, and email address, and if we approve of your application, we make your account live.

Once live, you login via the front page. Enter your username and password. It says 'Remember Me'. If you don't tick this, closing your browser logs you out (cookies are cleaned out). If you do tick it, your login lasts about a year (cookies last a year).

When done, click 'Logout'. This clears all cookies from the system and takes you back to the front page to either login again, or just browse and do those searches which don't require being logged in.

ABOUT THE DATABASE

(All database tables are (c) 2017 ZineDB).

As we saw above, there are 6 database tables in the database. These are their descriptions:

Article

MagazineThe name of the magazine the article is from.
Issue NumberThe issue. Issue 1 is the first issue.
Volume NumberThe volume, which is typically 1 volume per year.
PageThe page number of the article's first page.
AuthorThe name of the author of the article (say, Jenkins).
TitleNot the magazine, but the title of the article.
SummaryA description of the article (longer than the title).
Public DomainIs this article freely copyable?
URLThe URL pointing to the text of the article.

Author

NameName of the author.
EmailEmail of the author.
BirthdayBirthday of the author (as a date).

Issues

MagazineTitle of the magazine (eg, 'Red Herring').
Issue NumberThe issue. Issue 1 is the first issue.
Volume NumberThe volume, which is typically 1 volume per year.
PageThe number of pages in this issue.
Issue DateThe date when the issue came out
Cover Media1 for a cover CD/DVD/disk/tape, 0 for nothing
PriceOriginal price of the issue
Public DomainIs the whole of this issue freely copyable?
ISSNThe ISSN number
URLA URL to this issue online
Torrent URLA URL to a torrent of this issue
Filename in TorrentThe filename to a file in the above torrent
Front coverUpload a JPEG of the front cover

Magazines

MagazineTitle of the magazine (eg, 'Red Herring').
PublisherPublisher of the magazine (eg 'Newsfield').
Public DomainIs this magazine - all its issues- freely copyable?
Launch DateDate of the 1st issue
URLOfficial website of the magazine.
TorrentA URL to a torrent of this magazine

Pages

MagazineTitle of the magazine (eg, 'Red Herring').
Issue NumberThe issue. Issue 1 is the first issue.
Volume NumberThe volume, which is typically 1 volume per year.
Page NumberThe number of the page in question.
AdvertIs this page an advert?
Public DomainIs the text of this page freely copyable?
URLA URL pointing to the text - or an image or PDF - of this page.
Torrent URLA torrent pointing to this page.
Torrent FilenameAbove torrent has this page in this filename.

Publishers

NameName of the publisher (eg, 'Newsfield').
PhonePhone number of the publisher (eg, 290 200 3939).
CountryCountry the publisher resides in (Eg, 'USA')
StateCounty or state the publisher resides in (Eg, 'California')
CityEg, Los Angeles
ZipEg NY 20000
StreetEg, Wall Street
EmailEg, contact@magazine.com
FaxFax number
URLPublisher's official (or unofficial) website.

ADDING AN ISSUE ON YOUR PC

It's not as easy as with a mobile phone.

First, go through steps 1-4 below.

You can scan the front cover of the magazine with a flatbed scanner, and then hit 'Browse'. You then navigate My Computer to find the scanned image.

The 2nd way is with a digital camera. Again, hit 'Browse'. Take a photo of the front cover, then plug the camera into the PC, go to My Computer, then the name of the camera, and go in folder 'DCIM'. Or, you can take the SD card out of the camera and pop that in your PC, then navigate My Computer to find it.

Once the front cover is done, continue below at step 7.

ADDING AN ISSUE ON YOUR MOBILE PHONE IN 10 EASY STEPS

It's simple!

  1. Go to Add Issue
  2. Click 'Toggle Optional Fields'
  3. Tick the 'Tick here to upload the selected image'
  4. Click the button Browse
  5. Click 'Camera'
  6. Take a photo of the front cover
  7. Fill out the Magazine textbox
  8. Fill out the Issue Number textbox
  9. Fill out the Volume Number textbox
  10. Click 'Add Issue'

Now the issue is in the database, you can sell it here.

HOW TO SELL AN ISSUE

Menu Sell -> Add Issues for Sale
Next, to filter out issues you want to sell, refine the search fields:
Next, choose the issue you want to sell:
Now put in the data regarding the issue you are selling (note: Issue ID is filled in automatically):
Click Sell Issue and You're Done!

Just a note: The 'Sell Issue' table has a field called 'Upload Table of Contents'. You take a photo or scan the magazine's table of contents, and upload this. Basically, it is an anti-fraud protection system.

MENU ITEMS

How To Use:Instructions for the website.
Search: Search any of the tables in the database, with a form to indicate the search parameters.
Add: Lets you add a table row to the indicated database table. A form is filled in, and if the data is adequate, the row is added to the indicated table.
Buy: Every page relevant to purchasing items.
Sell: Every page relevant to selling items.
Contact: Contact the site administrator
Account: All to do with logging in and out. And also, to register a new user if none exists.

ABOUT OPTIONAL FIELDS

Basically, this unhides a bunch of text boxes (or 'fields').

When you add to the database, all the fields you can see are mandatory in that you MUST supply all the data there. Everything else - when toggled - is optional. You don't have to supply any data in those, it's optional.

When you search, it says 'Optional fields' but really it means, the fields you can see let you search minimally, but the extra fields will show data that NOT EVERYONE has submitted. In other words, you'll be searching for data which will be less frequent than the mandatory fields, so you won't get as many hits.

SEARCHING DATA

If you put nothing in any search field - like the Author name - it just finds every author as the results.

This is the same for all search forms.

ABOUT ADDING DATA

Every submission to the database, stores the user ID of the person to submit that entry - and stores the time & date of the submission.

This person can view all their own submissions, and there are a few hyperlinks on the right of the table:

The 'Required' fields mean that you have to have valid data in every one of these slots to be considered valid.

If the 'Required' field is bold, this means that those bold entries are considered a 'duplicate'. If a submission is made twice, it will tell you that the item already exists.

Eg, the publisher form has these minimal fields:

Here, the name 'Red Herring' and the country 'USA' will constitute a duplicate if both match the existing database entry.

ABOUT DELETING DATA

It's easy to delete any of your submissions.

You must be logged in.

To delete any item you have on sale, go to Menu Sell -> See My Issues on Sale. Click 'Delete' on right-hand side of the screen to delete a single item.

To delete an item from your shopping cart, go to Menu Buy -> View My Shopping Cart. Click 'Delete' on right-hand side of the screen to delete a single item.

To delete anything else you have submitted, go to Menu Account -> See All My Submissions. Click 'Delete' on right-hand side of the screen to delete a single item.

You can't delete more than 1 item at a time. This will be fixed soon.

SELLING

You will be selling issues, a physical copy of a magazine. You cannot buy or sell pages, articles, or (in the collective sense) magazines.

It's free to sell, and there are no transaction fees.

  1. First, list the item
  2. You, or anyone else, can now sell that item you listed
  3. You put the item on sale
  4. Someone searches for your item, finds it, and clicks 'Buy'
  5. They are told to Paypal you the issue cost + postage
  6. You are emailed that someone is selling your copy of the magazine, and how much to expect via Paypal
  7. They pay you via Paypal
  8. You post the item
  9. They receive the item
  10. You leave positive feedback and so do they

COOKIES

A cookie is a bit of data in your browser on your computer, which stores data securely, that a program on this website can read and write.

Our cookies are:

  1. username: This is your username
  2. password: This is your MD5 encoded password
  3. user: This just tells the system who's logged in.

Every page of ZineDB accesses these cookies without revealing any personal data or even the username or password.

No script will clash with each other script using the same cookies.

Because of this cookie use, you can skip between pages - and always click on the 'Back' button - without worrying about breaking something.

SECURITY

You'll be pleased to know that we have SSL enabled, so all your transactions are secure, and safe from prying eyes.

Make sure there's a little green padlock left of the URL.

Make sure it says 'https' not 'http' as the 's' means it's secure.


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