Seriously, though, whats your site running on? there's got to be a way to import the content!
-iphigenie
New site is Wordpress.
Old site is a badly coded static HTML page that was originally a saved HTML copy of an email I sent someone with all the original links. It's just a list of book titles and URLs.
This whole site began by accident from a simple text file of titles & links I originally made for the benefit of visitors to my chatroom that were looking for stuff to learn from. I never intended to turn it into a website when I started the list. If I had, I would have done it properly, right from the beginning. The static HTML page was a rush job to put the links online for someone else I gave the list to. (the whole history of the site is
here)
It has to be done manually because on the new site it's not just a list of book titles with links any more.
Each book needs a post with more info than the original site provided, title, author, file format of book, description, list of chapters, link to site, multiple relevant tags (on old site a book was listed in one section only, even if it could have fallen into multiple categories).
I don't know of any automated way to fetch all that data and create a post from it (properly formatted) that will work for every type of book format, especially ones that require reading a bit of the book first to get the info.
It's not a matter of importing the original data and it's done...if it were, it would be easy and I'd be finished with it already.
Being honest about it, this would be best done by a group of people that knew what they were looking at, and could handle writing good descriptions. I
asked for volunteers to help, but everyone that offered quit on me, most after making their first post.
I have found myself pushing a number of books to the bottom of my todo list because they don't have descriptions that make any sense to a normal person and the subject matter is too over my head to be able to easily write one myself (books on Ada, for example).
On a good day, I can do about 2-3 books per hour.
Actually, donating $1 to someone on this site who deserves it is not enough of a punishment...
I could imagine that it's like "hmm, if i am lazy today then some worthy person gets a dollar" - maybe too easy to make procrastinating positive.
-iphigenie
As far as the donating $1 being not enough of a punishment, the funds are limited, they will run out fast if I do too much procrastinating. (And there is the other part of the punishment, publicly showing off my laziness, added to it).
Psychologists will tell you that rewards work better than punishments. Every time you fail and have to pay a dollar you're reinforcing negative feelings. It would be better to put a dollar aside every time you post and spend the money on something nice when you've achieved a certain milestone.
-longrun
There is also a positive reinforcement factor if I do make the posts...increase in the amount I get from Adsense, which will be more if I make the posts.
My goal is to have enough to get my first Adsense check before I have to pay for the hosting of the site. I am hoping to be able to pay for it without reaching into my pocket this year, using the ebooks site to cover the costs of the book site itself, my sites, and the free hosting I provide for a few worthwhile educational projects (all on a single account).
So I have plenty of positive incentives to do this, above & beyond the project itself being worthwhile. And so far the positive ones haven't worked as a good motivating factor to push me to really get going & finishing it.
