Part 2: Using an ISSN for Your Design Blog: How Do I Get One?

ThisIsInspired — Tue, 04 May 2010 18:17:19 +0000

So a few weeks ago ThisIsInspired explored the pros and cons (well, pros and con) of acquiring an ISSN number for your design blog. How do you go about getting one for your blog, though? In this next installment, I’ll show you how to get an ISSN for your blog and start enjoying those benefits.

NOTE: While the process is the same for any periodical publication, we’ll consider it from the standpoint of an online, digital serial.

First, How Much Does It Cost?

Getting an ISSN number for any publication, whether you’re MacAddict or ThisIsInspired (eg, big or small, millions of readers or just a few thousand) you still have to apply to the Library of Congress to have a number assigned and the record established.

And the BIG surprise is that for a government agency, getting an ISSN assignment doesn’t cost anything. There is no cost for the number and no cost for the paperwork required to file it. Apparently, the Library of Congress has only the highest educational ideals and feels at no cost it may encourage more people to write and teach.

How Long Does It Take?

Here’s where things get more governmental and official. Any paperwork that needs doing always takes a while, even when you do it yourself. Having someone else do it takes more time, and having a government office do it, well…

When I filed for an ISSN assignment last October for this magazine, if expected it would take a few weeks at the earliest, kind of like a file-taxes-early-yet-still-wait-six-weeks type of thing.

It took about seven or eight weeks for a reply to get back to me. I was just starting to think my application hadn’t been approved and they simply didn’t contact the rejects.

So you file, and then you just have to wait. Make sure you plan around this wait time if you need your ISSN for a certain publication date. Incorporate enough time for slow downs or hang ups in between as well.

What Actually Happens When I Request an ISSN?

When you submit your application for an ISSN, someone on the other end (imagine Michael Palin in “Brazil”) receives the application and then checks out the blog to see if it matches the other information you’ve provided. From their dimly lit, smoke-filled government office (or maybe they just work in a cubicle and eat donuts), they make sure the blog itself, if it’s already in publication, lines up with what you say it does, publishes what you say it does, and doesn’t violate any laws. If you’re awaiting an ISSN prior to publishing, they’ll at least verify what information you provide and do their best to make sure it’s accurate. Just because it’s free doesn’t mean it’s easy or they can be sloppy about it.

if you haven’t started publication of your blog yet while you wait for the ISSN, attach mockups or article samples with the application when you email it in. They need to review the content itself as part of the approval process, and obviously if you haven’t published anything yet they’ll have no content to read. Send in two or three samples of what content you’ll be publishing.

If you’ve checked and double-checked your application before sending it in, there’s no reason to suspect it will be rejected or they’ll have a problem accepting it.

What Happens Next?

You wait.

But don’t be inactive! In the meantime, it’s best that you stay busy keeping track of your blog, interacting with your visitors, building repartee and encouraging link ups and feedback. Spend the time writing and publishing new articles, building your Twitter list, Facebook group, Flickrstream, etc. Anything to let people know you’re in publication – even if the ISSN isn’t there yet.

If you’re waiting for an ISSN assignment before you begin publishing, by all means spend extra time organizing what content you already have line up. Proof your articles, check spelling, grammar, images, and links. Work up a few interviews, build a backlog of scheduled articles, etc. Don’t sit idle waiting for the government!

How Long Does An ISSN Registration Last?

Unlike other registrations – for cars, for patents, for copyrights, etc – ISSN registrations do not need renewal. Once you receive your number you’re golden, at least until you make any minor change to your publication.

The instant you change anything from the title (even just a little bit) to the direction you take your articles and writing, you have to reapply and get an entirely new ISSN. Every time you make a change, you get a new one and repeat this process. But this isn’t a problem at all if you know where you’re going with your blog before you request an ISSN.

Where Do I Get An ISSN?

Here’s the big question, and the big answer. To file an application, you download the PDF form the Library of Congress website, fill it out, and email it back to them. It’s painless and you can do it all on your computer, no printer required. Here’s the link for the application form in PDF:

ISSN Application Form

Once you have the form filled out (just one page, so it doesn’t take much time), email it back to the Library of Congress at this email address:

issn@loc.gov

It’s that simple! Once you’ve finished the application process, you’ll need to know where to put it. You can hardly start plastering it all over the place willy-nilly – the ISSN needs to be more prominent than a TM symbol or copyright mark, but of course can’t be so overwhelming that your existing brand or identity suffers. In the the next installment, I’ll demonstrate practical, effective ways to implements your new ISSN and shows examples from popular blogs that do it right.

Thanks for reading This Is Inspired! Catch more inspiration online at ThisIsInspired.com and share comments and feedback.

Quick: Dynamically Open External Links in a New Window

ThisIsInspired — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 14:58:21 +0000

Since I began writing HTML ten years ago, I hated using target=“blank” in my markup. Coupled with the fact that if you’re using a strict DOCTYPE the target method is invalid anyway, I began looking for an easy way to open only external links in a new window (and I realize there are pros and cons of doing this). Using this jQuery technique, each link is tested to check if it’s local or not, or alternatively in the second method only opening links in a new window if they are children of a given element.

*Do make sure you import the jQuery library or else you’ll be left wondering why neither of these methods work.

Method #1: All External Links

Opens all external links in a new browser window
Using this method, jQuery checks all link references to see if they are heading off to a local page (eg: hosted on the same domain) or if they are being sent on their merry way somewhere else.

To use this salubrious tidbit, find the script block on your page, and paste in the follow snippet:

jQuery("a[href^='http:']").not("[href*='whatevs.com']").attr('target','_blank');

Make a note of the part that says “whatevs.om” and swap it out with your domain – thisisinspired.com or bing.com, (or .org, .net, .us, etc) for example.

This piece of jQuery will catch all anchor clicks and attach the behaviour otherwise achieved by target=“_blank”.

But what if you just need to open all the links in a certain area of a page in a new window? This may be useful in particular if you wish all links to open in the same except for those links that carry footnotes or references and are used in the midst of a lengthy article. In such cases, it might be to your audience’s best interests to open just those in a new window so they don’t lose their place. In this case, method #2 works best.

Method #2: Only Specific Children Links

Open links in a new window only if they are children of a given section.
This is very, very similar to the one above, except that it doesn’t just batch all anchors together based on what domain they reference – it catches only the anchors within a certain element and opens them all in a new window.

Copy this snippet into the script area of your page:

jQuery("a[href^='http:']").attr('target','_blank');

…and note the ...$(“a[href... area. Insert the ID or class of the parent element directly before the “a”, like so:

jQuery("#content a[href^='http:']").attr('target','_blank');

where #content is the ID name of the element whose anchors we want opened in a new window. For Wordpress users, you might change this to .post to select all anchors within only the post itself.