Specs of Salons Subscription System

legLess writes "Scott Rosenburg, Salon's VP of operations, wrote an interesting article for Web Techniques about Salon's subscription system. It goes into a fair amount of technical detail (JavaBeans and JSP on Linux for login and authentication; Perl, HTML::Mason and MySQL (CD: and oracle) for content). He also talks about their subscription numbers, what drove them to do it, and their plans for the future (technical and operational). A little fluffy, but still a good read."

Comments

In-house vs. outsourcing

[DouglasA]

I read this article when the mag arrived, and was mostly fascinated by their decision to build it all in-house. Two or three years ago, they most likely would have thrown a ton of money at another company to develop the whole system. They would have gotten something that was not exactly what they wanted, and no doubt three months late (at least). Companies finally seem to be realizing that they need to make better use of the staff they have, and that even adding a few programmers or other employees can be cheaper than hiring outside developers. That's what I'm seeing at my company now, anyway, and others I know.

Premium only content - mark it

[cowboy junkie]

As I recall, when Salon first implemented their premium content, they didn't mark what content was premium, but instead when you viewed the story it would give you the first couple of paragraphs then say that you had to subscribe to read the rest. This is a big mistake, as it really makes non-subscribers resent the wasted click, and I'm glad they finally wised up and starting marking everything clearly as premium.

I had no problem subscribing to Salon, though, because these guys are the real deal. While I love sites like /. that point to noteworthy stories on the web, Salon is one of the only true purveyors of Internet journalism that provides stories worth pointing to. They have top-notch folks reporting and provides commentary on the whole spectrum of news.

6$ a month, now, another good move from Salon.

[clarkie.mg]

This month, Salon launched a monthly subscription program for 6$.

Reading the article, I have to give credit to the way Salon deal with their readers.

1. Even the free site is not overwhelmed by ads like those flash based ones that run around the page on wired, or those poping pages on yahoo.

2. The price for the site is really low, compared to the price you would pay for a daily newspaper. They understood that internet users CAN pay for content but at a reasonable price.

3. They give premium content, not only ads-free stories.

Thumbs up, Salon.

The web isn't commercial only

[WiggyWack]

I'm so tired of the whole "The free web is over" rants. Why do so many people think the commercial part of the web is the only part of the web? People have created content for free for a long, long, long time. Whether it be music, art, comics, poetry, literature, editorials, films, TV shows (yay for public access cable!), books, whatever... Many people are driven by ideas or creativity they just want others to pay attention to, without getting paid for it.

So the "Soon you'll have to pay for all your web content" chant really means "Soon you'll have to pay for all the web content dished up by commercial organizations." Good. I don't need it anyway.

The Internet is cool because all the free content that was out there to begin with can now be put online by anyone and viewed by anyone. So your underground newspaper, or garage band, or your off-the-wall comic strip has the potential to be viewed by a lot more people than just those in your town or school.

I don't care if I have to pay for content owned by AOL Time Warner or whoever. There's plenty of people out there who want me to look at their stuff for free. (gee, kinda like how the Internet used to be)

You can read it in the bathroom

[Jeremy Erwin]

For you information, one of the benefits of "Premium" is that you can download the daily issue as a pdf. Good for reading on the commute, or on the commode, perhaps?

$72 per year? For Salon?

[Animats]

That's a bit much. The online subscription to the Wall Street Journal is only $59 per year. And the WSJ has far more content, real content, created by reporters spread around the world. Salon is mostly columnists, and rather lightweight ones at that.

What might work is, say, a service that lets you buy topics, like "politics", "literature", or "entertainment industry news" for a flat fee, but covers a large number of publications. Like AdultCheck and PornoPass, but for people who read. The "adult verification systems" are commercially successful, unlike micropayment systems. As usual, the porno industry figures it out first.