Link five leads to a section where it's possible to subscribe to printed issues online by credit card or some other form of payment. This section resides on another physical server, built using another technology and not maintained by the folks at Seven Days.

Link one leads to http://www.segodnya.ru, a daily newspaper, and link two leads to http://www.itogi.ru, a weekly magazine. We'll get to them later. Links three and four, meanwhile, will lead to publications that are still in the planning stage.

In terms of functionality and implementation, 7days.ru is the simplest domain of the three. All the pages are static pass-thru HTML and are located in a Lotus Notes database. Information inside it seldom varies and is corrected by the Web-master. All design units (pictures, buttons, banners) are located in a separate database.

According to Galustov, a total rebuild of this server is being planned.

Segodnya
Segodnya.ru, the Web site of the daily newspaper Segodnya (Russian for Today), consists of three parts: latest issue, archive, and forums. The latest issue is a copy of the printed issue, but it appears on the Internet in late evening of the previous day, while the printed version doesn't come out until the morning of the issue date.

The process of manufacturing a new issue is 90% automated. All articles and illustrations from the publishing system used for production of the journal are exported in a Lotus Notes database. All the necessary conversions, bindings to styles, etc. are performed by software written especially for this purpose by Macintosh.

The operator then checks up on the result of these conversions using a Lotus client and marks the articles that shouldn't get onto the Internet. By pressing a button in the view, he starts a script that creates Web pages in a draft database using HTML templates. The operator looks at the result in a browser and starts the next script that transfers the previous issue to the archive and places the latest articles up front. URLs of articles aren't changed during this process. The operator's screen is shown on Figure B.

FIGURE B

Here's what the operator sees when preparing a new issue of Segodnya. Click picture for a larger image.

Figure C shows the Segodnya home page as it looks finally rendered.

FIGURE C

Segodnya lets you catch up on the news of the day. Click picture for a larger image.

Arrow 1 points to links to 7days.ru, Itogi.ru, and their sections. Arrow 2 indicates an ad, arrow 3 points to the navigation menu, and arrow 4 indicates a link to the forums. Arrow 5 is a link to the newspaper archive, 6 is an archive search, and 7 is the issuing date of the printed newspaper. Arrows 8, 9, and 10 correspond to the "Question of the day," "Weather," and "Currency ratio" sections of the newspaper, and arrow 12 indicates announcements of articles with links to each one.

Figure D show you an example of an opened article.

FIGURE D

The article layout is quite easy to read, provided you speak the language. Click picture for a larger image.

Here, arrow 1 points to the heading of the page, and arrow 2 is a "pseudo-URL" leading to another article.