Still more tips - we’re going to be getting a LOT of customers this year, so we want everything to run smoothly. Here’s a spark of wisdom from last year: this is for everyone - get yourselves a teacher contact at the school!

If there’s one thing that can delay a book getting off to print (besides getting the pre-print payment in), it’s ensuring the staff have signed off on it.

A lot of yearbook companies insist on running the yearbook  through the teachers - we don’t like to do that. Having students build their own yearbook tends to get better, more involved and more personal results - and let’s face it, teachers have got enough on their plate.

BUT - even if you’re making a yearbook as students with no involvement from teachers, it’s important to ask if the school would prefer to check the content.

We can’t proof the yearbooks - there’re just too many! and we wouldn’t know what your school think is acceptable - so finding a teacher to read the proof means the school won’t censor it after it’s printed. You don’t want to be blacking out one line in 100 yearbooks the day before you hand them out!

Arrange early with the principal for a teacher who will check your yearbook (and get the teacher to agree!)  and you won’t be trying to convince someone at the last minute.

Plus, a teacher can often be more effective in getting the finance office to sign the cheque (and it’s one more contact for us in an emergency).

So anyone who hasn’t got a staff contact for the yearbook, get one as early as possible - those who have, be sure we know who they are!

Keep them informed about what’s going on - they can even be an editor in the online yearbook if they want - they don’t have to appear on the pages (although staff pages are often a great feature).

We’ll leave how involved your teacher gets in the yearbook up to you

So, things that the last few months have taught us…

- Clear instructions to joining members

A few times, since offering the instant yearbook creation link from our website, we’ve found that students who are trying to join a yearbook will end up creating a new one instead. Not ideal, for anyone!

We’ve set up a few fixes on the website so that students are getting warned. But for those of you who are yet to get students logging in, our advice is to give clear instructions (if you’re not going to use our email invite option in ‘edit members’, which we’d recommend). Tell the students that they need to go to the link in the top right of the website - ‘access your yearbook’. That way they get in fast and easily, and ready to fill in their profile

But many yearbooks are now busily running now, so here’s a couple of tips for the next stage…

- Members writing too much?

We’re already getting excited members who write too much in their member profiles. Great that people are enthusiastic, but no good if it won’t fit the template the editors chose.

If everyone is doing it, maybe it’s time to change to a template with more space, which you can do at any time! (We get the other end of the scale too - if you have a big profile for each member, try to give them questions to fill it, rather than just name and one question with a ten word limit!).

If the templates are how you want them, but one or a few members have too much text, the most common problem is members writing lists separated by line returns. A good piece of general advice to anyone filling in a yearbook entry is: if you’re making a list, write it on one line with commas or semi-colons to break it up. It’s the best way to save space to use on other questions

- Create your pdf as you go

To test the space limits, just create your pdf - for those who don’t know, this option is in ‘edit pages’ and gives you a view of your yearbook pages instantly online! You should do this as you go to see how the yearbook is progressing. It shows a watermark while the deposit is not yet paid - gone once the deposit is in.

If the pdf does not create, odds are that someone has written too much. To check who, you could look through the profiles edited since you last created your pdf, or you can send us an email and we’ll search them out and get back to you.

No good tryting to work on the yearbook when you can’t see the pages!

Hope that helps a little. And hope everyone is feeling fresh after the holiday and ready to jump on with their yearbooks!

It’s freezing here in Cambridge, but we’re strill coming into the office. So get I touch with problems, questions, pack requests, new yearbook projects and deposits. We look forward to hearing from you all!

The new year is going to bring a few changes to the site.  Jake and Jamey have been beavering away on a new look for the site that will make setting up your books even easier and as we’ve mentioned before there will be lots more profile page templates coming your way too:-)

Keep your eye’s on the blog for more news!

Have fab 2009!

In fact working on new templates is mine and David’s big task for the next few weeks.  We’re off for a well earned rest for a couple of days but we’ll be back on the case asap with our creative heads firmly screwed on!

What ever you are celebrating have a good one!

Whilst Jake and Gem took Ewa out for lunch Jamey and David had far too much fun with the toys in the crackers…  a game of mini frisbee had them leaping over armchairs in a most athletic way… I don’t think I have seen either of them move that fast!

Meanwhile I am eying up which of the lovely sweets I can take home…..

function THEMENAME_preprocess(&$variables) {

  // Get rid of all of Drupal's CSS files
  $css = drupal_add_css();
  foreach ($css['all']['module'] as $file => $status) {
    if (!strstr($file, 'modules/MYMODULE')) {
      unset($css['all']['module'][$file]);
    }
  }
  $variables['styles'] = drupal_get_css($css);

We also wanted (no *real* need) to use screen.css rather than style.css, so we edited THEMENAME.info to have this:

stylesheets[all][] = reset.css
stylesheets[all][] = screen.css

… and we removed the line for style.css from it.

Finally, as the superuser we went to /admin/build/modules (or /themes, can’t remember now) to refresh the theme cache. We also had to tick to enable the theme at /admin/build/themes as although we’d been using the theme for ages quite fine, it wasn’t actually ticked before.

And hey presto, it worked. Should probably add that it took waaaay too long to do though, so though we’d add this snipped for others to read.

Our main office server which hosts our network shares, backup system for the live website and a plethora of other things now detects whenever one of our USB backup drives are plugged in. The logic is: we plug in one of our backup drives at the end of the day, wait a few minutes for any changes to copy across (thanks to rsync), unplug and store them at home.

More importantly, all of our drives are fully 256-bit encrypted (not just password protected!) meaning that if one of these drives was lost or stolen, it be almost impossible for someone to crack the encryption and gain access to our customers’ data.

You can rest assured that here at AllYearbooks we take data privacy and security very seriously.

Our system is quite unique in that as you progress building your yearbook — inviting new members, uploading photos, adding custom pages and so forth — you are given the opportunity to preview exactly how your book will look once it’s gone to print. We’re keeping this useful feature but making important changes:

• Allowing members to upload two profile photos each
• Making our templates accommodate this second photo
• Text that wraps and flows professionally around objects on the page
• Rounded corners on borders and photos

The greatest change, though, will be that because of the new programming of our PDF system, we will soon be able to create unique, custom templates when one of our lovely customers requests it. For example, if the selection of templates provided doesn’t suit you or you like the look of one but would prefer it with a few tweaks here-and-there, we will be able to modify an existing template or create a brand new one for your yearbook.

Compared to our competition, I think this is getting the “best of both worlds” — everyone uploads their entries and photos online, the editors choose or requests a template and the final yearbook feels impressive and gleams with professionalism. Plus, unlike some of our competitors, you won’t need to wait a week or more for your template to be generated for you

The last few months in Jake and Jamey’s room haven’t just been about increasing monitor volume. While Nic and I keep on top of everyone’s needs, they’ve been programming like demons.

So what’s new? There’s even better security and backups for the online information and enough server capacity to support all the yearbooks people can throw at us. And come New Year, something else — a new and more versatile PDF creator for the online yearbooks!

First though, we should mention the yearbook chat!

This little feature — found now in the bottom right corner of the online yearbook — lets us give instant support and advice to editors, and editors can also use it to talk to each other. What’s more, Jamey spent an entire afternoon stocking it with open source smileys .

Jake intends to extend the system later in the year to have a separate ‘room’ for editors to talk to each other without our help desk getting involved, and potentially another room for all members to talk to each other too. It’s going to make for an awesome community within each yearbook.

I can’t speak for the tech side of things (although I know J&J gave a talk at a local Cambridge programmers’ meet that went down really well: Refresh Cambridge) but for helping customers it’s amazing! We can help with little queries instantly.

Even a little random chatter goes down well while it’s quiet still. Shows people are on the site and enjoying it!

Chat history has all the conversations stored, and so it’s a great place to gather tips. And from our end, all those emails with typos in are a lot less hassle