The first public preview of the blenderart magazine contents is available. Blenderart magazine is a bimonthly free PDF magazine featuring all new up to date tutorials, news and more articles on blender3d and related Open Source tools for CG, like the GIMP and inkscape.
really? that sounds very nice.
though geocities is not a nice one- I cannot visit any sites on geocities 
Doesn’t work here either, but it seems like the community journal’s back, good work!
This is really great, just like the first two Blenderman magazines. Looking forward to the first release.
sounds great, can you get a link to the .pdf bimonthly by e-mail?
Also how many people are “staff”? just curious
good luck for the future 
Update, now i can get to the site and download the preview pdf, but the pdf is corrupt. I tried downloading it multiple times. It says it has problems opening the pdf file. Not very informative on what kind of problem, only the number (14).
I’m on windows with Acrobat Reader 6.0.
Don’t know what tool you used to create the pdf, but I’d say it should work at least in Acrobat Then again, it may be a file corruption problem, I wouldn’t be surprised, with Geocities.
works fine here, hey maybe sometime in future ity could be incorperated into blenderartists.org like ye olde community journal hehe, i think everyone who knew it wants it back! 8)
looks very nice, dying to see it now! =P
[edit]: though, a lot of the links dont work >_< but the iumportant stuff is there at least hehe
Thanks Dreamsgate!
Oyster Thanks, but right now we are just using what we have.
Thanks wavk & SoftWork
Wavk I am aware of the crap geocities some time becomes, well cant complain its free!
We are using SCRIBUS to generate the PDF, but it works fine on win-acrobat too, I have also tested it on linux Acrobat7.
Alex_G We will try to find a way for that 
Staff is composed of just two people right now. But we will be adding more as we grow.
LohnC Thanks. We have just started and we still have to collect the material. I will use another topic for it.
If you guys would like a better place to host this site PM me and we might be able to arrange something.
This is really nice & usefull!! [!]
What about a section got blender scripts?
We have full intention of covering python scripts also. Just haven’t got it all settled just yet.
and Desoto, I’ll be in touch once I’ve talked to Gaurav about it. 
Hey guys i submitted some stuff when it was blenderman, i cant garentee my work and i am always unsure as to how much time i will have for blender related stuff, but if i have time i will contribute what i can
Dreamsgate! Nice to see you around some more - great magazine! I love the color scheme for the website too - just needs a little orange for flare! As far as geocities - blah blah blah - email me and I’ll set you up a website (can even get you any one of litterally thousands of professional templates - for websites and for newsletters and print material! software boxes too!) Maybe I can throw in some programming too … for old times sake … email me - we’ll figure it all out!
This is great! I still sorely miss the Community Journals, and this more than makes up for the lack of them. This will probably spawn several other Blender-related magazines in the future.
Oh, and try looking for a better web host (see this site).
Can’t wait to see the first (complete) issue!
I’d like to join the publishing team - as in I’d like to get involved with the website, the printing, and publishing - I can also write some tutorials and articles concerning Blender, Yafay, GIMP - especially from the Windows side of things…
Anyway, how do i join - i’ll set you up with a website and domain name and script a full custom cms with admin panel and everything - just give me the word!
Also, reading through the guidelines I think that you might want to be provide a template of some sort - and as for print I think it should be full 8.5x11 on low gloss paper - that way images and what not have some more sheene… as far as the template - maybe a one page layout and then they can add secondary pages if needed - that way the author knows how it will look and can adjust content to match some…just a thought!
As far as the templates and what not - go to:
or
and pick out anything - i think that you wanted it to be rather clean so I went to 4templates and picked out a couple of templates:
VA0196OR This one is orange and green but the green can be changed to blue and the logo can be replaced with Blender Art logo…
SD0016OR Just something cool that came up in the search for orange and blue - lot of potential there…
My Latest Template - this one hasn’t even hit the scene yet - well, there’s one out there that’s like it but this one has full drop down menus with alpha and all! it’s really sweet…
Anyway, pick out something and I can get you a real site working! I can even borrow your template and really work some magic on it if you want…
Daniel
prince7 at gmail dot com
Actually we have our website designed the way we want. The website is only for news, updates and when each mag is ready to be downloaded. We have no plans to make forums or make the website itself more complicated. Simple suits our pruposes just fine.
As for the magazine itself, it will only be offered in pdf, there are guidelines for submitting tutorials/articles on the website.
http://www.geocities.com/blenderart_mag/author-guidelines.html#Submission_guidelines
We welcome all submissions, if you don’t see your submission in the next issue, don’t worry. Most likely we are saving it for an issue where it fits the theme better.
In fact, first issue will be dealing with “Mechanical Modeling”, so if you have a tutorial/article that is already written/or wish to write a brand new one just for us , send it on in. We would be happy to hear from you.
That also goes for images (for the artists’ gallery), news of cool projects you are working on, python scripts you are developing, & and new techniques you wish to share.
Sandy
alright, how about a better host then? somewhere where you don’t have to have any banners and what not - and your own domain name? And how about a simple login system - that way atleast users can’t just download the magazine without first registering - for tracking purposes - it’s just a standard company policy… also by hosting it somewhere else it can run php so you can atleast get some dynamic content pouring through - i could transfer all the files to php and then run a news function through to the home page… i agree that simple is best as far as website - clean, simple, and not too much 3d but if you want to attract maybe investors or commercial sponsors to maybe publish the magazines for sale in the Blender Store you’ll need something a little more advanced! Although, the current template has a very nice pallette - it just needs alittle more tweaking… let me PM you the rest…
We looking into a better host as we speak, as for php, NO WAY, php drives me insane.
As for registering, I don’t think that is necessary. How many people download the magazine isn’t relevant to why Gaurav and I started this. We just wanted to give something back to the community and we were bummed when the last magazine fell through. So we kicked around the idea of doing one ourself. Finally convinced ourselves we could pull it off. And here we are.
Also, as for a template for submissions, we have a pdf of how the magazine will be layed out (we will get it online shortly) so authors can see what it will look like. But actual layout will be done by Gaurav. Which is why article submission for text is either plain-text or HTML only. So he can copy and paste into his template real easy.
We looking into a better host as we speak, as for php, NO WAY, php drives me insane.
Good, like I told you in the PM if you want to share the space (i have unlimited) with mine you can - i’ll get you a subdomain and ftp access and email accounts - just get a domain name that points to the subdomain and you’ll be set. I agree, that maybe the template should be left alone but it should atleast be a little more dynamic by use of very simple php - nothing over the top… no database or anything… and since you don’t want a user system then there isn’t anything trully dynamic - just some simple include commands to include the header and left menu … that way a change to that file changes all the others - believe me it’s not that hard - if you know html you can use it - it saves a lot of time later on when you have 20+ pages and each one has to have the changes made to it… don’t rule out PHP yet… your experience with php Nuke was a CMS nightmare but don’t let that make you think php is bad - it’s alot of good!
As for registering, I don’t think that is necessary. How many people download the magazine isn’t relevant to why Gaurav and I started this. We just wanted to give something back to the community and we were bummed when the last magazine fell through. So we kicked around the idea of doing one ourself. Finally convinced ourselves we could pull it off. And here we are.
in that case, it’s not worth the time, i just figured that you might want to find out who and how many users are actually using your site, that way you know if you need to change or modify anything… if later, the magazine gets some real sponsorship you could then use that as leverage to help promote it for sale!
Also, as for a template for submissions, we have a pdf of how the magazine will be layed out (we will get it online shortly) so authors can see what it will look like. But actual layout will be done by Gaurav. Which is why article submission for text is either plain-text or HTML only. So he can copy and paste into his template real easy.
ah, i see, so it’ll be ran like a real press, every article custom to the article instead of all uniform, that’s nice… Are you going to add a Q&A section to the magazine, if you did then you could have a Q&A submit form and the answers to the last mags questions can be answered and what not… what about text only submittions (or those with images for that matter) - could a submit form be added on the website? It would make it easier for alot of people - you might want to contact Bart about getting copies of the Blender3D Gallery submittions and you can chose which ones you want…
Sounds like it will be great!
daniel