I thought it might be useful to chronicle a day's worth of running TMP. I find that a lot of people underestimate how much time it takes to run a large website:
You just cut-and-paste press releases, right? How hard can that be?
I also suspect the exercise will be useful for me, in helping me understand how I use my time.
Starting the Day
Part of my morning ritual is to check in on the website, to make sure that things are "OK." That is, is the site up today? (Good!) Did the headlines I scheduled show up? (Yes!) Has anyone posted any obscene topics to the Message Boards? (No...good!) Any flame wars?
Wait, someone has started a topic on who paints better, historicals or non-historicals - I better read that one... OK, it's safe so far. :-)
What's this? There's a topic just called Supporting Member - I wish sometimes people were more descriptive with their topic names, I can't tell if this is going to be "pro" or "con." OK, I've read it, it's someone who's just paid up and wants their Supporting Membership stars. That requires action from me, so I bop over to that database and add them in - OK, that works, but email isn't going out from the official TMP account. Hmmm...that happens from time to time, usually resolves itself in a few minutes.