Click here to view ISSUE 1 AUGUST 2009

Coming soon – ISSUE 2 SEPTEMBER 2009

What is Portal?
Submitting content to Portal
Issue release
Navigation
Sections
Switching between full-screen and windowed modes
System requirements
Advertising and sponsorship

What is Portal?

Portal is an online, fully-interactive magazine published by Third-Gen set for July release. The magazine will detail the month in review for Arsenal FC, including feature stories, reviews, match reports and performance tracking of the team and its players.

Also included will be a collection of ‘Quickfire Q/A’ (QQA) with well-known bloggers (Arsenal-supporting or otherwise), where the interviewees are given a limited time to answer questions pertaining to Arsenal, the season, favourite player, anything at all – it all depends whether they can answer in time.QQA will feature within feature-length podcasts for a more indepth analysis with the guest.

Portal offers an interactivity few webzines offer, with intuitive navigation, appealing interface and an emphasis on user-submitted content. Feature articles, short blurbs and video submissions are all welcome for fans to express their thoughts on the greatest club in the world in a manner of their own choosing.

Submitting content to Portal

Portal relies on your contributions as the reader. There are a number of kinds of content you can submit to be viewed for the coming months’ issues of Portal. All submissions can be sent to

portal [at] third-gen.com

Articles

Ever wanted about your favourite club? Whether it be a rant or a thought-provoking essay, Portal is the right place for it to go. Just email the article to the address above with your name and reply-to email address and we will send back thoughts and confirmations of publication. All articles sent in are edited for grammar and style, but you get your own byline in an online work!

Quick comments

Within Portal, space is provided for short, to the point comments extracted from the blog. But if succinct is more your style than a long-winded essay, you can submit your thoughts to the address above, and they will more than likely get featured. Plus, there’s a higher degree of success your comments will make it to publication!

Video blog

To all the webcam-philes out there – you can submit a good, solid rant via your webcam or hand-held camera. If we like your stuff, you could become a regular video blogger for the webzine! Please be advised that submissions must be less than 10MB to be considered for publication.

Fan-footage

The blogosphere is read by thousands of fans world-wide, some of which never have the priveledge of being able to witness the incredible atmosphere of the english terraces (sentimental wording). Youtube is full of these, but if you’re the kind who just loves whisking out your mobile phone to record the crowd going nuts after van Persie smashes home a penalty, Portal is the place to send these. But anything is fine – get shots of the crowd during a “One-nil to the Arsenal”, or you and your mates taunting some Spurs fans at the pub. Again, keep the file size below 10mb – the inbox can take a battering.

Issue release

At this stage, Portal is set to be released in monthly parts. As it is a one-man operation (at the moment), it is a lot of work to produce this thing and so for the time being, a monthly release has been drafted. But the possibility of a fortnightly release has not been written off entirely yet, so stay posted.

Navigation

Portal’s design has been made as intuitive as possible so as to make for easy navigation between pages. On every page, the masthead (red and grey bar, pictured below) allows for quick access to all major sections of the webzine. The various subsections will then be viewable from each section’s page.

Each section’s page and subsection’s navigation may differ sl

ightly from the overall theme, but every effort is being put in to makesure it is as simple as possible. Some pages include scrollable text with dragbars for navigation. Others include arrays of buttons to navigate to subsections. In the end, Portal’s emphasis is on interactivity, so don’t be afraid to click to your heart’s content. You should be able to find your way back to where you left off.

Sections

Portal, like your traditional magazine, has regular sections of content. They are listed below in detail:

Home

The Home page features the traditional ‘word from the editor’, with links to that month’s featured articles written by Jammathon, guest bloggers and reader submissions.

Reports

Reports features match reports from all fixtures that month involving Arsenal. Featured alongside the match reports are photo-galleries from the match as well as fans’ video submissions before, during and after the match.

Reviews

Reviews will include analysis of players performances, what they bring to the club and interesting facts and trivia about the player – all brought to you in video presentation from yours truly. Product reviews (equipment, club memorabilia, etc) are also planned for future releases.

Rivals

Rivals keeps an eye on the progress made, not just by the Big 4 and Spurs (distinctions must be made), but of every team in the Premier League. Think of it as a light scouting method to try and guage who to put bets on for the following month.

Chat

Chat is the section where I talk to fellow bloggers and fans about Arsenal and football. Chat features the Quickfire Q/A and podcasts for the month, in easy-to-play interactive menus.

Opinion

The fun bit – Opinion is where all the audience input goes in. Here you’ll find submitted comments and articles from reader submissions.

Img&Vid

Img&Vid, or ‘Image and Video’, is where all user submitted pictures and videos go. Take pictures and videos with your mobile phones or hand held cameras during the match, send in a rant from your webcam, or film you and your mates singing your drunken arses off at your local after an Arsenal win.

Sponsors

Sponsors is the section for advertisers and sponsors. You can contact third-gen at the above email (top of page) if you would like your company or product advertised.

Switching between full-screen and windowed modes

One feature that some readers might miss is the ability to toggle full-screen and windowed modes for viewing Portal. The magazine ‘cover’, or splash screen (pictured further up the page) has an option on left of page to switch between viewing the magazine in either mode.

Also on the left of every page in the magazine are buttons to switch between modes when not viewing the cover.

The keyboard short-cut for full screen mode is ‘Ctrl-F’. To exit full-screen mode, press the Esc key.

System requirements

Minimum system requirements are not yet known. However, you will need the latest flash player to view Portal.

You can find the latest flash player here.

Advertising and sponsorship

Portal provides the opportunity for advertising your product and company to sponsor the costs of producing the webzine. Contact third-gen at

portal [at] third-gen.com

to discuss commercial arrangements.

So there you go. It’s all systems go, production wise, to get this ready by the release date. At this moment in time, July 31 is the expected release date. So stay tuned, and send your submissions in!