Extremely Important Point - Please Read

This entire download process is based on the current layout of the GCD web pages.   If they change the layout, this will no longer work until I get them back in sync.   Please notify me if you run into any problems, especially anything that looks like a change in the format of the GCD pages.

Also, because the pages are somewhat inconsistent in terms of what information can be found on each, I may miss some things.  Also notify me if you get unusual results or entries, or if certain issues do not work properly.

Important: The download process, at this point, only gets info for the first story from GCD. It will not get all the other story data for anthologies yet. I will do that, but it's fairly complex, and I want to get this working as close to perfectly first.

So, DO NOT OVERWRITE your Creative Team and Appearances data for anthology issues you entered, if you entered all the story info. At this point, you'll lose the Creative Teams and Appearances for all the stories other than the first.  Of course, if you didn't enter the anthology info, go ahead and overwrite.

In general, I would not overwrite anything I entered for Creative Teams. I only overwrite previous downloads, but it's up to you.  I will let everyone know when ROW can handle the anthologies also.

The Cue Cards are not yet complete, and, at this point, this is the only help.  I will complete both over the next week or so.

How to Enter New Titles and Issues

How to Update Existing Titles and Issues

Tips on Consistent Creative Team Entry

Overview:

The Web Download window accesses data on one of the internet comic book database, and enters that information into your ROW database. 

Web Title Search Tab

The first step is to find (and update, if you wish) the title on the web that matches your ROW title.  When you click the Web button on the Title Maintenance window, the Download from Web window will appear.  Keywords will display in the Keywords text box, based on the Display Title.

Click the Search button to display all the titles on the web that match these keywords.   Feel free to change the keywords to make the search more accurate.

All the matching titles will display in the list.  If you cannot tell which is the correct title, select one, and then click the Show Web Title Details checkbox.  This will display additional info to help identify the correct title.

Once you have selected the correct title in the list, click the Update ROW Title Data button, and your ROW title data will be updated with the key to the web title, and any other info that is not filled in for you.

This process will update the following fields on your ROW title data IF EACH IS BLANK (it leaves filled in fields alone):

Web Issues Search Tab

Once you have the Web title Id, you can click the Web Issues Search tab.  This will display all the issues you have on file for this ROW title.  You can have it display only issues that haven't been updated, or all issues.  You can also add additional issues.  Once your list of issues is the way you want it, ROW will create or update these issues when you click the Update button.

If you want ROW to retrieve the image associated with the issue, click the Retrieve Images check box, and enter or select the directory where the files should be located.  At this point, in order to get a directory to display using the Image path button, you have to actually select a file, though it will only fill in the directory.

Finally, click the Update ROW issue Data button.  ROW will go through each issue and add/edit it, or notify you if it cannot find the image.

Once the process is complete, please take a look at your data and see if everything looks OK.

This process will update the following fields on your ROW issue data IF EACH IS BLANK (it leaves filled in fields alone):

Some Key Urls in case you want to review what GCD says:

Search for the correct title:

http://www.comics.org/search.lasso?type=title&query=Adventures+Superman&sort=alpha&Submit=Search

The keywords will go where "Adventures+Superman" are in the above link.   As you can tell, this is looking for anything with both words in the title.

Title Information:

http://www.comics.org/series.lasso?seriesid=3345

This takes you to information about the title with a GCD title ID of 3345 (Adventures of Superman).  The title id is written to your ROW record and appears on the Web Download window, as well as on the list on the Title Maintenance window.

Issue Information:

http://www.comics.org/details.lasso?id=47881

This takes you to the issue with an ID of 47881 (Adventures of Superman, #466).   The issue ID will appear on the miscellaneous tab of the Issue Detail window, as well as in the list to the right of the Issue Detail window

Here is how I suggest you enter new titles and issues:

How to Enter New Titles and Issues

Then proceed with the rest of the process as described below

How to Update Existing Titles and Issues

Once the process is complete, all your issue records should be fairly complete (assuming they were on GCD).  If they were not, it's probably easier to delete the ones not there, and just Dup the previous issues.