How to Host the Carnival of the Capitalists
Brian Gongol


There is no necessarily right or wrong way to host the weekly Carnival of the Capitalists (or any similar Carnival, for that matter). In fact, if there were a mandated "right way," it would go entirely against the principles of a free and open marketplace of ideas.

However, the experimental April 18, 2005 Carnival of the Capitalists was received in an overwhelmingly positive way, and in the spirit of open-source software, the following is offered as a step-by-step set of instructions for duplicating that effort.
  1. Download the CotC hosting template. It's a spreadsheet that can be opened with Microsoft Excel or with the free open-source program OpenOffice.

  2. Enter the contributions in the "Raw Entries" tab, one item per row. Start early. The flow of contributions is about 1/3 Monday through Friday, 1/3 on Saturday, and 1/3 on Sunday. The less work to be processed on Sunday, the better. This spreadsheet approach minimizes the effort required.

  3. Save the icons from the "Icons" tab to your site. Note what file names they are given, and copy the exact file location into the "Formatting" tab.

  4. Copy everything except the very top line from the "Use this" tab. The formatting may need to be extended or shortened; naturally, stop at the last entry.

  5. Paste the copied section (as HTML code) to the page where you intend to post the Carnival.

  6. Before the very first line of code, copy and paste the following:
    <style> <!-- .class1a {background: #005080 } --> </style>
    <br> <br>
    <table>
    Note that the code #005080 can be changed to whatever hex color code you choose. That value sets the background color for the alternating lines.

  7. After the last line of code pasted in step 5, copy and paste the following:
    </table>
  8. Save and publish.
One editorial note: On the first trial of this method, readers were given the option of selecting the Carnival in random order, in alphabetical order (by site name), or grouped by categories. For reference, here are the number of visits recorded to each version in the first week:
Original/Unsorted 3336
Categorical 253
Alphabetical 67
You may or may not find it valuable to offer different versions of the same.

If you have any questions about using this method for hosting the CotC, please contact Brian Gongol.