[thelist] Fact of the Day backend setup?

[Jen Spadafora]

This fall, we want to launch a Fact of the Day feature on our website. I
need to figure out how to:

1) Have each date's one-line teaser appear on the homepage and be a link to
the entire 1-3 paragraph fact deeper in the site
2) Have the next date's fact appear automatically the next day (each fact it
tagged to a day, they are not randomly generated)
3) Have each 1-3 paragraph fact be written to a file, with day two being
added under day one (Ideally, the first month will be written to say
current.html. If I had to manually create archive months that is fine.)

The server is Apache. I'm not savvy enough to write my own scripts, but
generally can edit existing things (.jsp, javascript, I can configure MT --
that kind of thing). The facts of the day will be running for one year. We
may also offer them as an email subscription, and I wonder about making the
fact of the day available as a feed.

I know other places have implemented this, so I don't want to reinvent the
wheel. Any help would be greatly appreciated.