Regarding addition of a new item to the DB: it's manual. I am sure for 99%. Do you see a lot of repeating sentences in all the IT stores? I don't. There is always something unique. There is always a different information in the details (more/less/mistakes/typos/etc). Always different photos (except the manufacturer-provided ones).
Well yes, someone somewhere types a description, but I would think that they don't type it by hand into some form that causes it to be injected into the database. And my bet is they almost certainly have some way of automating the image associations based upon the item id (and maybe the whole damn process as well).
Regarding schedules: in order to implement something like this, there should be a separate filed for each item record in the database - after what datetime to show the item. This needed very rarely, so I don't think it is a good idea to have this field, and have one more DBfield/date check every single time the item shows on the web page.
That depends, there are a number of ways it could be done. Regardless, at the bare minimum newegg almost certainly has an internal staging server for previewing/debugging new pages on, and some automated process for deploying changes from that server onto the live server, either as a batch, or possibly they have a more complex interface that allows individual sub-sections to be deployed peicemeal, and probably there's either a policy in place where changes automatically deploy every X minutes, or a way to schedule changes to deploy at a certain time.
And the last thing - they do not ship during midnight. So why bother with scheduler?
Simple, because they already have all the data for listing the chips in their system (probably in that staging area somewhere), so why force someone to manually press some kind of button when they get in to work in the morning just to send that out. As soon as the data is into the system, and tested to be correct, there's no reason to do anything other than to schedule its deployment, and forget about it. Having to have someone remember to do it manually when they show up for work is just an unnecessary liability.
Another reason is very simple...they know people will be waiting up for these chips at midnight, and if they don't put up the new pages at midnight, and a competitor does, guess who gets that business...the competitor. It is in newegg's best interest to post the chips as available as soon as it can actually do so.
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