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🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Feb 4, 2023 10:33 PM UTC in reply to Maurice Dekker from 06:34 PM:

That happened to me too when I signed in after trying to change my password by email. Email is not working, and I didn't get the email it sent. When I signed in from the same page where I had tried to send an email for changing my password, it said "Cannot continue, because no row in the Person table could be identified." To change your password, do it within five minutes of signing in, or ask for assistance. Since you were able to sign in to post this, you should be able to do it within five minutes of signing in. Just click on the link with your name, or select "Personal Information" from the menu with your name, and then click on Change Password.


Gerd Degens wrote on Tue, Feb 7, 2023 06:14 PM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from Sat Feb 4 02:07 AM:

Dear Fergus and dear authors of Chess Variant Pages,

perhaps I have not fully understood the Chess Variant Pages and do not know the possibilities that the system offers. Nevertheless, my question:

Is it conceivable - or already realized - to derive a ranking of attention or interest from the frequency of hits on a variant page? Such a possibility would be very helpful for the authors from my point of view to be able to recognize the appreciation of a variant.

I do not mean the Recognized Chess Variants in alphabetical order, nor the variants marked with 'hearts'. I have in mind a ranking in numerical ascending or descending order based on hits.

Did this already exist, so am I too late or is this an interesting approach?
 


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Feb 7, 2023 06:46 PM UTC:

I have made the 404 page more powerful. While I had previously set it up to give suggestions, it wasn't always doing a good job of that. It now does a better job, and if you enter just about any Chess variant name right after the domain, it should be able to direct you appropriately. Try it out and let me know if there is any way to improve on it.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Feb 7, 2023 07:49 PM UTC in reply to Gerd Degens from 06:14 PM:

Is it conceivable - or already realized - to derive a ranking of attention or interest from the frequency of hits on a variant page?

No, we have not been using hit counters, and I did not find any logs with this information. It might be possible to set something up, but I would like to have a way to ignore robot activity or frequent visitors to the same page, and I'm not sure how to do that.

We already have other measures of popularity. See Which are the Best Chess Variants?.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Thu, Feb 9, 2023 11:49 PM UTC:

I have been at work making our 404 page the best in the world. The main strength of our 404 page is the ability to search the database and offer appropriate suggestions. When I was looking at examples of what are supposed to be the best 404 pages, none of them did this, and their main strengths were only in graphic design. I won't say ours has the best graphics. I did limit myself to public domain art instead of hiring an artist, and there are lots of other 404 pages with good art. But the art I chose was suitable for a 404 page and a good match for our site. So, I'm happy with it.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Feb 10, 2023 03:00 AM UTC:

I found color versions of the artwork, and since the artist died over 100 years ago, I assume they are also in the public domain. But I'm having trouble deciding which I prefer. I'm wondering if maybe the color makes the images too distracting. So that others may compare them, the color images will be used if you are signed in, and the black and white images will be used if you are not.


Kevin Pacey wrote on Fri, Feb 10, 2023 04:02 AM UTC:

@ Fergus

Something may be wrong with the 'game review' page (linked to from 'What's New' page). No reviews show at all, but rather some sort of coding(s).


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Feb 10, 2023 06:25 PM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from 03:00 AM:

I decided to go with color.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Feb 10, 2023 08:17 PM UTC in reply to Kevin Pacey from 04:02 AM:

Something may be wrong with the 'game review' page (linked to from 'What's New' page). No reviews show at all, but rather some sort of coding(s).

Okay, I've corrected the link to use the supported parameter instead of sortbydate.


H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Mar 2, 2023 08:13 AM UTC:

The home page still needs a lot of work to become presentable:

  • It is not clear that the photographs or program logos can be clicket to navigate somewhere; the fact that the page is full of recognizable links creates the impression that navigation should occur through those.
  • The photograph for Shatranj / Chaturanga is awful. The pieces are so small and shown at unfavorable angle that it require a microscope to notice these are not just an ordinary stounton set, and the board looks like it has disintegrated into individual squares for no obvious reason.
  • The alignment of the images is messy: the images are not of equal size, so that upper-left alignment of the smaller xiangqi images is all wrong.
  • Although there now is a photograph for the 'featured variant', it is not obvious at all what its significance is. The word 'featured' (or better:  'variant of the month') does not appear with it. There is also no link in the accompanying text (like there is for Shatranj/Chaturanga and Xiangqi/Janggi/Shogi), nor a suggestion that the image can be clicked.
  • The program logos are all of different size; again there is no suggestion that clicking those would do anything.
  • Depending on the display/window width, the four topics with an image either display as 4x1, 2x2 or 3+1. In the first two cases the program logos are tiled to approximately the sam size as one of the other images (which is OK), but in the latter case they are displayed side by side, and because that doesn't fit, displayed as rows of 6 + 2 (messy).

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Thu, Mar 2, 2023 10:29 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 08:13 AM:

It is not clear that the photographs or program logos can be clicket to navigate somewhere; the fact that the page is full of recognizable links creates the impression that navigation should occur through those.

I created new buttonized images of each logo.

The photograph for Shatranj / Chaturanga is awful.

I replaced it with a Chess photo.

and the board looks like it has disintegrated into individual squares for no obvious reason.

Since I don't have a Chaturanga board, I made it by laying out individual board tiles. Since these were hand-made, they did not all align up evenly.

The alignment of the images is messy: the images are not of equal size, so that upper-left alignment of the smaller xiangqi images is all wrong.

I took the width and height values off the Xiangqi image, then replaced it with a Janggi image, because its more square shape is less portrait, and that fits better with the other images being more landscape than portrait.

Although there now is a photograph for the 'featured variant', it is not obvious at all what its significance is. The word 'featured' (or better: 'variant of the month') does not appear with it. There is also no link in the accompanying text (like there is for Shatranj/Chaturanga and Xiangqi/Janggi/Shogi), nor a suggestion that the image can be clicked.

I added a line about that with a link in it below the image.

The program logos are all of different size;

I made new ones that are all the same size today, but the uniformity made none of them stand out as much. By being different sizes, they all stood out better. So, I reverted to the ones with different sizes.

  • Later on, I used a mix of resized logos and old ones to make each line the same length when there are four lines, but without making each logo the same width. This gave them a staggered but justified look.
  • After increasing the width of your idiagram logo, I recolored the white part to better show the beveled edges.

Depending on the display/window width, the four topics with an image either display as 4x1, 2x2 or 3+1. In the first two cases the program logos are tiled to approximately the sam size as one of the other images (which is OK), but in the latter case they are displayed side by side, and because that doesn't fit, displayed as rows of 6 + 2 (messy).

I tried using flexboxes to get the one alternative I would consider better, but I couldn't get it to work. I wanted to evenly split them on two lines with the logos spread out across the width of the page, but all I could do is split them into 4+4 all on the left side. So, I reverted it back. For now, the logos are grouped into pairs that must be on the same line. That's why you'll get 6+2 instead of 7+1.

  • However, I did adjust the flex-basis of the DIVs and got some screen sizes where all eight logos appear on a single line.
  • I later added some synchronized media queries to keep the logos on a single line for the 3+1 pattern by allowing them to resize. On both Firefox and Edge, this seems to work correctly without the logos stacking into a block when three images are above them.

Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Fri, Mar 3, 2023 06:07 PM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from Thu Mar 2 10:29 PM:

I have picture of my Shatranj board and pieces that may interest you. Just to see how to upload. Or I send by PM.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Mar 3, 2023 06:32 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 06:07 PM:

We don't have a PM system in place. To upload it, you can go to your personal information page, then select "Upload or Manage Files" from the Edit menu. I believe you're familiar with how that works from uploading images for your pages.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Mar 3, 2023 06:37 PM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from Thu Mar 2 10:29 PM:

I have now managed to use @container queries to get the logos for game software and web servers to increase in size to fill available space when there is some. This should put the space they take up on par with the preceding images. However, @container queries are a new web technology, and it may not be available on older mobile devices whose OS can no longer be updated. For desktops, though, you should be able to run a browser capable of handling them. For example, @container queries do not work on my iPad 2, and in landscape mode, the logos show up in a 3/3/2 pattern instead of 2/2/2/2.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Mar 3, 2023 07:00 PM UTC in reply to Jean-Louis Cazaux from 06:07 PM:

I have picture of my Shatranj board and pieces that may interest you.

I got them from you by email. I uploaded smaller versions and tried them out on a test page, but I don't think I'll use them.


Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Fri, Mar 3, 2023 07:35 PM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from 06:32 PM:

I didn't know I could upload on that page. Good. 

 

(I remove the photo having got a very bad private comment about this by an editor. I just wanted to help, forget it)


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Mar 5, 2023 02:33 AM UTC:

Does anyone recognize the Chess set used for the Chess photo on this page? Since my mother picked it up at a yard sale for me, I don't have any information on it. It is a medieval fantasy themed set with Wizards for Bishops and Dragons for Knights. I borrowed the board from another set.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Mar 5, 2023 05:57 PM UTC:

The randgame.php script will now send you to a page's canonical URL instead of to a semantic URL with /page/ as the directory. When you do enter an URL with the /page/ directory, it will also send you to the canonical URL for the page, and when there is none, it will run the 404.php script. Note that these are two separate changes, as the randgame.php script will send you straight to the canonical URL without sending you to the /page/ URL first.

I also changed the ItemID for the home page from HomepageofTheChe to Homepage, and I made the appropriate corrections in the database and files where the old ItemID appeared.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Thu, Mar 30, 2023 11:29 PM UTC:

I added a special media query to this page to recognize the browser available on the Kindle. Recent Kindles have a 300ppi screen, which results in displaying 300 pixels as an inch. Since most screens would display 300 pixels in a larger physical size, this can lead to images and text being too small in the Kindle browser. While it's Article mode can make a page more readable, it's best to not make readers need to rely on it. The query checks whether there are lots of pixels on a small screen. The idea is to check that the width is at least the width in pixels of the 6 inch Paperwhite and no more than the width of the 10.2 inch Scribe in inches. With some margin for error, the query looks like this:

@media (min-width: 1060px) and (max-width: 7in) {
}

Besides the size issue, the Kindle browser has hardly been updated in years, and it does not support many features that have become commonly supported in other browsers. For example, this page uses a flex display, but since the Kindle browers do not support this, I have provided some fallback CSS for putting some sections in columns.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Mar 31, 2023 10:57 PM UTC:

The whole site should now appear at a more normal size in the Kindle browser, because I used the @media query described earlier to zoom the contents by a factor of 2 in Kindles.


A. M. DeWitt wrote on Tue, Apr 11, 2023 12:18 AM UTC:

It seems that the script for editing a page's index information is a bit broken. For example, I am trying to check the fields 2d and Shogi-based for MSshuka and MPshuka because I forgot to do so when initially creating them, but every time I try to do so, it doesn't work. This is the case even if I delete them and restore them afterwards. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Edit: I thought I'd create a page for Honno Shuka (Shuka + 1 Chu Shogi Queen, placed halfway b/w the Bishop and Rook at setup), which bridges the gap between Shuka and Shosu Shogi, before deciding that the game should be kept under Shuka's lore section. However, now that I am trying to delete MShonnoshuka, I am having the same problem that I encountered when I accidentally made MSshoka instead of MSshuka. Namely, MShonnoshuka is still in the database, but the database has been tricked into thinking MShonnoshuka has been deleted.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Apr 11, 2023 01:33 AM UTC in reply to A. M. DeWitt from 12:18 AM:

Since editors use some scripts that other members do not, this might be a script I do not use frequently. What is the URL of the script that is not working right for you?


A. M. DeWitt wrote on Tue, Apr 11, 2023 02:04 AM UTC in reply to Fergus Duniho from 01:33 AM:

It is the "Edit Index Information" script in the Edit tab in the top menu.

Edit: I've decided to change the name of Shuka to Seireigi.


A. M. DeWitt wrote on Sat, May 13, 2023 02:44 AM UTC:

The Edit Index Information script is working now.


A. M. DeWitt wrote on Sun, May 28, 2023 02:11 PM UTC:

It seems MShonnoshuka has not been fully deleted. When I changed Seireigi's name from Shuka, I tried to delete MShonnoshuka, but it seems that the page hasn't been fully deleted (probably because I clicked "Delete This Submission" too quickly). The record of it is still in the database, but the database thinks it has been deleted, as shown below. I would like this record to be fully deleted so it doesn't cause problems in the future.

404 Error from https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/honnoshuka

ItemID is MShonnoshuka

A record of this page is still in the database, and it indicates that the page has been deleted.


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