Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Ok, but then what is the problem?

The Review New Submissions page seems to be skewed towards new submissions now, rather than submissions that have new changes ready for review. This makes approving pages much harder, as you will only see the newest pages rather than the ones that have changes ready for review. Perhaps if the page is sorted by the timestamp of the last action taken on each article this can be rectified without having to worry about the unreliable modification date.

update test

Also, I am getting this error whenever I try to update my previous comment:

Attempting to update comment.

SQLSTATE[42000]: Syntax error or access violation: 1064 You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MariaDB server version for the right syntax to use near 'WHERE `CommentID` = ?' at line 1

Update of Comment with ID of 46749 failed.

I successfully tried updating a couple of my comments, including one on this page, and I successfully updated the comment you referred to, though that was with a different script than you would use. So, I have not been able to repeat what you did.

Looking at the PHP error log, I see multiple errors looking like this:

Failed to prepare SQL in update_row: UPDATE `Comment` SE WHERE `CommentID` = :keyvalue

This was added to the error log by a catch clause I have in update_row().

That "SE" shouldn't be there, but there should be the word "SET" followed by a series of parameters being assigned to table columns. Since we appear to be in the same time zone, these were just over an hour and a half ago, and I was not doing any programming then.

Looking at the individual lines modifying $sql, most lines just append to it, and one uses substr to delete the last two characters. That points to one thing that happened. The $sql string could have this value if it were passed an empty array. After appending nothing to "UPDATE Comment SET ", it chopped off the last two characters and appended " WHERE CommentID = :keyvalue". I added some code to update_row to catch this error before this happens, but I'm still not sure why it happened. This is about what arguments were passed in the function call and not about how the function operated.

I thought of one more thing that could be going on, and I updated update_row to return a warning when it happens. This function now reads the row from the database and checks its values against the values you want to update, and it adds to the SQL query only those values that are different from what is already stored in the database. So, if you tried to update a comment without changing anything, it wouldn't add any values to the query. In case this happens, it will now exit early with a warning.

Problem when trying to change password: "Cannot continue, because no row in the Person table could be identified."

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.

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?
 

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.

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?.

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.

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.

@ 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).

I decided to go with color.

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.

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).

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.

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

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.