111 comments on “Site Feedback”

  1. Nice to see RSS highlighted. The link to the feed behind the orange icon should probably have https , not http. And it might easily be assumed that the “Fifteensquared” text immediately beside the RSS icon also linked to the RSS feed. Perhaps either make it so, or put a space between them? Cheers.

  2. Hi Ken Mac, Numerous messages at the moment: Error establishing database connection. Is there some work going on in the background, or just a lot of traffic? The blog for Brockwell was up a bit late and people are jumping on, but I found those messages also getting on to Phi, and trying to come here.

  4. @2@3

    It looks like we’re under attack again. Pesky bots!

    I’ve put us on the highest alert for a while.

    Thanks for letting me know.

  5. Mev @1

    As I’ve said before, I don’t fully understand RSS and I’m looking for guidance.

    Is there anything else I need to do or anything I should do differently?

  6. Hi, no, that’s good. Anyone who wishes to can now easily see that they can add 225’s feed to their preferred RSS reader. If they do so, they will get a list of article titles and authors pushed to their reader, and clicking on each one will reveal the full article. “So why don’t they just visit the web site?” It’s the push element that is the difference – the articles come to your reader as soon as they’re published, rather than you having to remember to visit the site your browser. To leave a comment though, one has to click through to the site. To some, this will all seem pointless (“well, I visit the site every day, so why do I need it?”), but RSS can be a very neat way of getting all your regular content served up straight to you.

    I may not have expressed myself clearly before. Adding “RSS” to that text is good, but I meant that both the orange icon and the text should (IMO) both be links to the RSS URL. Currently, it seems that the text links back to whichever page it’s on.

    Since this is a WordPress site, you should be able to get feeds for each of the categories too. Hang on, I’ll check…

  7. paddymelon@3. [I thought it was nice to get independent confirmation of being human.
    Which reminds me that, as someone who now lives abroad but worked for several years in the UK, every couple of years I get a letter from the pensions people asking me to get a certificate from a “person of standing” that I haven’t popped my clogs. So I went to my French GP and asked him if he could confirm that I was still alive. He replied “Well, I suppose I could take your pulse.”]

  8. …hmm, maybe not. But I’m on mobile at the mo. I’ll have another look when I’m next on a desktop.

  9. I presume the attack is why the RSS feed is continuously dropping,

    As I said a while ago, the RSS notifications are showing the whole post, not just the summary.

  12. OK, here goes.

    Up to sometime in April, the notification in my newsfeed reader (in Thunderbird) has just the first line or so of the post. For instance, the Indy puzzle 12,006, 2nd April:

    Eccles is back in his usual Wednesday slot this week, which means he’s found me … Read more >>

    But sometime in the last few weeks, the whole post appears, such as today’s Indy:

    Good morning everyone.

    An, in places, fiendish grid from Tack to get to grips with.

    There were a couple of very tricky parsing jobs in this one. I’m detecting a vaguely religious theme, unsurprising perhaps given recent papal events.

    6d is the Pontiff in this conclave. It has kept me stumped until just before posting this and instead of white smoke, there’s a white flag for 20d.

    Definitions are underlined.

    ACROSS

    1 Poet Laureate departs still sharp (4)

    ACID

    Poet Laureate [PL] departs removed from] still [PLACID]

    And so on. So, if I look at the notification I have avoid reading the answers.

  13. Ah, now I understand. Except that I don’t.

    For many years, Fifteensquared used a plugin that automatically inserted a “Read More” into any post that didn’t have one. However, it hasn’t been maintained for a number of years and has been flagged as a security risk.

    Now, bloggers have to insert it themselves.

    You will see that new posts do have “Read More” so I have no idea why Thunderbird is treating things any differently.

    I will attempt to investigate. In the meantime it might be possible to teach Thunderbird to stop processing there.

  14. I can see the read more on the home page.

    It would appear that the problem started after a Thunderbird update on 7th April. The Thunderbird help pages however, don’t give any information about configuring news feeds.

  15. In recent days, when viewing any page on fifteensquared on a mobile the following links (or similar) are inserted at the very top of every page:

    Fifteensquared RSS
    Independent on Sunday 1,835 by Filbert
    Guardian Quiptic 1,327/Pasquale
    Financial Times Sunday 90 – News by Julius
    Azed/Everyman

    These appear above the main Fifteenquared header, making it look as if the site has been renamed to “Fifteensquared RSS”. They also take up a lot of space, requiring more scroll-down to get to the actual content than should be required. You can simulate this on desktop by making your window very narrow.

    Is this intentional? I personally don’t think these links add much. On the home page, they just seem to duplicate the first few articles at the top of the page anyway (but in an odd order). On other pages, they just duplicate information that is already available in the sidebar (or at the bottom of the page on mobile).

    I suspect this is related to the RSS discussion above, and indeed the only link that doesn’t seem to be available elsewhere is the RSS link. I think the RSS link could be better placed in the sidebar, beneath Recent Posts, or in the footer.

    Thanks,

    Max

  17. Max @15

    Good point. I assume that you’re accessing the site on a mobile device. While experimenting, I’ve been using a “real” computer and the feed appears at top-right beside the header. I’ll look into changing it today, depending how my wife has mapped out my Sunday.

  20. I see this has now moved to the right-hand side, which is much better. Why include the extra links to the recent posts though? These are already in the Recent Posts section on the left-hand side.

    I’m assuming that this content is generated by an RSS plugin. Would it be possible to remove the plugin from this part of the site altogether and simply replace it with a static “RSS Feed” link that points to https://fifteensquared.net/feed/? Like this:

    RSS Feed

  24. Max @20

    Still getting to grips with this RSS stuff. Current method will not allow me to show any less than one feed.

    Dormouse @23 LHS pane appears after main page, followed by RHS

  25. Hope this is the right place for this.

    I’ve just started solving cryptics (literally a couple months ago and now I’m obsessed!) and am finding this site invaluable, especially the fact that the quick cryptic solutions are under a cut, which means I can use the clue deconstruction to point me in the right direction without revealing the full answer. I find this really helps as a learning tool.

    Is there any chance that format could be carried over to the other cryptics? It would help bridge that jump up from the quick, for me and anyone in this intermediate stage.

  26. @25

    Firstly, welcome to the site. I hope that you are able to stick around.

    Putting the blog together for the Quick Cryptic is a time-consuming business. The smaller grid and lower number of entries helps a lot as does the fact that it appears only once a week.

    All the bloggers are volunteers and can’t really afford the time to put in that amount of effort for 15×15 grids. Plus all the bloggers have varying technical skills.

    I think that if I was to ask all of them to put in the effort required then my inbox would be full of resignation letters.

    I think that we, as a community, have to expect that the majority of visitors are reasonably comfortable with the explanations given and if anyone wants anything expanded then they can ask via the comments.

  29. @28
    Not sure exactly what you mean by your question. It is never a hard problem to solve It was just a suggestion for consistency on titles where bloggers may be consistent with their own blogs but not necessarily with each other. e.g. yesterday’s Guardian cryptic blog didn’t mention the newspaper whereas Wednesday and Thursday did. Really is not a biggie, just a thought that affects me for approx two seconds every two weeks.

  32. KenMac I can always find anything I want just going down the page , no need for any search things . The site is very well-designed , if I can use it anybody can . Personally I like the bloggers having their own style and inconsistencies .

  33. I think Edtheball’s point is that on the home page, the blog is listed as “Cryptic” rather than “Guardian Cryptic”, which would be better

  35. And it’s that kind of response that makes me think it’s time to stop coming to this site.

  36. Yeah, thanks Crispy – at least you got my point at @33. agree with you @35 and hope it doesn’t put you off the site too 😡

  37. @34

    Whilst you may be right it doesn’t necessarily mean that anyone new to the site will have that knowledge.

  38. Admin@30
    I see category now – at the very bottom of the page on ios. The search that I was referring to is the one by the menu below the banner. The category does
    indeed work. All I was saying was that my bookmark on my phone browser (safari) – https://www.fifteensquared.net/?s=guardian – contains the search term for that search bar, defaulting to searching titles which contain the search which was not the case for Soup on Friday or Tramp on Tuesday

  39. You have done a crossword by Soup , you come to look at the blog and it says – by Soup . The bloggers are volunteers trying to help us in their spare time , leave them alone , stop nit-picking and just be grateful .

  41. Now that the Everyman isn’t a prize puzzle (Check word and Check grid available ander Assist) is there any reason to delay the blog until the following Sunday? When I (very rarely) have a witty comment to make or (even more rarely) a bone to pick I’ve forgotten a week later…

  43. Ken – as the opportunity to comment on the list of setters has been closed, I’m coming here to mention that, although you’ve changed the headings for the columns in the FT list to 2025, 2024, 2023, the corresponding columns for the other two papers are still showing 2024, 2023, 2022.

  44. Roz@42. I didn’t know that, so OK… At least they shouldn’t need to check that the prize submissions are correct…

  45. @43

    Yeah, comments were never meant to be enabled. Nevertheless, thanks for the feedback. Properly changed now. 🤞

  46. Hi… completed an Indy puzzle by Mog this morning early… looks like it might have been crossed with a Hoskins? Had fun anyway… so nothing lost, but just to let you know. Cheers n thanks for everything..

  47. Just to add this Mog puzzle is numbered 12,034 so appears to be in sequence.. maybe the blog is erroneous?
    Cheers

  48. Another avatar question, I’m afraid! If you look at https://www.fifteensquared.net/page/2/, the blogs by mc_rapper67 have a weird double-headed giraffe by them. I worked out eventually that this is actually the blogger’s avatar.

    The rendering of the avatar is okay on desktop (although it does look a bit weird for only those blogs to have a picture by them), but on mobile or a really narrow browser window the text gets squashed right against the picture and looks like something has gone a bit wrong with the rendering. Is it possible to add some padding around the avatars for bloggers, I wonder? Or maybe just turn off display of those avatars?

    Cheers,

    Max

  49. Max @48

    There was a time when all bloggers had pictures associated with their posts. This practice was changed (before my time) for reasons I never really understood.

    When I decided to implement avatars I wondered if this might allow us to re-introduce the pictures. I found a way but it isn’t automatic. I agree that the text does appear to be too close on mobile devices and I will continue to see if the idea is viable.

  50. Hi Ken

    I notice the RSS: Recent posts section is no longer showing the recent blogs. It’s quite a handy navigation tool and, at the moment, I’m having to go back to menu to move between the various blogs for today. Is it likely to be returning?

    The issue is somewhat compounded by the site also being quite slow to respond either to comments posted or to a simple refresh – occasionally but not always interrupted by a Captcha-type check. The slowness is a fairly recent thing – perhaps just the last week or so? Is this due to ongoing work with the hosts or is this likely to remain the case?

    ATB

    PM

  51. I registered that the site was being particularly slow earlier in the day and so was not surprised when Ken cranked up the Cloudflare security setting to ‘critical’. The fact that I am able to comment now suggests that he has been able to turn it back down to ‘high’. But am I alone in being completely excluded from the site when this happens? I cannot get past the ‘verify that you are not a robot’ procedure: I tick and it just comes up again and again. Clearly, from the timing of comments on Kite’s VE Day puzzle, other regulars can get past this, and I don’t understand what the problem is in my case. Using Google Chrome, which seems uncontroversial …

  52. Further to my query of yesterday @51, the RSS posts section was back earlier this morning but has now gone again. And refresh is taking substantially longer than it did yesterday with a couple of ‘unable to access database’ messages.

  53. Just to report that although I’ve just now been able to reach this site, having been denied access earlier this morning, there are currently no RSS posts visible.

  54. Site seems to have speeded up today, which is great, and the RSS section is back to working. The arrow button in the bottom right, enabling a swift return to the top of the page has now disappeared. It is another useful feature, esp in a Guardian blog which can get quite long.

  55. Admin@49. For what it’s worth, I dislike the inclusion of pictures for setters on the main page. I think fifteensquared’s main page has a really clean and consistent appearance that is almost entirely text based and find the large and uncontrolled avatar images jarring and a real detriment. They are far too prominent compared with how they are used for comments.

  56. I have no idea, Ken, whether you are noting and responding to comment here or whether the site (or my brain) is playing games with me but the arrow button mentioned @54 is now back in place. If that was you, thanks.

  58. I’ve tried to post a comment this morning but it never appears, even though if I then try again I get a “Duplicate comment detected” error message.
    It’s possible that the system will sort itself out later this morning in which case about five different versions of the same comment by me on Paul’s Guardian puzzle may appear. Apologies if that happens.

  61. Just an idea, but how about combing Site Policy, Privacy Policy and Cookies under a single heading in the top menu covering all three?

  62. Hello Admin
    I’ve no idea if this would be easy or fiendishly-complicated, but just in case it’s the former….
    Would it be possible to add a quick way for someone to “like” and/or “agree with” a btl comment? Something like a thumbs-up icon, for example.
    That way, if folk only wished to add an agreement or approval for an earlier comment, they could do so without having to log in and write as much, which may help keep the list more manageable…
    Just a thought!

  63. Jay@61: Is there any reason for Privacy Policy and Cookies to be in the top heading at all. Most websites would merely include these in the footer.

    I imagine, the Privacy Policy and Cookies pages could also be combined into a single page with the Privacy Policy title.

  64. Ken- a few points on the Newbie Corner.

    1. It would be helpful if the rules were explicitly to require that requests for explanations include the clue in question as written (ie including letter/word count) and not just its provenance. (The preamble suggests that this is a requirement.)

    2. Is the corner intended just for clues in puzzles that are blogged here? It doesn’t appear to say so, although that would seem to be an implicit requirement, given the reference to blogs providing full explanations.

    3. Given that solutions to clues in the major crosswords are published on the web before any blogs appear (see, for example, Dan Word), it may be as well to remove the reference in the rules to published solutions.

  65. Sorry, but trying to correct some unwanted italics has produced duplicate comments at 54 and 55 of today’s Anto blog. Can 54 please be deleted?

  68. All the entries on today’s Menu lead to the Home page – and you can only find Site Feedback by searching: it isn’t on the “Feedback” page.

  69. I like the organisation of the new top menu but the header links don’t work as I would expect.

    For example, on a mobile, if I tap Feedback I would expect the Feedback menu to expand and reveal the sub-menu items. Instead, I am taken to the fifteensquared home page. All of the headers do this and it is at odds with how users expect menus to behave.

    I can expand the menu by tapping the icon on the far right, but this is a small target to aim for and is not directly in my line of sight when reading the menu items.

    Tapping Info, Feedback etc should expand the menu and not navigate to a different page.

    Edit: the same happens on a bigger screen but the issue is mitigated by the menus being displayed as you hover over them with the mouse.

  70. @68 @69

    Thanks for the feedback. This is new-ish territory for me and I’ll see what can be done.

  71. I would suggest organising the new menus as follows:

    – Home – change this from a menu into a direct link
    > Info
    — About fifteensquared (moved from Home)
    — Setters
    — Bloggers
    — Links
    — FAQ
    > Topics (rename this from Blogs – I doubt many people realise that these are technically Blogs so the term is confusing)
    — add Newbie Corner here once it’s settled
    — (no other changes)
    > Feedback
    — (no other changes)
    > Policies
    — Remove this and add Privacy Policy and Cookies to the page footer instead)

    Note, the Home menu doesn’t actually contain a link to Home at present (other than the “bug” I’ve mentioned above).

  72. Actually, General Discussion is not feedback so doesn’t really work under the Feedback heading. You could rename the heading to “General” and move Newbie Corner here as well.

    If you also renamed “Blogs” to “Puzzles” (or Crosswords?) I think this would make sense overall.

  73. Thanks: whatever you just changed is much better. As Max@69 says: you wouldn’t expect that tapping on the word “Feedback” would produce a different result to tapping on the little down arrow at the end of the line.

  74. The new look is lovely – much cleaner, however, with apologies, can I add a couple of suggestions.

    Following on from this discussion – apologies for adding information about clue types on the Newbie post, rather than the area. Finding the two on a phone isn’t obvious while that post exists – would it work to label the blog post as a discussion about … ?

    Secondly, is it intentional that the way back to the home page is clicking the header? That’s how I’m having to navigate back on a laptop as there’s no link on the Home button.

  75. With the most recent changes the menus are coming together nicely. However, on smaller screens I think the behaviour still needs tweaking to bring them into line with how menus normally work. At present, when you open one menu, then another, the first-opened menu does not automatically close. This makes it difficult for the user to discern where one menu ends and the other begins and means that the user is presented with a bigger list of choices than needed. I would expect that clicking on one menu would automatically close the other menus, as is the behaviour when hovering over menus on bigger screens.

    I still don’t think that Feedback is a good home for General Discussion. General Discussion is for “discussion of general crossword related matters and other topics of interest”, which is not the same as feedback. Would a menu heading of Discussion work instead, I wonder? This would give:

    Discussion
    — General Discussion
    — Site Feedback

    It’s still not quite right, but I think better than “Feedback”.

  76. Thanks for the recent changes, Ken/Admin. This is all looking good now and I like “Share your thoughts”.

    One final thing is that the downward arrow heads that indicate a sub-menu would ideally be located next to the menu text. At present they are in the far right-hand side. This area is out of site when focussing on the menu text and is often covered by your thumb when using a phone in your right hand.

    I was just clicking quickly through the menus to test things and was surprised by Newbie Corner navigating me away rather than opening a menu. I realised I hadn’t been registering the arrow heads at all.

    Could the arrow go on the left-hand side instead maybe?

    Not one to lose sleep over!

  77. Thanks Max (and others) for all the feedback.

    I don’t think I have any control over the arrow position.

    There are still a few tweaks needed which I should be able to address over the weekend

  78. Hi Kenmac
    Do you think you could add in the “Today’s Cryptics” panel a regular link to the Everyman, please? I keep forgetting where to find it, and Google only found ancient ones!

  82. I don’t know if I’m unique in this but I have failed to buy you a coffee, Ken, on a few occasions with the BuyMeACoffee site failing on my device/browser (ios/safari).

    The way it fails almost invariably fails to give me an error on the payment page apart from one time whereby my perfectly normal email address is reported as invalid. I’ve tried different email addresses and even set up a page on the site thinking it might be easier to support another member but still no joy so far.

    I’ll have to try on a different device and/or browser when I get the opportunity but just thought I’d share my frustration even though this is not strictly on topic.

  83. @82

    I don’t know about unique but I’ve certainly not heard of any other problems except for the early days of its existence.

  84. Hi Ken, Dropping in to say I’ve had quite a few verification requests today, and some recently, but increasing today.

  85. Hi Ken
    Several times this morning I’ve had “Error establishing a database connection” when I’ve tried to access the site, though so far it has worked on a second (or, once, third) go. Is there maintenance going on?

  88. Pan. Pan. Pan. Imminent crash. I really hope you’re having a lovely weekend KenMac, but things seem to be getting weirder.

  90. Came here to ask after the Maskarade blog, but it took lots of attempts to get past the “database error” messages.

  91. Like others, finding it very difficult to access the site. ‘Error establishing a database connection’,

  92. KenMac I have not been able to post today using Roz .
    C suggested a change of name and it worked , hope that is okay .

  93. Ken – I have just solved what the Independent website says is a Filbert to then encounter a blog for a Bluebird?

  99. Just fyi I think something is up with the clue types in the Quick Cryptic recently. The examples seem to have got mixed up, which may be quite confusing for beginners, i.e. it says you’re looking for anagrams and hidden words, but the example given of the type of clue that follows is not an anagram or hidden word. This was the case this week and last, I think.

  100. I haven’t noticed problems with the Quick Cryptic examples or clues for the last few weeks, either in the website or the paper app. I do check the clue types and instructions when I build the blog and use the listed clue types to explain the parsing. I also check the explanations and expand on them if necessary.

    There was one clue in #66, Carparthian’s recent Quick Cryptic where various commenters argued that 11D should be an Acrostic, not one of the listed clue-types. However it also worked as a charade if you knew all the abbreviations, and that was a listed clue type.

    Is there a specific example you are thinking of? Because I noticed I’d left an extra clue type on one of the blogs a few weeks, editing things in the wee small hours.

  101. Thanks Shanne. I was talking specifically about Quick Cryptic 66 and 67 in the summary bit titled “TODAY’S TRICKS”. Under Anagram it gives an example of a Hidden Word (instead of an anagram), and for a Hidden word it says “Hint that answer reads the same backwards” (instead of a hint that the answer is hidden in the clue’s words). It’s super minor and looks like an accidental copy/paste situ, but for newbies that could be quite confusing. Has that helped?

  102. Sorry Crumpets @101 – I’ve corrected both of those. Also sorry to be slow – I answered this morning in the gap between setting up today’s Donkey Derby and the gates opening. Actually doing the corrections had to wait for me to get home.

  103. Bug report :
    When the number of comments passes 99, the leading 1 is off screen on my iPhone, so this comment will appear as 03, not 103.

  104. @103

    Yeah, I actually reported it to my predecessor and he was unable to offer a solution. Since I’ve taken over, I’ve also failed 😞

    My intention is always to try to do the jiggery-pokery necessary to start afresh when we approach triple figures but the last few weeks have been hectic.

  105. Hi KenMac

    Re the Guardian Jumbo blog: sorry to have jumped the gun with my post. I’ve been blocked from sending emails since lunchtime but I’m still receiving them, so I saw your message.

  108. I came here to say thanks for sorting out the posting issue – but I also want to say that the comment @108 appears to be spam.

  109. Looks like Ken has sorted out the spam spotted yesterday by Gladys, but more has appeared this morning (currently @109).

  110. Hi Ken (again): I see that the Newbie Corner thread has automatically closed itself. I assume it was meant to remain open indefinitely, like this thread and General Discussion.

  111. @110

    Oops! I made it a post rather than a page.

    Should be OK now.

    (hopefully I’ll tidy it up over the weekend)

Comments are closed.