If you think something's broken ...
... you may well be right. But read this before worrying too much.
Current status, etc (as of end December '07)
I first released this into the wild on 15th Sept. 2007. The initial version was, as early users pointed out to me, chaotically organised, not well explained, and also missing a couple of important features. Their comments therefore resulted in many rapid changes, and as of now it seems to be settling down into something rather more coherent. But then again, it's not finished yet. My current plan is to finish writing the documentation and then start putting up some permanent links to it, which I haven't done yet. This should bring more users, who will possibly discover new problems, which may perhaps result in another set of changes.
My point is, if you thought you saw a problem a few days ago, check again in case things have changed. I'm putting notes that look like this on the pages to mark things that I'm already aware need doing. It's even possible that the help pages may have something relevant to say.
Things that can go wrong (is this wise ? - ed)
- A page in the normal site style titled "Temporarily closed". This is not to worry about at all, it indicates that I'm making some kind of changes involving getting things into an internally-inconsistent state, such that I don't want it talking to anyone until they're sorted out. With any luck I'll have remembered to give some sort of explanation of what it's about and an indication of how long I expect it to take. Just wait a bit and try again.
- You could get a "refused connection" page. This would be a web-server problem. This looks serious, but probably isn't; most likely, again, because I'm fiddling with it and it'll be back shortly. Not to worry too much, just leave it a bit & try again. If it keeps happening over more than a few minutes, something is wrong & please do contact me.
- the Light-blue Screen of Partial Death. A page saying "Come back later" in a handful of different languages. This indicates that there is something wrong with the url in question - the code to make a link work, or a button or whatever, has blown up (other links are probably unaffected & ought to continue working). This is always a problem, and please let me know about it, tell me what you were doing & which link it was.
- Just Plain Oddness. A button doesn't seem to do anything, or does something you weren't expecting, or something just generally isn't as you think it should be. Either a) it's doing what I think it should, in which case there's something I haven't made clear enough, or that could be better arranged, or b) it isn't doing what I think it should, it's a bug in the code. Either way, please contact me.
If you want to contact me, here's how (the link on my name at the bottom of each page will also do it). Apart from any actual problems, I'm also very interested to hear if anyone has any other comments, suggestions, etc. Eventually, it would be nice to add some kind of mechanism for general discussion, a forum or mailinglist or something.
and finally ...
I'd like to thank the volunteer guinea-pigs who tested this thing in its early stages, and responded with a fine crop of comments, suggestions, and other such good stuff. Thanks, in order of appearance, to Carol Turner, Phil Taylor, Andy Hornby, Paul Sherwood ...