Call for volunteers: website content checking
Posted by Niall Harrison
26 July 2011
As close readers of this blog may have realised, one of the ongoing projects this year at Strange Horizons is to update our website design and backend. In the ten years since we launched, the current site has served us extremely well with minimal updates, but now we want to improve or add various bits of functionality that a modern online magazine really should have – such as direct comments on articles and stories, RSS feeds for each department, better archives and search functionality, and so on – and refresh our design.
We're making steady progress, but the next stage is a big one, and we'd like to ask for your help. We've exported all the content from the current site, but need to check each page to make sure the process has worked smoothly and there are no unexpected formatting errors creeping in. Obviously, with ten years of content, that's a lot of pages to check!
That's where you would come in. We'd like volunteers to go through the exported pages and flag any problems for the attention of our webmasters. You don't have to correct the problems, just point them out so that we know what needs fixing.
As an incentive, anyone who checks at least 25 pages (probably 2-3 hours' work) will be entered into a draw for a one-off A3 print by Tommie Kelly:
Anyone who checks at least 50 pages will be entered into the draw, and will receive a Strange Horizons mug.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask in the comments below -- and if you're interested, please email webmaster@strangehorizons.com.
Comments (8)
Posted by Paul on July 27, 2011 5:01 AM
The email address you provided does not work.
Posted by Abigail on July 27, 2011 5:04 AM
There was an errant tag in the formatting - it should work fine now. Thanks for the heads up.
Posted by Paul on July 27, 2011 6:17 AM
Hmm. Still not working for me. I've included my email with this post, just in case there's something the "webmasters" can email me instead, to let me know how to begin checking pages.
The error message returned to me when trying to email webmasters@strangehorizons.com is below.
"Technical details of permanent failure:
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 554 554 5.7.1 : Recipient address rejected: Access denied (state 14)."
Posted by Matt Denault on July 27, 2011 8:24 AM
I note that on the SH Staff page, the webmaster group e-mail address is singular--webmaster@@strangehorizons.com.
Posted by Matt Denault on July 27, 2011 8:25 AM
Er, webmaster@strangehorizons.com, that is!
Posted by Shane Gavin on July 27, 2011 10:08 AM
The email address is indeed singular: webmaster@strangehorizons.com
I've updated the post, and sorry about the confusion.
Paul, I'll send the details to you shortly.
Posted by nigel foster on August 26, 2011 9:00 AM
Er. . .it still ain't working for me. If you still need volunteers my e-mail address really is accurate.
Posted by Niall on August 26, 2011 12:41 PM
Nigel -- sorry about! Not sure what the problem could be. The webmasters will be in touch with you shortly; if anyone else is having problems emailing us, please do let us know.