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Wings Over Scotland


Archive for the ‘housekeeping’


Dealing with the deluge 35

Posted on December 10, 2013 by

As you can probably imagine, with over 140,000 readers a month we get quite a lot of emails. Unfortunately the contact form plugin we’ve used until now to avoid being swamped in spam (which is what tends to happen if you just give out your direct email address) is a bit rubbish, and results in an inbox that looks like this:

contacts

Having 95% of your email listed as being from “Contact” or “Contact form” is, we can reveal, a major pain in the backside when it comes to keeping track of conversations.

Read the rest of this entry →

You don’t know what you’ve got 40

Posted on November 28, 2013 by

…until it’s gone. Wings Over Scotland is normally protected by a brilliant spam filter called Akismet, which blocks the constant flood of fake comments that assails every website on the internet. Akismet has filtered out 1,496,404 of these attempts to sell you counterfeit fashion, hardcore porn sites and attempts to steal your bank details since we started, in amongst the 120,297 real comments we’ve published in that time.

akismet

Last night it suffered a temporary outage, with the result that the four or five “pending” comments we usually wake up to in the morning – ones Akismet thinks are spam but isn’t 100% certain about, and so puts in a queue for us to look at manually – have been replaced today by 1,877 (and rising – an hour ago it was just over 1,000).

Here’s what this means for you.

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Some tweaking 90

Posted on May 10, 2013 by

We've been doing a little minor smartening-up around the place this afternoon, mostly (though not exclusively) for the benefit of people using the site via mobile phones or tablets. There's a new comment box that should work for both iOS and Android devices (and will enable you to italicise, bold or underline things, as well as embed images), and there are now a couple of little orange buttons at the bottom right of the screen that'll take you directly to the top or bottom of a page. (Replicating the effect of the Home and End buttons on a PC keyboard.)

Hopefully they'll make the site a little more user-friendly. If you have any problems with them, give us a shout and we'll see what we can do.

Moving in 41

Posted on March 06, 2013 by

So, we’ve moved. We’ve done it a couple of hours early as it was getting VERY confusing with two versions of the site live at once and people posting to the new one even though we’d EXPRESSLY TOLD THEM NOT TO 😀

Unfortunately this does mean a small handful of comments have been lost, and may not be coming back. Sorry about that. (We took a backup of them in the hopes we might be able to somehow resurrect them from the XML, but we’re promising nothing.)

Anyway, this is WingsLand’s new home (new RSS feed here). It should hopefully be more stable than the old one, better able to cope with higher volumes of traffic, and more resistant to malicious attacks and threats. There MAY be the odd hiccup as we iron out wrinkles that don’t become apparent until you’re up and running, but hopefully not. If there are, please bear with us over the next 24 hours or so.

(We especially hope Google Analytics doesn’t get screwed up. We simply can’t tell you how impenetrable and horrible Google Analytics is, and if we live to be a billion we hope we never have to try to make it do anything again.)

One bonus is that a number of people who previously couldn’t access the site because work filters blocked it for having the word “game” in the address should no longer have problems. The old site will stay in place for the forseeable future so that people’s old links will still work, but will no longer be updated and comments will be closed.

But anyway, there it is. We’re here, we’re having a beer, get used to it.

We are several 3

Posted on January 29, 2013 by

Just a quick bit of infrastructure, folks. We’ve been meaning for a while to get round to sorting out proper author tags, as the WordPress theme the site uses annoyingly doesn’t link from bylines. However, as the sidebar “tag cloud” isn’t big enough to include all our tags at once, even that didn’t quite do the job.

So now in the black tab bar at the top of the screen there’s a handy Contributors page, from which you can immediately and easily locate articles by your favourite WingsLand writers who aren’t me. Want to feature in it? We want to hear from you.

The listening blog 21

Posted on April 26, 2012 by


Regular readers may have noticed that our comments system has been prone to random brainstorms for a while, leading to some awkwardly-formatted comments that can be a bit of a pain to read. Ever alert to customer concerns, we’ve installed some new plugins that should smarten things up somewhat, and which also provide a five-minute editing window so you can go back and fix any embarrassing clangers that may have slipped into the first draft.

Um, that’s it. Nothing more to see here. Move along, now.

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    • Andy Storrie on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Come on, Campbell. You just canny help yourself, son. Let it go. This bullshit is yesterdays propaganda, lad!Jul 19, 17:33
    • Aidan on The Pillars Of Sanity: “@Alf – but isn’t that exactly what has happened, look at who are the hero’s in this story. The U.K.…Jul 19, 17:27
    • William G Walker on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Dear Rev, I’m pleased that your “report of victories” got a first-class response from all your fans! It must take…Jul 19, 17:21
    • Lorn on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Great piece, Rev. I do hope that you, with all the other people who placed their heads above the parapet…Jul 19, 17:13
    • Alf Baird on The Pillars Of Sanity: “A widna haud ma breith on any UK state quango protecting the rights of Scots, though she may learn something…Jul 19, 17:06
    • Peter McAvoy on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Well done to everybody who refused to accept and challenged this woke fascism and to the deserved victories you have…Jul 19, 16:22
    • sarah on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Somewhere, over the rainbow… there is a happy land of sanity where children and women, and their supporters, can live…Jul 19, 15:53
    • Marie Clark on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Well done Stuart, you’ve been in this fight for a long time and it’s nice to see the outcome now.…Jul 19, 15:49
    • panda paws on The Pillars Of Sanity: “However deranged this week has been, I have every faith that next week will be the gift that keeps on…Jul 19, 15:47
    • agent x on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Meanwhile I am really enjoying watching the beautiful talented women playing in the EURO’s 25 without seeing big bollocked men…Jul 19, 15:45
    • SilentMajority on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Great article (and many thanks to the author!). Each and every victory an occasion to cheer. I am especially pleased…Jul 19, 15:28
    • duncanio on The Pillars Of Sanity: “And the hits keep coming.Jul 19, 15:24
    • Robert Mellish on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Meanwhile, at Pride Glasgow this morning, we could see on open and ‘proud’ display the extent of capture of corporate…Jul 19, 15:22
    • Mark Beggan on The Pillars Of Sanity: “It looks to me that the whole of Civic Scotland licks the gravy one way or another.Jul 19, 15:06
    • agent x on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Sturgeon: “There are people who have opposed this Bill that cloak themselves in women’s rights to make it acceptable, but…Jul 19, 15:03
    • agent x on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Well done Stu. I note that various press are stating that Swinney and NHS should put an end to the…Jul 19, 14:55
    • dramfineday on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Hear, hear, Jon.Jul 19, 14:47
    • Astonished on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Great work from all concerned. Any idea when we will start jailing all the transallies for all the harm they’ve…Jul 19, 14:35
    • Mark Beggan on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Monday to-do list; Visit Charity shops and complain about Trans flags. Demand to speak to the manager. It’s going to…Jul 19, 14:32
    • Mark Beggan on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Well done Rev. So it’s Operation Citadel. We know how well that worked out for the Wermacht.Jul 19, 14:27
    • sarah on Points Into Prongs: “O/T “Support Legal Fees For A Scottish TV Channel” crowdfunder. David Henry has worked for 10 years to try to…Jul 19, 14:26
    • Pete on The Pillars Of Sanity: “One line that sums up the entire debacle is “We haven’t even covered the latest developments in the Sandie Peggie…Jul 19, 14:22
    • Robert on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Good to see the late, great David Graeber quoted. I have often wondered where Graeber, as a prominent left libertarian,…Jul 19, 14:18
    • Andy Ellis on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Huge debts of thanks are owed to the few brave individuals (including your good self!) who whether willingly or by…Jul 19, 14:17
    • Gav on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Most satisfying article you’ve ever written Stu?Jul 19, 14:13
    • Jon Drummond on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Absolutely excellent article Rev Campbell. I salute you for your dogged determination in bringing this perversion to light and continuing…Jul 19, 14:13
    • GM on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Fine writing and a fine effort more generally. You should come back up to Scotland and put yourself forward for…Jul 19, 14:12
    • David on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Stu, congratulations to you. You fought these people all the way and can now rejoice.Jul 19, 14:03
    • Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Points Into Prongs: “REST AND BE THANKFUL (Some online history) « The making of the road, in any sense that we would now…Jul 19, 13:44
    • Anthem on Points Into Prongs: “Yup, Noises need to be made.Jul 19, 13:26
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