We thought that it was high time to do a quick Loquax update blog. Remember we don’t send out newsletters any more and so our blog, forums and social media are usually where we let you know about everything going on with the site. The biggest change is right here on the blog as we’ve given it a much needed revamp and spring clean. Additionally we’ve made a useful improvement to our competition listings plus there’s been a bit of a tidy up within the forums.
New Look Loquax Blog
One thing that we’d noticed with the blog was that it had some serious loading issues. On top of that the design had become a little bit dated and it had become difficult to upgrade or add in new features. So we decided to strip it back and start again. As part of that process we also went through every blog post, deleting unrequired old content and fixing a boatload of links that had become broken. We also put content into new categories, so for example we have a lot of ‘compers in the news’ posts under Professional Compers (not the best title but we couldn’t think of an alternative) and you can find some of our favourite posts under Memory Lane. Do you remember when we sponsored the National Dodgeball Championship? Actually one thing that is missing from the Memory Lane posts are some of the items we used to sell and giveaway such as Loquax badges and keyrings. We’ll put a blog together covering that soon.
Competition Listing Updates
Daily entry competitions have their own forum and tracker which is fine provided you remember to check that section on a regular basis. If you’re searching for comps by new today, closing, prize type or comp type then our system omitted the daily entries from those lists. That meant, for example, if you looked at purchase necessary competitions you might think we’re missing a few. Not any longer. We’ve now fixed our code so that daily entry competitions will appear when you’re checking out the listings. For example if a new daily entry prize draw is added then it’ll appear in the new today list. You can also discover it by prize and entry type. The daily tracking remains so if you click ‘entered’ then it resets at midnight and you can be reminded to enter again. Of course if you click ‘ignore’ then that particular daily is hidden from view. To make life even easier for you the tracking buttons have also been added to the daily forum too so if you visit you’ll see the entered/ignored indicators next to the various threads.
Forum Spring Clean
In addition to the tracking elements added to the daily forum, we have also fixed the phone-in and postcard forums to also show their trackers. Loquax has had a major overhaul in the background and during that process some elements were lost or not reactivated so that’s why they vanished. We had thought about merging all the competition post forums into just one section but understand users still like them separated. Elsewhere we have had to switch off some of the Local Groups due to lack of interest. These groups were good back in the day of local newspaper, magazine and radio competitions and when Loquax was a busier hub of chat etc. Today social media and limited offline comps have made those sections less useful. Our remaining spring cleaning efforts have been mainly changing old links and adding a bit of extra intro text in places to hopefully encourage more involvement from the community.
Cloudflare Errors
One thing that we are aware of is that some users have been experiencing errors when using Loquax. This usually comes in the form of a Cloudflare error page. Cloudflare acts as a security blanket across the site and whilst it does a good job keeping things out sometimes it’s not letting compers in. We’re not 100% sure what causes this issue but we are looking at a few ideas. However if you encounter this error then you can fix it by deleting your browser cache and Loquax cookies. To check if it is your browser causing issues then simply open Loquax up in an alternative browser (or device) and see if the site loads. If it loads then go back to your favoured browser and delete cookies and cache. If that fails then do get in touch. We are on social media channels so you are welcome to ping us via those.
And That’s It For Now
OK it’s not the most exciting update but firstly we thought it was high time we let everyone know what’s going on at Loquax. Because we don’t send out a newsletter, and to be fair we’re not that prolific on social media, we do wonder if people think we’ve vanished completely. Mind you some compers still think we closed down in 2013 – oops. We also think it’s important to let you know we’re not just letting the grass grow. We want to continue evolving Loquax for as long as we possibly can. We think it could be better in terms of mobile and tablet use, some of the content needs updating and we’re always finding stuff that’s out of date or broken. As long as the site is needed – or we retire lol – then we’ll keep ticking along quietly as the best competition site (at least in our opinion).