A very belated Happy New Year from all of us at Loquax. What started as hope for a more optimistic 2021 quickly changed with further lockdowns and to be honest it’s taken us a little while to get back on the old hamster wheel. However things are starting to move again and myself and Kirsty are busy working on bits and bobs that need fixing across the site.
Where’s The Newsletter
First off though you may be wondering what has happened to our newsletter. At the moment we have a slight issue because of changes in UKGC rules about gambling and advertising. One partner site has stipulated that we’re not allowed to use direct or indirect marketing to advertise bingo brands. This is because a self-excluded player or someone registered with Gamstop may read our newsletter, click to Loquax, discover the bingo section and then be tempted to gamble. The fact they could do that with many sites or even Google doesn’t matter. Nor is it relevant that our newsletter is for people who enter competitions. Also seemingly irrelevant is that if that said excluded person clicks to a bingo brand then their blocks should come into play and prevent them from playing. For whatever reason this one partner site thinks we should be doing that instead. It’s annoying and frustrating but unfortunately until we can resolve that situation we’ve put the newsletter on hold. Instead we’ll keep you up to date with news via Facebook and the blog.
Hide Gambling Options
That all said we are aware that gambling content isn’t for everyone and when you’re comping on Loquax you may prefer a simplified set-up minus anything to do with lottery, bingo or slots. The good news is that you can create essentially a ‘Competitions Only’ version of Loquax. To do this you need to go to Edit Comp Listing Options and from there select the ‘Gambling’ tickbox from the ‘Hide Type Of Competition Options’. Click ‘Save Changes’ in order to save your choice. What this will do is two things. Firstly any competitions listed with a ‘Gambling’ icon will be hidden from view. Secondly you will see a stripped back menu on the red navigation bar! But that’s not all! If you subsequently try and visit any of the gambling sections on Loquax or try and click to a site we advertise then you will be redirected back to the homepage. In other words we’re stopping you seeing our content and visiting these sites. Note that this is an opt-in feature and only applies when you’re logged in to Loquax. We think that this is more than an acceptable way to manage things.
Loquax Prize Draws
As always we still have a number of giveaways running on Loquax for you to enter. You may have noticed that we’ve switched from using Gleam to a different mechanic. It’s called RafflePress and it works in a very similar way. However you can login with either your Facebook details or your email address. Ideally we’d like it to be related to your Loquax login but that’s going to require a little bit of tweaking. Anyway don’t forget to enter these draws. There’s a new one every week and if you’re not too keen on the prize we’re featuring then we’re happy to offer an alternative to the same value. Currently on offer this week are 1. Big Night In A Box; 2. Personalised Heart Mugs; 3. Chocolate Treat Box; Solitary Bee Hive; 5. Microwaveable Fur Slippers; and 6. Poseable Cat Lamp.
Early Spring Cleaning
Very observant users might have noticed that there are a few changes going on. The blog for example has had a little tidy up and similar activities have been going on across the site. This follows on from our server changes late last year as we bring Loquax up to date in terms of coding. Sadly we’ve had to say goodbye to some parts of the site although you may never have known they existed. In the early days of Loquax we had three games that were developed in-house (by that Kirsty did them). One was Lake Loquax, a lemonade stand style game, another was Chockablock that was a kind of Tetris game and the last one was Hocus Poker. The latter was a game Kirsty created for a competition which I think she won. For it’s time it was really cool but now Java isn’t part of the modern browser it’s had to be retired.
Image credit: Wiresmart.io