We are pleased to let you know that we are working on a new and improved Crossword Club site for our members, which will be ready to go live next month. We’ll be sharing some of our ideas with you between then and now, and asking for your feedback.
The new site will include all the best features of the existing site, but also benefit from improved functionality, meaning that it will suffer from far less downtime and fewer errors. It will also have some of the features you’ve asked for, including a members’ discussion forum, leaderboards for cryptic and concise puzzles, and a “My Profile” page to enable you to track your personal performance.
We apologise for the disruption that has been affecting the site recently, and hope you’ll be pleased with the improvements to the new site.
To celebrate the launch, and thank you for your loyalty, we’ll be offering you a preview of the new site a week before it goes live to new members, and also rewarding you with a month’s free extension to your Crossword Club subscription.
When I visit the Times offices next Monday, I’ll get my first look at the new site. Although I’m wary of heralding false dawns, the exchange of e-mails with my current contact at the Times has been very encouraging, and it looks as if a considerably better site is, at long last, coming fairly soon.
If this is the success it promises to be I think we all owe you a big debt of gratitude for all your efforts on our behalf.
I wonder if putting the whole site behind a paywall has brought about a new and more positive attitude towards people who are no longer just “readers” but “paying customers” from those higher up the chain of command…
It’s of no more interest to me than whether a setter uses a computer when producing a puzzle – what matters is the results, and how they get there is their choice.
I like J2EE running on some kind of respectable commerical appserver with Apache, but that’s just me. It is probably best to buy your full suite from one vendor, otherwise they’ll be pointing fingers at each other.