Widgets and Game Viewers

If you have a chess.com widget on your web page or blog it might be a good idea to see if it's still there.

I've had a widget on  both my web pages (http://www.tomorrowland.info and http://www.u3anepean.org) since June 2008. Sometime after March 15 this year the links disappeared.  I didn't notice till late August and when I checked the chess.com widget page I saw that several of the widgets were no longer displaying the graphic. The link was still there, but it was invisible to viewers.

I replaced the widget with another and in just over four weeks another 17 people have joined chess.com because of those links. Not all have stayed to play, but they've joined.

I think chess.com have fixed the dodgy links now but do make sure your own is still in place.

In July neurionb asked whether it would be possible to make the chess.com pgn viewer available to members. (See his post HERE.) Erik confirmed that it's on the list of things to be done and it's certainly appreciated how much other, more important, work is happening behind the scenes. On the other hand, if a small-turnover web site like mine can generate seventeen members in a month just by having a widget, imagine how much more powerful a pgn viewer, complete with chess.com logo and link would be.

And consider the potential number of chess.com players who would seize the opportunity to post games on their own web sites and blogs. I know that I could expand the amount of chess content on Tomorrowland, and, for the first time, create one on my U3A site.

Erik, it's a potential winner.

A pgn viewer is a good idea. (for the beginners:pgn is a kind of chess notation)

When I saw the title I expected an article about a famous chess player or an remarkable method to win a game.

Sometimes it's hard to pick the right title.  I'm not sure what I could have done with this one, though.