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Sunday, July 22, 2012

Web Form Submissions: Important New Feature!

If you are planning on submitting to the July Secret Agent Contest, here's some good news:

The submissions form will now be available 30 MINUTES PRIOR TO THE OPENING OF EACH SUBMISSION WINDOW!

This means, of course, that you will have up to 30 minutes to enter, PROOFREAD and FIX FORMATTING on your entry BEFORE it's time to hit the submit button.

Isn't this amazing?!  Once again, huge thanks to the wondrous Michael.

PLEASE avail yourselves of this new feature.  I am dearly hoping that this will greatly reduce the amount of format fixing I will need to do.  (Yes, I kind of do a lot of it.)

Spread the word!
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29 comments:

  1. Dana EJuly 23, 2012 at 12:58 AM

    Awesome! Thanks, Michael!

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  2. Aldrea AlienJuly 23, 2012 at 1:04 AM

    A most-needed feature indeed. Thank you, Michael, for adding.

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  3. LanetteJuly 23, 2012 at 8:26 AM

    Of course Michael is awesome, he has a Hungarian last name. :)

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  4. Dana EJuly 23, 2012 at 9:11 AM

    I LOVE the submission form!

    This was my first time to enter in a while and being able to see your submission on the right of the screen was awesome!

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  5. BetsyJuly 23, 2012 at 9:18 AM

    Thank you, Authoress, for another contest! Very excited and nervous -I think I got in! (I did receive the confirmation as I used my gmail address.) I had my entry all set as soon as I accessed the form (30 minutes early) but when the clock ticked down to the entry moment, I clicked "submit" and nothing happened. I had to fill the form out again to actually enter. But it did allow me to practice, which was great. Thanks again! The new form looks great. The only downside was I sat there tweaking my entry for thirty minutes!

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  6. UnknownJuly 23, 2012 at 9:50 AM

    @Betsy sorry to hear you had troubles with your submission. Send me your operating system (Mac, Win XP, Win 7, etc) and your browser (IE 7/8/9/10, Firefox 12, Safari 3.1, ETC) and I'll have a look at it so nobody else runs into that problem.

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  7. UnknownJuly 23, 2012 at 9:51 AM

    @Betsy Err, to my email address (not here in the comments (katowulf on gmail)

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  8. UnknownJuly 23, 2012 at 9:52 AM

    @Dana_E me too; I played with it for hours longer than I needed to because it was fun to see it update. It's also fun to watch the countdown.

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  9. CourtneyCJuly 23, 2012 at 11:02 AM

    I used the bot for the first time, and am not sure if my submission went through. When I clicked "submit" it just reloaded a blank form. There wasn't any confirmation message. So, I'm not sure if I need to try again during tonight's window.

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  10. stefwritesJuly 23, 2012 at 11:09 AM

    Same exact experience as Courtney C.
    Hit submit and it reloaded a blank form. No confirmation email.

    I had everything ready at 8:30, but at 9:00 when I hit submit, everything went blank.


    Should I try again tonight?

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  11. AnonymousJuly 23, 2012 at 11:12 AM

    I had the same thing happen too- I tried to submit it again starting from the second blank form and had it happen again. I swear I hit submit the nano-second the button changed to open, and I wonder if everyone doing that caused some issues. Would love any suggestions for avoiding that tonight! Michael- Im on a Mac with Safari 5.1.7.

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  12. kiwingJuly 23, 2012 at 11:21 AM

    Same experience. I got a blank form after submitting. Then I tried to submit via email (with a short apology in case it was a resubmission). So far, I've only gotten a rejection notice because the apology note put me above the word count. :( I guess I'll try again.

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  13. AilynnJuly 23, 2012 at 12:31 PM

    Had the same experience as Courtney. How long does it take to know if we made it in? I could email again later but I wouldn't want to be disqualified for sending it in twice. Thanks for your help and for the contest.

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  14. AilynnJuly 23, 2012 at 12:32 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  15. BetsyJuly 23, 2012 at 12:48 PM

    When I submitted the first time, I had the same experience. So I filled out the form again and submitted. That time I received an immediate confirmation on the screen telling me I made it in and what my number was. I used my g-mail account and received an immediate confirmation email stating my number in the contest. If you didn't get either of those, I would assume you didn't make it in. Tonight, I'd have the form up and filled out and when the countdown is zero click submit. If it boots you back to a blank form, fill it out again and hit submit (as quickly as humanly possible!). That's what worked for me! Best of luck!

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  16. WriteinPencilJuly 23, 2012 at 12:49 PM

    I had the same experience of getting a blank form after I'd hit send. Since I did not receive a confirmation email, I filled out the form again. It went through, and I received only one confirmation email - for the second attempt.

    I hope this information is helpful! :)

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  17. Tlotlo TsamaaseJuly 23, 2012 at 2:04 PM

    Yeah I hope this information is helpful too hey, looking forward to submitting. Great

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  18. A. M. PerkinsJuly 23, 2012 at 3:42 PM

    Well, crud. I got a blank form, too, but thought that must be the standard and didn't want to mess anything up by submitting twice. Especially annoying since I was extremely sleep-deprived and really REALLY needed some extra sleep but got up early so I would have everything set and ready to go at 9 AM.

    Oh well. Nothing for it - I just have to hope I can make it in at 7 :-(

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  19. AilynnJuly 23, 2012 at 7:02 PM

    Thank you, Betsy! I did it right this time. Yay.

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  20. AnonymousJuly 23, 2012 at 7:06 PM

    With the web form submission, I think I may have put too many spaces between lines because they didn't show up in the area to the right that said "this is how your post will appear". Apologies for any inconvenience. ^_^

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  21. UnknownJuly 23, 2012 at 7:06 PM

    @A. M. Perkins: good luck

    @Ailynn: yay!

    @everone: Sorry for the annoying bug, it was a complicated timing issue I couldn't forsee and didn't do enough testing to catch. It was fixed up in time for the second round.

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  22. AngieJuly 23, 2012 at 7:08 PM

    Okay, I know this is a contest, and I appreciate you doing it, but I'm kind of irritated now. This morning I entered right after 8 am central time and I got an email back saying the contest wasn't open yet. I went, huh, maybe my computer clock is different from everyone elses?? So just now I entered all my info into the web entry form - and WATCHED the clock tick down (it was 2 seconds faster than my computer). I hit submit when the time was up, and AGAIN, it said that the contest wasn't open yet. The other thing is that it keeps giving me a message saying that it's not open until 5pm MDT. I'm on central time. Not sure what that means? I don't know what happened, but I'm a little... frustrated and sad that I didn't get in. I hope you can fix whatever glitch this is before the next contest. Again, I really do appreciate you doing these contests.

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  23. UnknownJuly 23, 2012 at 7:08 PM

    And the second round received 25 submissions in a little under a minute!

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  24. UnknownJuly 23, 2012 at 7:12 PM

    @Angie - It was probably a caching issue (stored in your browser from this morning). I saw the same behavior when I was fixing the Ultra Annoying Bug of Doom so I know that both of those irritations were cleaned up. Better luck next time!

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  25. AngieJuly 23, 2012 at 7:20 PM

    Well, the first time I entered by email, so I'm not sure if that would make it a caching issue. After I didn't get in this morning, I looked up the form and it said it was closed, so I closed the window and then about half an hour ago reopened the entry form from your blog (so it opened a new window again). I'm not going to pretend that I know how caching works, but would it really be an issue with both methods of entry?

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  26. CourtneyCJuly 23, 2012 at 7:27 PM

    I did the same. I had both an email ready and the bot form.

    When my clock said it was time, the bot form was in countdown mode with still 18 minutes to go. I'd click submit every now and again, but nothing happened. When it got to zero and changed to "submit", I clicked it and it instantly said "sorry, contest is full."

    I appreciate how the bot should make everything easier for everybody, but in my case it is a tragi-comedy. :-(

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  27. AnonymousJuly 24, 2012 at 12:48 AM

    Yuck. Same problems as above. Hit the button at 1 minute AFTER the hour according to national time clock(?) and was told I was submitting too early!! RE-submitted only a few seconds later and was told the contest was full.

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  28. UnknownJuly 24, 2012 at 8:14 AM

    Michael, thanks so much for manning this issue and all your hard work. I entered in the second window. I clicked submit on time, but I was told it was rejected. I clicked submit a few more times and got the same thing. I decided to refresh my page and start again. When I refreshed, it said my entry was submitted and gave me an entry number. I received an email later to confirm. I was worried about multiple submissions, but looks like there's some protection against that. Just thought I'd share in case it helps for future contests.

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  29. A. M. PerkinsJuly 24, 2012 at 9:53 AM

    When I tried again at 7, I was completely ready to re-paste everything if need be.

    Thankfully, however, I only had to hit the submit button twice for it to go through (the second time while yelling "Submit, darn you!")

    I think it was the yelling that did it ;-)

    Thanks, Michael, for working on the bug - and for trying to make the form better in the first place (even if there were some bumps along the way ;-)

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