The Kenilworthian has a very detailed review of ChessLecture.com.

We all know that slowly working through problems and annotated games in front of the board is probably the best real practice for classical game situations, especially for the young. But we also know that we have work to do, kids to feed, and lawns to cut and that most of us also have less and less time for classical play. It would be great to work through deeply annotated games or opening analysis at a real chess board, but for most of us that is just not going to happen any time soon. As I suggested in my review of Chess Openings for White, Explained, there are the chess books we buy because we would like to read them and then there are those we actually find time to read because they are user-friendly. ChessLecture.com is the most user-friendly mode of chess learning available and it is one you will actually use.

As someone who really likes ChessFM, I can see there being a value to ChessLecture.com.  My only problem is time.  So much to learn…so few hours!

Browsing my website logs, I’ve noticed that some ChessUp users have been hotlinking to my images from their forums / blogs.

In general, I am fine with this.  Hey, you guys like the tool…I’d be crazy to complain about that.  All I ask is that you be kind and post a little link on your webpage to my humble site.

But I do have 2 point that I think everyone should be aware of:

1) If you run a forum and users are able to post links to scripts on other websites, that is a pretty big security violation.  You can trust me…but what about some other site where a guy has embedded a malicious PHP script?  This is one of the reasons I created the ChessUp Forums.  Users can link to my image creation script, but ONLY when the script is coming from my own site.

2) I reserve the right to embed a text link to my site in images if they are hotlinked.  It will not be ugly and surely won’t be as intrusive as a watermark, but it will probably just be some small text at the bottom of the image that says “http://chessup.net”.  If you want to avoid that, you can always download the image that you create with ChessUp and host it on your own servers.

Cliff Notes Version of this post: I’m not against hotlinking, but please provide credit somewhere on your blog if you are going to use my bandwidth.  Additionally, I may put a text link in hotlinked images.  And be sure your forums are secure.

ChessUp now has forums!

The forums are open to everyone. Categories include general chess talk, puzzles, and ChessUp’s chess diagram tool. (Who knows, there might even be more forums added in the near future…)

So, the $24,000 question: can you post ChessUp diagrams in the forums?

Of course! And it’s pretty simple, too. You don’t even need to download the image.

So stop on over and say “hi”. While you’re there, why not register and take our first poll? It is voting season, after all.

See you in the forums…

UPDATE: I’ve added an unregistered forum. Anyone can go there and post messages without registering. Why not go take the poll?

In the spirit of Halloween and dressing-up, I created a new style for the ChessUp website today. No, it’s not scary and has nothing to do with Halloween…but then again, those kids that dress up like football players don’t really have much to do with Halloween, either, now do they?

The header graphic came out way better than I expected. I found a nice stock footage image of a king piece and then built the rest of the header around it. I also replaced the website’s background pattern with a new one.

I tested the re-design in Firefox and Internet Explorer 6.  I didn’t notice any problems, but please let me know if you do.

I have another big addition to this website in the works. Stay tuned…