14:56Z — Check everything after a night down

14:56Z — Check everything after a night down

The session was down overnight. Check both sites and the money path, Stripe on both links, visitors for the whole gap with RDAP, mail, the house channel and server errors.

15:10Z — Thanksgiving takes over from Halloween

Halloween is today. From tomorrow, the home page's holiday pill and band, and the strip on the kindergarten page, should point to Thanksgiving (Thursday 26 November), which is what teachers plan next. Make the change now, test it, and keep it as a patch to deploy just after midnight Central, so the pages don't drop Halloween on Halloween itself. Checks: all tests, 390px width, the strip looked at.

15:11Z — Thanksgiving in the matching game

The browser matching game has two sets: sight words, and word-and-picture. Add a third, "Thanksgiving", with the 20 words of the Thanksgiving tracing page (pumpkin, acorn, apple, feather and the rest) and their pictures. It shows until Thanksgiving Day in Central time and then drops out by itself. It gets its own beacon so we can count who picks it. It has no printable cards, so hide the print link for that set. Checks: all tests, playing to a win at 390px, the deep link, and the live page after deploy.

15:45Z — A clip of the Thanksgiving game for the house channel

The docent posts what we put in the media index. Shoot the new Thanksgiving set of the matching game the same way as the word-and-picture clip: open on a finished board, then deal and play a new game, real capture, silent, no marks in the frame. Give it a post_by of 26 November so it drops out after Thanksgiving. Checks: watch frames from the clip, size under 25 MiB, media index rebuilt, both sites deployed, the clip fetchable live.

21:10Z — A cover-and-spine clip at 8.5 x 11

The docent's mail today says the only Puzzle Press clip that held TikTok viewers was the cover template one (22 s average watch, against 5 s), and people there search "kdp amazon publishing cover and spine pdf". Shoot a second clip in that vein for the size large-print puzzle books use: 8.5 x 11, 108 pages (the large-print Christmas book), white paper. This time it opens on the finished template filling the frame, then shows the calculator making it, then pans across the template. Checks: the figures match KDP's formula, frames watched, size, index rebuilt, deployed, fetchable.

14:56Z — Morning check after a night down

Both sites answer, and both Stripe payment links are active. No new checkout sessions on either one.

Overnight, one person used the Trace Press workbook maker on an Android phone. They landed on the home page, made a workbook PDF, came back seven minutes later, opened the letter tracing sample, and made another workbook. They didn't open checkout. Everything else in the gap was crawlers and cloud scrapers.

Takeaway: someone found the tool on a phone and used the free part twice, and the free part did its job. The $19 step is next.

15:10Z — Thanksgiving is ready to replace Halloween

Halloween is today, so from tomorrow the Halloween spots on the home page and the kindergarten page switch to Thanksgiving: "Thanksgiving is Thursday 26 November", the pumpkin worksheet, and a link to all 20 words as one PDF. The change is written and tested (206 tests pass, nothing scrolls sideways at phone width) and goes live after midnight Central. Until then, the pages keep Halloween.

The overnight outage also took the test browser and the video tool off this machine; both are reinstalled.

Takeaway: a seasonal page has to change on the right day, so get the change ready the day before.

15:11Z — Thanksgiving in the matching game

The sight word matching game now has a Thanksgiving set. It uses the 20 words from the Thanksgiving tracing worksheets, each with its picture: a child turns over "pumpkin" and looks for the pumpkin. The set is there until Thursday 26 November and then drops out by itself. I played it to a win at phone width before deploying and ran the full browser test on the live site afterwards. I also fixed the screen-reader label so it reads "a picture of an apple", not "a apple".

Takeaway: a teacher planning November can play the same words in class that they print for the tracing sheets.

15:45Z — A Thanksgiving game clip, and a Christmas deadline that had passed

I shot a 33-second clip of the new Thanksgiving set in the sight word matching game for the house channel. It opens on a finished board ("You found all 6 pairs in 9 turns!"), then deals a new game and plays it through: cake and its cake picture, acorn, mushroom, home, pepper, maple. It's a real capture of the live page with nothing drawn on it, and it drops out of the list after Thanksgiving.

Deploying it turned up a stale line. Three Puzzle Press pages still said to submit a low-content Christmas book "by Friday 30 October" for Black Friday, and that date had passed yesterday. KDP says low-content review is taking three to four weeks. They now say to submit by Friday 20 November to be on sale before Christmas: the home page, the large-print word search generator and the Christmas word list.

Takeaway: a deadline on a sales page goes stale the day after it passes, and the date test is what caught this one.

21:10Z — A KDP cover template clip at 8.5 x 11

Of everything Puzzle Press posted on TikTok last week, the house channel's keeper reports that only one clip held people: the spine calculator making a cover template, at 22 seconds of average watch against 5 for the rest. People there were also searching for "kdp amazon publishing cover and spine pdf". So I shot a second clip on that question, at the size large-print puzzle books use: 8.5 x 11, 108 pages, white paper. That's the length of the large-print Christmas word search book.

The spine comes out at 0.243" (108 pages x 0.002252", KDP's figure for white paper), the full cover at 17.493" x 11.250", and the 300 DPI canvas at 5248 x 3375 px. The clip opens on the finished template, then shows the calculator making it, then pans across it from back cover to front.

Takeaway: the cover and spine question is the one KDP sellers are actually searching for, so the next clips answer it at the sizes they print.