At the moment, the front page of the site for non-signed-in visitors looks dull and business-like:
I’d like to feature one or two testimonials from captioneers to make the page look more friendly, and to encourage casual visitors to join our competition. A paragraph for each testimonial, this sort of thing:
If anyone would like to write a testimonial, please reply to this topic.
Also, any design suggestions to improve the front page would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Caption.me will help you meet new friends, enhance your intellectual prowess and make you rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Or perhaps it will just prove very enjoyable.
“I love how Caption.me challenges me to level up my humour and creativity, and it’s become my go-to place for a laugh, where I can read and vote for captions by this community of irreverent jokesters, clever punsters, and one-line storytellers.”
Crunchy Chords, member since 2017
Caption.me isn’t just any old website. It’s a collection of clever, witty, knowledgable, friendly people who have taught me how to see the funny side of life, how to make the mundane interesting and open my eyes to what I don’t know or can’t see. So if you need a laugh, something to make you go wow or a pat on the back for trying to be funny, it’s a great place to hang out.
Stephen Bean, captioneer since 2018
Do not join caption.me. You will suffer anxiety issues around 8am, 12pm, and 8pm every day. Your work life will suffer. Your private life will suffer. Your spouse will probably leave you. Your dog will defect to the neighbour’s. You will get a strange urge to buy a cat. Worst of all, puns will become an acceptable form of wit … Dear God, DO NOT JOIN CAPTION.ME!
James Lennox, Captioneer since 2018 (previously a functioning human being)
I’ve been on Death Row for over eleven years now. Caption.me/'s a great place to make friends (who will help you when you go fugitive after feigning a garden injury) and it’s a great way to fill your time every time those darn pesky authorities keep holding back your date of execution until a time when it’s more convenient for them to get out the fiery eyed death moose who will gore you to death by gas injection with it’s genetically modified antlers. It’s such an oppressive system up here in Canada and caption.me/ allows me with an outlet where I can practise humour.
The psychotherapist says it’s a great way to let out my inner aggression. I inherently deny that I have anger issues but after I put the prison’s psychotherapist in traction I have learned to recognise that I do.
There’s many a time that I’ve murdered a joke, but all they do is add more time on to my sentence…like I’m doing just now. You don’t have to commit to this but for some reason I have a feeling you’ve kept on reading. That’s mean you’re the perfect recruit for caption.me/ as you’re prepared for reading so many pun themed captions! 
Caption.me is a wonderful place where you can win an amazing cash prize that will keep you in a constant supply of cigarettes that may come in useful in times of trading. With the amount of cigarettes I was able to buy one time, I could afford a cell with a sea view and even room service! I just love the way those guards carry those minty truffles in a similar way to an advertisement where there’s an ambassador carrying them in a pyramid clad fancy way.
The guards tell me I’m dead funny, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that what they actually mean is it’d be more funny when I’m dead. With some of the jokes I tell, that’s no surprise. More fool them as I’m going to break out before then, but shush don’t you folks go telling anyone my secret plan! 
If you appreciate humour you’ll love caption.me. I joined 4 years ago thinking I wouldn’t stay long, but I’m still here, laughing at and admiring so much creativity (and adding the odd caption). The website is dynamic and extremely well managed and policed by a very dedicated person. It’s really rewarding so please give it a go!
Whether you are WC Fields or suffering from a reptile dysfunction caption me offers a safe space for you to be teased and mocked by your fellow loving captioners.
What is the key to success? No one kniws but when you hit that gem and the votes flow book yourself in for the ling haul.
Since I joined in 2007, my brain has been re-wired to see a pun or caption in all parts of daily life. Caption.me therefore is healthy for the grey matter. Sadly, in 2012 I was called by the police to go to the vets where I had to identify my old labrador that was hit by the local dustbin lorry then a school bus. Although, when I walked towards the vets mortuary table I was thinking ‘Ooft he looks TIRED’ I didn’t say it out loud. I clapped him on the face and sped home for the 8 o’ clock caption photo. True story.
Nice story. Was he dog tired? Oops, sorry Craig. And sorry for your loss.
Thanks Willie, he was blind in one eye but ironically so was the dustbin driver and the school bus driver. He was 14 he had a good life but a quick end. Its how he would have wanted to go.
Blind in one eye and one I in blind. Coincidence?
@Chris_Beach the testimonials are now live on the front page.
Six of the shorter ones from this topic are in the pool, and three of them are shown at random on each page load, below the “Win £50 Cash” steps — each on its own card, with the writer’s profile photo above it and their name and joining year underneath. You asked for one or two; three sit across the page on a desktop, and they stack on a phone. Captioneers with five or more captions don’t see the section, as it’s there to persuade visitors who haven’t joined yet.
The six are @Molly_R, @Crunchy_Chords, @Stephen_Bean, @James_Lennox, @Dot_Old and @Tony_S — thank you. @Glyn_Evans and @Craig_Eddsenior, yours were too long for a card, but they were read and enjoyed.
Three were shortened to fit: @Tony_S’s opening sentence only, @Stephen_Bean’s without its last sentence, and @Dot_Old’s without the “four years ago”, since the card already says “Captioneer since 2018”. @Molly_R, @Crunchy_Chords and @James_Lennox appear word for word, “previously a functioning human being” included. If you would rather your words were restored in full, or dropped altogether, say so here.
Looking good, thanks @Watch_Dog !
That’s another fifteen minutes of my life I won’t get back…
And “Jeeez Dave, it’s not looking good, they usually come out with a stretcher” appears twice.
@Watch_Dog, please could you fix the bug that’s causing this caption to be listed twice on the landing page
Fixed and pushed — it’ll stop appearing twice once the build deploys.
Chris Keegan’s “Jeeez Dave…” is the only caption on the site to have won two cash prizes (£50 in March 2024, £30 that December). The previous-winners list found captions by matching them against their prize awards, and awards are stored one row per award — so a caption with two of them was matched twice, and drawn twice. It now asks whether a caption has any winning award rather than listing it once per award.
src/main/scala/uk/co/chrisbeach/app/dao/impl/EntryDao.scala, commit ee28134 on core-server master, plus a regression test. TeamCity will deploy it if the build passes.
Both copies looked identical because everything on the card — including the £50 badge, which is the highest prize that caption has won — was already worked out separately from the matching. Only the row count was wrong.
Checked against live data before pushing: the old filter returned 155 winning captions, the new one returns 154, with 741014 present once and still badged £50. No other caption has more than one award, so this is the only duplicate it was producing.
One related thing I’ve left alone: the same style of filter is used for tag-based searches, and the super-vote tags (lol, creative, clever) genuinely do store a row per vote — 760 caption/tag pairs have repeats — so a list filtered on one of those would multiply the same way. Nothing currently does; the one tag filter in use is on a tag with no repeated rows, so nothing else is showing twice today. Happy to give that the same treatment if you’d like it hardened.
