=== Cupcakes === 

 Please use the preview button before saving (although we all miss things from time to time I know). In Kevin Jackson (dancer), half the title of the cupcakes link is repeated. Please sort that out (not clear from your usage here whether you intend the template to precomplete the title or not, although it does at present). As we can see from your problems with this, just snipping part of the title is confusing. 

 As you can see from the original version, I had already considered the title and decided that the reader is better served with something else. The guideline for external links says that we should choose a helpful link title, not necessarily the exact title of the original web page. 

 Also, what is the point of this template if the author still has to provide the complete url?  Similar templates complete the invariant part of the url which would at least make it easy to update Wikipedia if the Ballet News url changed. 

 Also (sorry for another also) are you intending to do anything useful with the separate date and year parameters? Have you checked whether  can convert (day, month) pairs without the year? If not to either of those questions, I think it is easier to let the user provide the date in one parameter. I suggest in any case you do that and call it date so the usage of this template is uniform with all the other templates which have a date parameter. 

 Basically, if we still have to give the full url and have to use a special date format, I would prefer not to use the template (although I am normally very keen on them). —    

 ==== Template:Cupcakes & Conversation 2 ==== 

 Various editors had simply reversed the month and day in other articles, apparently not noticing the stray comma that doing so left with the original .  

 I therefore created the new  (superceeded by a revised ).  

 Using the templates has the housekeeping advantage of keeping track of the links to Ballet News, further faciltated by having the year as a seperate param. 

 Let me think about further modifications. —    

  

 OK.    

  

 I've got a provisional modification ready but want to sleep on it. —    

  

 For the sake of simplicity I've removed the seperate parameter for the year — and embedded much of the URL — in both  and , which obviates the necessity for seperate templates with DMY and MDY dating. —     

  

 Thanks, that is better! I have noticed you worked at that during the day and have just updated Amy to use the template. I won't be around so much for the rest of the year, so Happy Christmas. —