[Dev Stalker] Track developer posts

Plasma

Thought I'd whip this up, as I sometimes just want to see what the developers have posted lately instead of digging through threads directly :)

<a href="http://www.play4dead.com/ns2/" target="_blank">http://www.play4dead.com/ns2/</a> will show the latest posts from developers in one page. Right now you may need to reload it if it times out loading initially.

If this is horrible I'll gladly shut it down but I think its neat!

Tagertswe

Thanks! Greatly appreciated !

Triggerman

Always wanted something like this, being a WoW-player being used to seeing those blue-trackers. Guess it's up to them if they want everything monitored though, not so sure I would at least :p
Good work!

Silverwing

Very nice. Good job! Have a cookie.
=)

Rebel

Nice :D

weezl

haha, this was awesome, an interesting read!

Silverwing

An RSS option would rox my box...

broadband

i always wanted to stalk people.

Asraniel

<!--quoteo(post=1826435:date=Jan 23 2011, 06:21 PM:name=Silverwing)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Silverwing @ Jan 23 2011, 06:21 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1826435"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->An RSS option would rox my box...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

+1

Runteh

Very cool.

ahrz

very nice!

i've been checking <a href="http://unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showuser=11528" target="_blank">locallyunscene profil page</a> almost everyday since march 2010 to get this kind of information!

Mahmutti

Awesome. I will be using this a lot :)

nUfl0w

<u>nice!</u>

Camron

Cool. Are you fetching all of those posts on every page load or are you storing them on your server?

Also, what about adding the twitter stream? It's already available through RSS and through APIs so it should be easy to add.

IronHorse

<!--quoteo(post=1826492:date=Jan 23 2011, 12:48 PM:name=Camron)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Camron @ Jan 23 2011, 12:48 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1826492"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Cool. Are you fetching all of those posts on every page load or are you storing them on your server?

Also, what about adding the twitter stream? It's already available through RSS and through APIs so it should be easy to add.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
add the twitter stream definitely.

Plasma

<!--quoteo(post=1826492:date=Jan 23 2011, 04:48 PM:name=Camron)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Camron @ Jan 23 2011, 04:48 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1826492"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Cool. Are you fetching all of those posts on every page load or are you storing them on your server?

Also, what about adding the twitter stream? It's already available through RSS and through APIs so it should be easy to add.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

At the moment they are fetched when you load the page (hence why it sometimes takes a few seconds to load).

I wanted to make sure the page was up to date, I may cache it for 5 minutes or so in the future if I end up adding RSS support so we don't hammer the forum server.

RSS sounds like a neat addition, and I can add the twitter posts inline as well. Will see when I can get that done.

luns

if that website keeps getting updated daily, someone pin this(make it sticky)! its very useful information to keep track of developers responds, because I hate scrolling through pages of chit chat to find the golden nugget.

Deadzone

Sweet! bookmarked

Camron

<!--quoteo(post=1826518:date=Jan 23 2011, 05:45 PM:name=Plasma)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Plasma @ Jan 23 2011, 05:45 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1826518"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->At the moment they are fetched when you load the page (hence why it sometimes takes a few seconds to load).

I wanted to make sure the page was up to date, I may cache it for 5 minutes or so in the future if I end up adding RSS support so we don't hammer the forum server.

RSS sounds like a neat addition, and I can add the twitter posts inline as well. Will see when I can get that done.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Here's what you should do:
1. Store their posts on your server (in db or file)
2. Store the devs' current post counts. Now instead of hitting the forums to fetch their posts, all you have to do is load is their profile first and check if their post count has changed. If it has, then you fetch the new post(s).

Harimau

This is awesome. Thanks.

SgtBarlow

I would check the date of a users last post to see if it is greater than the latest date you have stored for that user. Using post count may deliver inconsistancy should the forum ever be turncated/reinstalled/a post deleted & total posts recounted.

Slickk-

Very nice. Bookmarked.

Camron

<!--quoteo(post=1826624:date=Jan 24 2011, 10:16 AM:name=SgtBarlow)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (SgtBarlow @ Jan 24 2011, 10:16 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1826624"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I would check the date of a users last post to see if it is greater than the latest date you have stored for that user. Using post count may deliver inconsistancy should the forum ever be turncated/reinstalled/a post deleted & total posts recounted.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
But in order to check the date of their last post you would have to fetch their posts. You would have to do a separate search for each dev on every page load. This is what I am trying to avoid with my recommendations in order to make that site less stressful to these forums. To prevent any inconsistencies you would add a fail-safe option that would re-fetch all of the dev's post and update their post count in a set time interval (like once a day).

IronHorse

<!--quoteo(post=1826662:date=Jan 24 2011, 12:23 PM:name=Camron)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Camron @ Jan 24 2011, 12:23 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1826662"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->re-fetch all of the dev's post and update their post count in a set time interval (like once a day).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

once a day? theres like hourly twitter updates some days... ?

Camron

<!--quoteo(post=1826695:date=Jan 24 2011, 04:01 PM:name=ironhorse)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ironhorse @ Jan 24 2011, 04:01 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1826695"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->once a day? theres like hourly twitter updates some days... ?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Twitter could be updated on every page load because that would hit Twitter's servers and not UWE.

I didn't say the forums posts should be updated <b>only</b> once a day. I said the <b>fail-safe update</b> could be once a day. I suggested checking post counts first before updating posts in order to take some stress of UWE servers. Because post counts could change from post/topic deletions, the fail-safe update would re-get all of the posts even if the post count was the same.

"fail-safe" is probably the wrong word.

Plasma

I've made an update to the page.

1) Renamed to Dev Tracker (as thats nicer :) )
2) Improved how quickly the page loads by downloading poster data in parallel
3) Now tracking recent TOPICS (such as front page news articles) posted as well as POSTS
4) Now tracking twitter posts
5) Added Progress link at the top right
6) Added RSS support

The page is still uncached and real time for the moment.

Harimau

Nice touch with the twitter posts. Your tracker is quickly becoming the definitive deliverer of developer doings and disclosures. I don't see the recent topics/front page news articles up though.

Plasma

<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I don't see the recent topics/front page news articles up though.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You can see 'Please post comments on the topic Natural Selection 2 News Update - First NS2 preview on Destructoid here' post, but not the actual news content itself right now (maybe later?).

Should give you a hint though to check the news page.

At the moment I'm only grabbing 'recent' posts/topics (from each users Profile page and then 'Posts' and 'Topics' tabs).

These pages seem to be fast/cached so that load is low, and the page is supposed to act as a recent change log rather a complete history (which would be more work).

Also just localized timestamps on the posts.

I don't have access to time information (just date) for forum posts, without doing a real forum search, so its at most a day granular at the moment - should be okay for now.

Harimau

Oh, well I didn't even see that 'Please post comments on the topic Natural Selection 2 News Update - First NS2 preview on Destructoid here' post. Maybe it's up now. I'll have a look.
Edit: It isn't. I see the top two twitter posts and cory's latest reply about skulk bite hit indicators.

If it's a recent changelog rather than a complete history, what's your current starting date for the forum/twitter posts respectively? Do you ever plan on making it a complete history?

dnleech

Very nice, man!

Plasma

Added another few changes:

1) Posts are now consistently ordered so that new posts always appear at the very top (and not a few posts down) due to mixing of Twitter (known date/time of posting) and forum posts (only know day at the moment).

2) Added News support - News posts from the front page (and its content) is now shown

3) Added a relative posting time when it is available (eg 3 hours ago)

4) Added a 'Feedback' link at the top to jump to this thread