checkpage.co.uk

[eFestivals]

As many of you already know, I've just launched a new service for checking when a webpage changes. http://www.checkpage.co.uk

Because it alerts you by both text and email - and the texts cost money - it's a pay-for service, that costs £5 for a month's membership which also includes 40 text alerts. (Extra alert credits can be purchased at £1 for 10).

The website has been developed very quickly so it's currently a bit rough and ready in what it does and how it does it. There's lots of room for improvements, so this topic is going to be used as blog, to flag up changes and improvements as they get put in place.

FYI: improved error checking was implemented at around 9am yesterday (8th May), that should stop some of the 'false' alerts such as the ones that were sent out at around 1am on Sunday morning.

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The first big issue is to do with the checking of some normal gig ticket pages, where tickets haven't gone on sale but other text on the page (such as 'hot tickets' or 'just announced') might change, causing the system to alert you to that change.

To deal with issues like this, a 'rules' system is going to be built into the page-checker, that will allow (amongst other things) just a segment of the page to be the part of the page that's checked to stop the false alerts from changes to other parts of the page.

I hope to get this done and in place today - to stop the 'wrong' alerts for changes to the radiohead ticket page that a few people are checking. I'll be happy to re-credit the alert credits to the people checking this page when I've got the 'rules' system in place.

Edited April 24, 2017 by eFestivals

[eFestivals]

I've got most of the way with improving how checkpage reads a webpage for comparing, so that the radiohead ticket links don't keep triggering a change because of the changing 'hot tickets' and 'new on sale links'. Now I just need to re-write the main checking code to include the new bits, which I hope to get done this morning.

Once that part is done, it'll then be improvements to the user interface.

 

 

[eFestivals]

The improved checker is now running. so there'll no longer be unnecessary alerts for those monitoring the radiohead ticket pages.

Because for those RH pages I know there's been a lot of 'false' alerts - not really false, because some of the page has changed (just not the bit you want to change) - I'm going to attempt to extract details of who has been alerted and how many times for these, and then re-credit the alerts onto the user's accounts ... that is, if I can do that. While I do have a record of it all, it's not been kept in a very good way for me to be able to extract it, so there's some work for me to do on this.

 

[eFestivals]

That's all of the issues around the improved page checker sorted, so the next thing on the list it to improve the main user page.

[eFestivals]

There was an issue early evening, that caused hotmail/outlook.com, etc, to reject checkpage.co.uk emails for a while.

A couple of changes were made to settings that may or may not have improved things at around the same time the issue went away, so I'm not entirely sure if one, both, or none of those changes cured things, but the problem is cured anyway.

[eFestivals]

The page checker has has a further full re-write, to make it less of the rush job it was when I first wrote it. It now includes much better logging of alerts, so it will be possible for users to see both their own alert history* and the alerting history* of any page listed they might be interested in monitoring too - tho these history features haven't been included yet.

(* it would be a lot of work to re-create the alerts history prior to now in the new format, so both will only be a history from now).

There's also an updated page selector, that gives some detail of what exactly is being checked with each page.

So, now I can properly get on with improvements to the user pages

[eFestivals]

there were a number of alerts triggered during the night for one of the pages that's monitored, where the webserver responded with an empty page.

The error handling has just been adjusted, so that these shouldn't trigger alerts in the future. Sorry for the annoyance to anyone affected.

[eFestivals]

The Glastonbury Festival home page has triggered alerts the last couple of nights, because they've added a "gates open in X days" bit (tho their programmer doesn't seem to have heard of British Summer Time )

I've now excluded everything beyond that part of the page from the checks, so it doesn't trigger change alerts because the number of days has changed.

[eFestivals]

The checkpage scripts have just been modified to filter out the various 'server busy' and other messages the website returns when busy - which will stop some of the false alerts that have happened today and recently.

These sorts of false alerts were previously filtered out, but See have changed some of those error messages recently, which is why the alerts have been triggered.

Apologies to anyone that's been annoyed by the alerts.

[amyharvz]

Hi,

Is the page still working? I just registered and paid but can't log in... I've also sent an email to admin x

[Griffalo]

I'm having the same problem! I've paid but it keeps taking me back to the "active membership is required" page  x

[eFestivals]

I'm guessing it's because your payments came from a different email address to your checkpage account.

I'll have a look in a bit, and will get back to anyone who's emailed.

[eFestivals]

12 hours ago, Griffalo said:

I'm having the same problem! I've paid but it keeps taking me back to the "active membership is required" page  x

I've found your account and payment, and associated the two so your account is now credited, and have also emailed you.

[eFestivals]

21 hours ago, amyharvz said:

Hi,

Is the page still working? I just registered and paid but can't log in... I've also sent an email to admin x

I've sorted your issues and emailed you.

[eFestivals]

checkpage is now set to monitor the glasto main ticketing entrance page* at a 5 second interval - meaning that the alert for any change should be very speedy.

* http://glastonbury.seetickets.com - that can redirect to any address they choose to set it to redirect to, which is why this particular address is the only one that needs monitoring.

Edited April 24, 2017 by eFestivals

[michael eavis' beard]

Neil, do you know your hyperlink on the op is to efests home page and not checkpage website?

[eFestivals]

If anyone has paid using a different email to the one they've used for their checkpage account, PLEASE EMAIL admin@checkpage.co.uk to get the issues sorted - cos I can't guess at it!

 

[eFestivals]

3 minutes ago, michael eavis' beard said:

Neil, do you know your hyperlink on the op is to efests home page and not checkpage website?

doh - thanks, have just corrected it.

[eFestivals]

Sorry for the alerts over-night, but they were genuine alerts for page changes.

I’ve already looked into it, and requests for the page were alternating between the normal page and two different ‘can’t serve page’ error messages. Going by the time they happened I suspect it was because of backups or other system maintenance.

I already had a number of different filters in place to trap other ‘can’t serve page’ error messages I’ve seen in the past, but See occasionally change the wording of the messages and I can’t filter them out until after they’ve happened. The error messages last night were ones I’ve not seen before.

I’ve already added new filters today for the errors that happened this morning, so there won’t be any alerts in future for the same errors.

[Nattybot]

I have had 3 alerts today and the page hasn't changed ?

[eFestivals]

4 minutes ago, Nattybot said:

I have had 3 alerts today and the page hasn't changed ?

yeah, it has.

The most recent alert was because part of the text changed from "Tipi Village - Sold out" to (just) "Tipi Village".