Month: October 2006

After months and months of coding and redesign, we’ve finally put the RSS feature online. You can now replace the generic two sentence blurb in the middle of your page with any xml feed!
If you haven’t heard of RSS, you’re not alone. RSS has been around for some time, but has just recently started to become popular. The new RSS system is a simple but powerful feature that allows users to subscribe to a newsfeed or podcast listed in the preferences – or enter one from another site.

Selecting an RSS feed will allow you to get the latest news or content delivered right to your start page. Each time a new item on the feed is updated, the paragraph of information on your page will update as well. If CNN posts a new story, it shows up on your start page. If Ask a Ninja posts a new podcast, you’ll be the first to know.

This is the first of several new features finally making their way onto the preferences panel. For a while, we considered having an “advanced” preferences panel so as not to confuse users who just wanted the basic functions. Rather than switching back and forth however, we’ve come up with a more simple solution.

Advanced settings are going to appear on the right hand side in a special box, and you’re going to have the ability to add or subtract them from your preferences panel. By default, the new RSS feature will be turned off. If you’d like to add that option to your preferences, you can click the link in the right hand menu. As new features are added, you’ll also have the ability to go to your preferences and add them. We have two or three more major things we’ve already started working on. Keep checking the DevLog for details.

Ironically, if you want all the latest DevLog details delivered to your start page, you should probably NOT use the new RSS feature. We’ll still be updating the default two sentence blurb on a regular basis.

UPDATE: Tonight we updated the default announce paragraph to randomize messages. There’s currently seven of them, covering the various features of the site. We didn’t want non-RSS users to feel left out of today’s update!

AwesomeStart is now running on brand new, shiny, expensive GoDaddy servers. The move took place yesterday, and everything seemed to go pretty smoothly. This will hopefully put an end to all the downtime we were having last month. Thanks again for sticking with us as we made this move!

In the last DevLog we mentioned getting the RSS up before we moved the servers, but we were having so much trouble with outages that the move became the top priority. We’re still working on RSS implementation, and hope to have it done by the end of the month. Currently, we’re looking for a way to fit the feature into the preferences panel. We want that page to remain simple and uncluttered, but as the site grows it’s starting to get pretty full.

One option under consideration is an “advanced” preferences panel – it would allow more “advanced” users to go to a separate page to change even more things on their theme – add more links, add a feed, etc. There’s lots of ideas floating around right now, and it’s really just a matter of trail and error until we find the one that fits.

We’re working on some fantastic new features, but before we get to that, we should talk about the server updates.

We’re aiming to move the site to a new server by the end of October. As you’ve probably noticed, we’ve been having some trouble with our current Hostingplex server. The new server guarantees 99.9% uptime, and should be a little faster too. We’ll have an update when we know the exact time of the move.

We’re been getting your emails, and lately everyone seems to want the same thing: more links and RSS feeds! The links are going to require a bit of a major patch to all pages, so the RSS feeds are going to come first.

This is what the current test implementation looks like, and is probably very close to the final v1.0 product. You’ll be able to check a box in your preferences to put a feed on your page in place of where the AwesomeStart blurb currently is. If you chose not to check that box, your page will remain how it is now. Eric and Greg have been working on adding several more features, but those probably won’t make this release. Adding RSS to these pages has proven to be more difficult than any of us every thought.

If you don’t know anything about RSS, it’s fairly simple. An RSS feed is simple a way to gain access to the latest news or updates of a site. If a site has RSS, then you’ll be able to get the latest news updates, podcasts, torrents, or even blog entries delivered right to your page. The above example is from the Skepticality podcast. Every time they post a new podcast, that paragraph gets updated on your start page with a link to it as well as a little note regarding it’s contents. Most sites with regularly updated content have an RSS feed – just look on the site, or try Googling the site’s name along with RSS.

The current version does not have support for html tags or images within the feed. Also, it will only display the latest feed. We’re looking to change it to implement these features as well as the iTunes RSS tag for podcasts. Whether these items make the first release or not, the RSS feature should go online before the end of the month.

If you’ve been experiencing problems with your start page – particularly network connection errors, page not found, or down time – please contact us to let us know.

Nearly a year ago, we switched our web host from CKVance to Hostingplex to alleviate downtime. Recently, we may have been experiencing a bit of downtime with Hostingplex and are considering switching hosts once again. If you have any suggestions, we’d love to hear from you. Let us know!