Keeping track of of your fav website's updates

[KiwiMeowo]

While I have been moving away from most social media and stayed closer to personal websites, the culture of personal websites is still rather new to me. Having lived in social media like Facebook and Twitter for a majority of my life, there are things that I don't feel as used to while exploring the personal webs, like how following a site works.

Due to how much I am used to the follow mechanic of social media, I always rely on Neocities update timeline to check if my favourite sites updated.

While Neocities allows users to follow a user so that you can see when the user updates, there are times that users might disable their profile, and updates won't show up on your timeline anymore. Also, there may be websites that are hosted outside of Neocities, so they won't appear on my Neocities timeline of course.

Despite the option of bookmarking websites, you don't really know exactly when and where the website updates, especially if the website doesn't have an update section. Another thing is that there's often a chance I will just, forget about checking the site.

So a question I want to ask you guys is that, what kind of method do you use to follow websites?

• Does your website-hosting platform also have a social-media-like timeline like Neocities does?
• Or do you use bookmarks to keep track of websites you like?
• If so, how often do you check them?
• I heard there's a thing called RSS feed. I haven't learnt exactly what it is right now, but do you use it to follow other sites' updates?
• Do you have an RSS feed in your site?
• Any relevant questions you wanna add?

[/list]

[larvapuppy]

I do mostly use the Neocities feed to follow updates. But, I also use RSS feeds when I can find them! The Melonland Wiki has an RSS guide explaining how to use RSS. My personal choice for a feed reader is CommaFeed; I saw someone on here recommend it.

I do have trouble keeping track of sites when they aren't on Neocities and don't have an RSS feed though! Sometimes there are sites where I wouldn't mind coming back later to check updates, but they get buried in my bookmarks 

[Melooon]

Sooo having been in the website club for many a moon at this point; I have tried SO MANY the options and the best solution I have found is simply to go to your friends and family's houses and sit them down and say "Look at this cool page I made today" 

You can split update notices into "owner updates" and "technology updates":

• e.g. an owner update is when the owner of the site chooses to tell you about a new feature,

• while, a technology update is like neocities where a piece of technology tells you that a file has been changed.

Technology updates are often a bit useless.. they tend to tell you about incomplete updates, and people tend to end up ignoring them after a while. In the case of neocities, most of the time when I see an interesting update, its more like a reminder to explore someones site again, rather than meaningfully telling me about a new addition.

Owner updates are different because the site owner has to actually choose to tell you about an update, and usually they will give it a lot more context e.g. "Hi, I made a new blog about my trip to Spain, out now!" or "I added 500 new gifs to this page!" - having that context, and knowing its an important update for sites owner makes it much more interesting for people!

There is also the split between updates you have chosen to follow, and ones you accidentally encounter:

For example we have a thread on this forum for Personal Announcements, posts here are "accidental owner updates", because site owners choose to post updates, but you have not chosen to follow their update, it could be very interesting or not interesting at all for you. (status cafe is often another example of this) ~ it can be good for discovering new things, but it also produces a lot of white noise.

RSS feeds CAN be great for "followed owner updates", but they depend on you actively having a habit of checking your RSS reader; and on the website owner actively having a system for publishing RSS updates (its actualy not that easy for hobby homepages  )

I've found that sending e-mail newsletters telling people about new updates to my site is the most universally reliable way to share updates; because most people have a habit of checking their e-mail and are happy to spend a few minutes reading one if its interesting to them. (That's the main reason we have the Post Office here!)

After that, alternatives include posting your updates on friend-group discord chats, on Mastodon or SpaceHey etc .. those are ok but people who over post updates on social media tend to annoy me 

At the end of the day, I use a mix of all of them; I know different audiences will be more prone to reading different types of media; so I know RSS people will like certain kinds of updates, other updates will be enjoyed by family group chats, others are best posted on Neocities, and posts (like blog posts) I tend to like to include in a newsletter update.

I think all of that is quite important; its not supposed to be tooooo easy. Keeping up with friends requires effort and keeping up with sites should require effort too; you should only worry about it if you really care about that site; otherwise its ok to let a site slip away for a while as you surf on to other zones 

[KiwiMeowo]

I do mostly use the Neocities feed to follow updates. But, I also use RSS feeds when I can find them! The Melonland Wiki has an RSS guide explaining how to use RSS. My personal choice for a feed reader is CommaFeed; I saw someone on here recommend it.

I do have trouble keeping track of sites when they aren't on Neocities and don't have an RSS feed though! Sometimes there are sites where I wouldn't mind coming back later to check updates, but they get buried in my bookmarks 

I have not tried using a feed reader yet. There are a few websites outside of Neocities that have an RSS feed, maybe I should check out feed readers sometime.

Also, I just saw your RSS feed, I didn't know stylesheets can be added to the text file, that's so cool!

RSS feeds CAN be great for "followed owner updates", but they depend on you actively having a habit of checking your RSS reader; and on the website owner actively having a system for publishing RSS updates (its actualy not that easy for hobby homepages  )

I believe most people doesn't really use RSS very much, considering I didn't know what it is until recently. And having to manually update the RSS feed text file every time a new stuff gets added can be a bit annoying.

I have a section where is shows the newest stuff, so that people will immediately know if there's new art/blog compared to the last time they checked. The way it works is by using fetch() and get the first art image/blog link from their respective pages, I made it this way because I don't feel like updating the update section every time I upload a new art/blog, considering how frequently I upload.

I've found that sending e-mail newsletters telling people about new updates to my site is the most universally reliable way to share updates; because most people have a habit of checking their e-mail and are happy to spend a few minutes reading one if its interesting to them. (That's the main reason we have the Post Office here!)

Email newsletter sounds pretty neat, I tend to check emails semi-frequently so receiving my fav sites' updates there would be quite convenient. Though again, not a lot of sites have email newsletters.

After that, alternatives include posting your updates on friend-group discord chats, on Mastodon or SpaceHey etc .. those are ok but people who over post updates on social media tend to annoy me 

I feel like posting on social media would be the most convenient, though I believe people who follow personal websites tend to refrain from using social media a lot due to how attention-grabbing they are, especial the ones I often use (Twitter).

I guess there are different pros and cons for the multiple methods of keeping up with a site's updates, but since majority of the sites I follow appear on my Neocities timeline, perhaps it will remain my main method.

Currently Neocities automatically show my website's updates, but after writing this post and thinking about a possibility of me moving webhosts or disabling profiles, makes me consider adding an RSS feed or email newsletter in the far future.

[ValyceNegative]

I make it a habit of personally checking the links I have in my affiliates once a month: I just choose a day to browse. Most active sites have something new at least every month and if they have update logs it's way easier to tell who added things.
Bookmarks are used for pages with reference material or guides, stuff that doesn't need to be checked periodically but it's useful to have when working.
(Though, since I travel a lot and my working station changes periodically, it's kind of a hassle remembering to export and import bookmarks everywhere- so I'm planning to add these links on my sites anyway, at least I have everything in one place).

I also use RSS feeds, I got late into them but glad the system still works perfectly and there's many options to customize your readers. Frankly once you follow enough blogs its dashboard does become a bit like a social hub xD

[candycanearter07]

I have not tried using a feed reader yet. There are a few websites outside of Neocities that have an RSS feed, maybe I should check out feed readers sometime.

Also, I just saw your RSS feed, I didn't know stylesheets can be added to the text file, that's so cool!
I believe most people doesn't really use RSS very much, considering I didn't know what it is until recently. And having to manually update the RSS feed text file every time a new stuff gets added can be a bit annoying.

https://journal.miso.town/ this is a pretty useful thingy to automate rss stuff, you just add a link like https://journal.miso.town/atom?url=YOUR_JOURNAL_URL_HERE to the page, then format it a certain way and boom rss feed

[greenspace]

i use fika bar, which is a bookmark manager with social features that will also find rss feeds in whatever you bookmark. here's my bookmark page

for me, having sites i want to keep up with easily accessible as bookmarks is the most helpful, so rss is just a bonus. outside of that i sign up for so many newsletters and enjoy the deeper and less addictive "feed" that newsletters form in my inbox.