feedraider the blog

New Direction

2011-05-07T11:18:00.001+03:00

Teaser: Feedraider will start covering trends on news, instead of just news in the upcoming version.

Search Updated

2011-05-05T00:58:00.002+03:00

The search is back online and continues to index a hundred thousand blog entries per day. More smarts coming to get a feel for the pulse of the World.

Search Quirks

2011-04-26T19:13:00.000+03:00

Search is being overhauled. Results can vary in quality for the next 48hrs.

Testing Django Caching

2011-03-02T22:12:00.003+02:00

Feedraider runs on Django and is now caching pages to improve performance.

Upcoming

2011-02-18T23:34:00.003+02:00

After the upcoming skiing holiday I'll address performance issues to squeeze milliseconds out of the page rendering.

Other things on my mind: better relevancy for latest news/gossip when browsing item snippets.

Happy Winter Holidays To All!

Downtime

2011-01-10T22:19:00.002+02:00

There's been a few hours of downtime in the past days. I'm looking into it (logs are vague). Suspects on the table include phusion passenger (aka. mod_rails).

Now Featuring Popular Tweets From Twitter

2011-01-05T00:10:00.002+02:00

With a most relaxing holiday behind me I got back to add popular tweets to the feedraider mainpage. Enjoy!

Happy Holidays!

2010-12-22T00:53:00.002+02:00

I will be taking a break for the holidays and hope you will enjoy quality time with your loved ones as well. All the best and see you next year!

Popular In Entertainment, Popular In Technology

2010-11-22T00:03:00.003+02:00

The frontpage is now beefed up with popular links from across the web.

Feed Handling

2010-10-25T21:01:00.004+03:00

I've been thinking on how to reduce my workload in monitoring the service, yet keep feedraider as a high quality site from today onwards. As I have to monitor the site in any case I'm thinking of turning the table upside down, and requiring swift moderation of (new) feeds before they'll be added to the system. This way the service won't rot, even if I have a holiday once in a lifetime. The change would affect new feeds only and as feedraider knows many feeds (over 1 million -- many, unfortunately, not offering quality reading) this will not affect everyone.

This change will add a few days until feedraider is up for public again, but the I'm sure it's good for everyone's eyes, and offers me peace of mind.

Updates Are In

2010-10-24T23:51:00.004+03:00

Signups are still behind closed doors as I add a few more more monitoring tools to keep the quality high on a daily pace for upcoming future. I don't want to spend my time monitoring a service, so the tools need to be really good to get the job done swiftly and efficiently...

If you're a good person reading this, tweet me at mixman@twitter to register in the meanwhile.

The mainpage will get an overhaul in the coming week and spy functionality should be making a comeback. The service is now on a sound footing. Keeping it family-friendly seems to be the biggest battle. Bad feeds (eg. product placement feeds that are input to boost someones product/affiliate sales) worsen the quality of the service and I'm trying to minimize their influence.

Weekend Update Upcoming

2010-10-22T22:57:00.003+03:00

The opening of new registrations was slightly delayed as I added more moderation tools for fighting spam. Normal operations should continue over the weekend.

Notes

2010-10-18T23:54:00.003+03:00

Seems I managed to kill emailing due a DNS switch. I took registrations down until this is fixed. This also affects changing passwords, as no email confirmations are sent. Will be fixed tomorrow as I've time to tackle this issue properly.

In the meanwhile, I'm migrating old (non-spam) pages for existing users as requests come by.

v3.0: A New Start

2010-10-17T23:22:00.003+03:00

*inhales air (long day)*

I noticed the database for feedraider v2.0 contained a lot of material that did not fit its original purpose. Feed links to porn, affiliate marketing, blog spam, Get Rich Quick -schemes and so forth. A decision was taken to reset the feeds and pages to keep the service not only family friendly, but consisting of quality feeds that people are reading due their own personal interest. The previous version did not come with a Terms of Service, which is now in place and requires user approval. Overall this drastic change makes for a richer experience with the new UI I've setup for v3.0 that helps finding articles on related content much easier.

For those using feedraider for reading/monitoring feeds the Settings page has a form to request your old pages up. Submit the form and I'll review each request (ASAP). I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but this *really* had to be done.

I'll be monitoring the service usage more closely from now on to uphold the Terms of Service.

Enjoy the changes while consuming your doze of RSS!

Version 3.0

2010-10-11T00:49:00.001+03:00

The next feedraider is coming into play in the coming days. Stay tuned.

A new feedraider in the works!

2010-07-18T19:52:00.002+03:00

Work has continued on feedraider to get it back on track as a premium aggregator it was back in 2007. Stay tuned!

Feedraider Statistics, May 2010

2010-06-13T21:28:00.000+03:00

106k members
480k pages created by members
1000k feeds being tracked

Feedraider Statistics, April 2010

2010-05-01T14:06:00.000+03:00

96k members (+8k)
440k pages created by members (+22k)
935k feeds being tracked (+60k)

Feedraider Statistics, March 2010

2010-04-06T19:36:00.001+03:00

88.5k members (+10k)
418k pages created by members (+30k)
867k feeds being tracked (+170k)

2010 Plans

2010-03-09T22:21:00.003+02:00

I seem to have a knack for coming up with unrealistic deadlines. December came and went. In any case, I'm evaluating on how to proceed with the feedraider update and will have time for small changes end of March and bigger ones later on.

Feedraider Statistics, February 2010

2010-03-01T14:54:00.001+02:00

77.5k members
385k pages created by members
693k feeds being tracked

Feedraider Statistics, January 2010

2010-01-26T10:27:00.001+02:00

65.7k members
356k pages created by members
534k feeds being tracked

Feedraider Statistics, December 2009

2009-12-14T23:43:00.002+02:00

54.3k Members
325k Pages created by members
364k Feeds being tracked

Scaling

2009-11-18T23:59:00.002+02:00

As v2.0 got rolled out the number of articles piled up faster than I'd ever imagined. Feedraider is drifting away from a "little" project. Plotting down a of a poor-man's-data-scaling-solution took a while, but I've a good understanding on how to pull it off on my budget while ensuring growth into the billions. ETA: December.