Robot "News" Posts

[saintmike]

Forum URL: aussportsforum-asf.freeforums.net/

Hi.  Its me ... again. 

I've noticed on some sites they have these sort of robotic post(ers) that place up to date news on the site. In an allocated thread. 

How do you get them ?

Do you have to invite them or just join somewhere - ie give the URL of your site ? 

[Kami]

Apr 16, 2024 17:05:01 GMT -8 saintmike said:

Forum URL: aussportsforum-asf.freeforums.net/

Hi.  Its me ... again.

I've noticed on some sites they have these sort of robotic post(ers) that place up to date news on the site. In an allocated thread.

How do you get them ?

Do you have to invite them or just join somewhere - ie give the URL of your site ? 

These aren't "robots" as PB does not allow any script that automatically sends a request to their servers (which what an automated bot would do); instead, a member of the staff creates a dedicated account for that particular purpose and manually posts the updates.

[saintmike]

A-ha - thanks.

[Kami]

Apr 16, 2024 20:13:31 GMT -8 saintmike said:

A-ha - thanks.

Of course, any time!

[Scott]

saintmike - just for my own curiosity, can you give me a link to a site's post that has this please?

[saintmike]

Apr 17, 2024 6:12:37 GMT -8 Scott said:

saintmike - just for my own curiosity, can you give me a link to a site's post that has this please?

An old site I used did - not sure its still going.  BUT - they had a link to these sports outlets/sites and the posts seemed automatic. 

They weren't technically members - like a bot I guess. I'm trying to remember their "names". They may well have been circulating data from other sites too. It was sport.

They weren't common ones. I guess they were like those search engines that seem to come in as guests and look for information. BUT - they "posted" results etc. 

If it all comes back to me I'll post here.  

[Kami]

Apr 20, 2024 22:53:15 GMT -8 saintmike said:

Apr 17, 2024 6:12:37 GMT -8 Scott said:

saintmike - just for my own curiosity, can you give me a link to a site's post that has this please?

An old site I used did - not sure its still going.  BUT - they had a link to these sports outlets/sites and the posts seemed automatic.

They weren't technically members - like a bot I guess. I'm trying to remember their "names". They may well have been circulating data from other sites too. It was sport.

They weren't common ones. I guess they were like those search engines that seem to come in as guests and look for information. BUT - they "posted" results etc.

If it all comes back to me I'll post here.  

Is it possible you're referring to an RSS feed, by any chance? Like, instead of a "post" like this thing I'm writing right now, some other part of the forum where "posts" from external sites appeared? Something like one of these ESPN feeds, that was fed into an RSS reader, and the HTML for said reader was put somewhere on the forum HTML (like the sidebar, a table on top of the forum, or on a custom page), kind of like >>this<< (featuring an MLB feed, my personal sports favourite).

The key note is whether or not the automatic content appeared in a post OR somewhere else on the forum. If the forum was a PB forum and the auto-content appeared in a post, then either: a) it wasn't automatic it just looked that way, or b) the forum was violating the developer guidelines for plugins/scripts.

The more likely answer, however, if it did NOT appear in a post, and instead appeared in a box somewhere on the forum or on a custom page, or something of that nature, is that it was an RSS feed coming directly from the sportsball website(s) that would then provide the 'automatic' updates you're referring to -- this wouldn't be against the developer guidelines for PB because no information if being sent to the PB servers.

There is a small chance they could have used something like the Admin-Only HTML in Posts plugin to add the HTML for an RSS feed in their posts, but I'm not entirely sure that this plugin is particularly well known.

[saintmike]

I think you are right Kami - that sounds like what I remember.  It was some time ago. 

Cheers

[Kami]

Apr 21, 2024 17:56:42 GMT -8 saintmike said:

I think you are right Kami - that sounds like what I remember.  It was some time ago.

Cheers

if that's the case, then this is absolutely possible and totally permissible on PB — the RSS feed isn't submitting anything to PB's servers, just displaying some information coming from another site.

I would be happy to walk you through adding RSS feeds onto your forum, if you're interested in doing so — you would just need to select the site(s) you want a feed from and I can help you with the rest.