How do I get notified when a new thread is posted on a forum page?

Help and Support
1

I am brand new to Distill and think it can fill my need, but I can’t get it to work on the main page I want to monitor. I am trying get notified whenever a new thread is added to a forum page. I tried tracking the alert icon that gets a number added but it won’t do it, so I tried the threads with no luck. Could someone on your team help me figure out how to do this. If this can be figured out, I will happily pay the monthly fee for your service. Thank you

2

Hello @mateo001, welcome to the community forum!

Usually, forums lists posts in reverse chronological order. It is easy to get notified when a new post is added, or an existing post is modified by monitoring that list. Is such a list not accessible in the forum you are monitoring? Can you share the URL? Thanks!

3

Thank you for the response. There is a list. I just do not have an programming, HTML, Java knowledge, so it may be easy and I just don’t know how to set up the Monitor. Here is the link. Carothers Performance Knives For Sale | BladeForums.com

4

Got it. There are two ways to monitor the BladeForums for updates:

  1. They offer an RSS feed of the updates. It can be monitoring using the “Monitor feed” option shown in Disitll’s menu popup as shown in the following screenshot. It is the fastest and easier way to monitor the forum.

    image
    image815×469 35.4 KB

  2. Or, by selecting specific parts of the page. This works for any webpage, especially the ones that don’t offer a feed. Here is a quick start guide: Distill.io Chrome Extension - Monitor Website Changes – Distill. Following config should be able to monitor the list:

{
  "selections": [
    {
      "frames": [
        {
          "index": 0,
          "excludes": [],
          "includes": [
            {
              "expr": "[data-xf-init='preview-tooltip']",
              "type": "css"
            },
            {
              "expr": ".label",
              "type": "css"
            }
          ]
        }
      ],
      "dynamic": true,
      "delay": 0
    }
  ],
  "regexp": null,
  "ignoreEmptyText": true,
  "includeStyle": false,
  "viewport": {},
  "dataAttr": "text"
}

To learn more about config, checkout Config and Advanced Options – Distill. I recently showed how to view and edit config here as well: How to get notified of front end changes - not back end changes - #5 by ajitk

Note that the two approaches can alert whenever a new post is added or an existing post is updated.

Try these out and let me know if you need any help. Cheers!