Notifications for new Beta releases

[Yapab]

Hi,

When the first beta's came out I made a small script which emails me when a new beta patch is released. A few of my friends use it and I decided to make a frontend for it and let anyone sign up for this email notification.

It's worked great on the last two betas so anyone is welcome to check it out:

http://www.qbasix.com/ARMA2

You can also easily remove yourself incase you lose interest in the betas!

I posted it on other forums and got a good response so hopefully it helps some people get the latest beta fixes early as not everyone browses the forums daily.

Thanks,

Yapa

[Cole]

Over 60 views and no other comment? Shame on you people :p

Thanks Yapa, that's a useful thing.

[JW Custom]

Nice thanks :)

[rothy]

Thanks! :)

[Thr0tt]

Nice idea but the information you are gathering is it now secure once you have it stored ?

[KrUEgER]

nice job, thx

[Yapab]

Nice idea but the information you are gathering is it now secure once you have it stored ?

Yes the information gets stored in a secure database at a business grade host so unless I'm malicious it will be safe! I guess if someone is really paranoid then they would not sign up.

Its only storing your email address and name/game alias so not really personal information!

Thanks guys! hope it lets you get that beta patch sooner :)

[Thr0tt]

Yes the information gets stored in a secure database at a business grade host so unless I'm malicious it will be safe! I guess if someone is really paranoid then they would not sign up.

Its only storing your email address and name/game alias so not really personal information!

Thanks guys! hope it lets you get that beta patch sooner :)

Cool. Was just checking, no harm in asking, now where do I put my credit card detail again ? ;) j/k

[Yapab]

heheheh thats ok I understand your concerns :) and will be upgrading it to include inputs for your credit card number ;)

Just got notified about another beta, seems BIS are busy!

Yapa

[Shadow NX]

Good work mate, thanks for this :)

[Mudkip]

Do you post on Whirlpool?

[Placebo]

Superb idea Yapab, thanks for doing this, signed up :)

[Kremator]

Great idea. Signed up too !

In fact all releases from BIs should be covered in this :)

[Yapab]

Do you post on Whirlpool?

Hello Mudkip, yes I post on Whirlpool too :) and a few people from there signed up too although the thread has become a bit quiet recently.

Thanks for the feedback, and to anyone who has signed up please make sure to mark the first "sign-up" email as safe because web services such as hotmail, gmail, yahoo etc might make the email as spam so you will not get the update email.

Yapa

[markushaze]

absolutely great... you should let the German speaking crowd also see this.

here`s a link to a German ArmA2 forum:

http://www.armamdb.de/forum/index.php

Again: Thanx :-)

[Yapab]

Hello markushaze,

I've had a look and not sure which sub-forum to post it in.

Please feel free to post the link and details since you probably know German and the forum better :)

Yapa

[markushaze]

Yea great. ill do that.

Thanx again for this:-)

*edit*

Done:

http://www.armamdb.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=564

[otreblA_SNAKE_[ITA]]

Thank you =)

[DTM2801]

Great idea, signed up.. now dont go and abuse our mailboxes ya hear :P

[connos]

Thanks Yapab great idea indeed. Are you posting to PC Games Hardware?

[Pauliesss]

Thanks man. :)

[Yapab]

Thanks for the feedback everyone! I'll see if I can update it when time permits to show patch version and possibly change log in the email.

connos, yes I'm the same Yapa from PCGH :) I get around ;)

[Snake Man]

Any chance of RSS feed for the betas? (RSS feed is much easier for end user than email).

[Yapab]

Any chance of RSS feed for the betas? (RSS feed is much easier for end user than email).

Not really because I think another user has already made an RSS feed for the betas!

Now that we have both systems everyone will be informed! I for example get emails on my phone, I can also get RSS feeds on the phone but emails are easier for me than looking at RSS feeds as they give a signal when a new email comes in.

Yapa

[HitmanFF]

Thanks Yapa, very handy service! Especially yesterday when there were two beta releases, I got warned again after downloading the first one :)

[Bouben]

Thank you kindly!

[Lhowon]

Thanks a lot, this is very handy.

[PhunkMaZ]

Very useful script. Thanks! :cheers:

[Cole]

Hey Yapab,

first of all, I'd like to thank you again for this notifier, it's really helping me to grab the new betas asap :)


And now I'd like to ask something:
Would it be possible to add the new changes from the changelog into the email?

example how it could look for the current beta, which is 60141:

Hello! New ARMA2 Beta Patch is available for download.

Click here to download (http://www.arma2.com/beta-patch.php)

Changelog:
[60129] Fixed: AI subordinates now move faster (use less cover) to catch up when leader is way ahead of them.
[60102] Fixed: AI subordinates should now respect formation more when moving in combat.
[60101] Fixed: Group leader was often running far ahead alone in combat.
[60092] Fixed: AI leader did not wait for a player to cover him when moving in combat.


Would be really helpful in certain situations, like when I'm quickly checking mail on my cellphone and I'd want to know what's the new changes, but I can't access the changelog on the beta website directly. :)

[CarlGustaffa]

So as to skip work early? :D

[Cole]

yeah! :D

[Yapab]

Hey Yapab,

Would it be possible to add the new changes from the changelog into the email?



Hi,

Thanks for the thank you, glad its helping you keep up to date with the beta's.

I can code this in, I'm pretty busy this weekend but I'll try and add that feature this week.

Thanks,

Yapa

[richiespeed13]

Thanks!

[Cole]

When I got an e-mail about the latest beta (71382), GMail automatically threw it into the spam folder and when I open it, I get a huge red warning saying:

Warning: This message may not be from whom it claims to be. Beware of following any links in it or of providing the sender with any personal information. Learn more

There's nothing dangerous in the mail itself, but GMail automatically disabled links in the message. I guess they accidentaly blacklisted your e-mail account?


Edit: I might also note that this never happened before with beta notifications. Not even the first time after I signed up.

[MadDogX]

I was about to post the same thing. GMail marked the latest beta notification as spam, as Cole described above.

[Cole]

I just noticed that you can "Report Not Phishing" when you click the little down arrow at the top right corner of the e-mail. That sends the message for review by Google staff.
Hopefully they'll remove the e-mail from the blacklist :)

[Yapab]

Hi guys,

3 possible reasons for this:

1) I updated the code since the last beta release to also mirror the file on my server, it could have triggered something but really should not have.

2) The 71382 patch notes include a url, this could have triggered some kind of Google phising protection (most likely reason)

3) As the registered user base is almost 200 and a good few of them are Google... it could have triggered some kind of spam trap.

As suggested by Cole please click "reply" and the drop down box will have the option to "Report Not Phishing". After that also click "Not Spam" so the spam system moves the message to your inbox and marks it safe.

Yapa

[Cole]

Seems like Google already fixed this mistake (atleast on my end).
About an hour after I used the "Report Not Phishing" button, links in the e-mail became clickable again. :)

[Yapab]

Yep fixed by Google.

Now updated for ARMA2 Operation Arrowhead beta patches.

[connos]

Yep fixed by Google.

Now updated for ARMA2 Operation Arrowhead beta patches.

Thanks Yapab!!!

[MadDogX]

Not sure how many people besides myself actually still use(d) this, but I noticed that the e-mail notifications suddenly stopped coming when the build numbers hit the six digits in early december. I tried contacting Yapab about this problem but he seems to be MIA since 2011.

Anyway, since I've been doing a lot of coding in Node.js recently and wanted a nice little project as motivation to dive into some of the modules (Express, Jade, Nodemailer, reCAPTCHA etc.), I decided to create my own e-mail notifier, which can be found here:

http://arma2beta.maddogx.com/.


It also comes with an RSS feed, here: http://arma2beta.maddogx.com/rss. Twitter functionality is in the pipeline aswell.

A few things to note:


If you sign up and don't receive the confirmation mail, check your spam folder. Especially GMail loves putting stuff there. :rolleyes:
Obviously, all e-mail addresses will be treated confidentially and will never be given to third parties. I've just realized I forgot to add a "privacy policy" page to the site, so I'll add that later today.

[oktane]

Sweeeeeeet thanks man. I stopped getting them, and therefore stopped making noBlurs! Making use of the RSS for the noBlur autobuild!

Noticed some missing items on the RSS, is that normal?
Like all of these:
ARMA2_OA_Build_100496.zip ARMA2_OA_Build_100496.log
ARMA2_OA_Build_100409.zip ARMA2_OA_Build_100409.log
ARMA2_OA_Build_100385.zip ARMA2_OA_Build_100385.log
ARMA2_OA_Build_100296.zip ARMA2_OA_Build_100296.log
ARMA2_OA_Build_100258.zip ARMA2_OA_Build_100258.log
ARMA2_OA_Build_100257.zip ARMA2_OA_Build_100257.log
ARMA2_OA_Build_100056.zip ARMA2_OA_Build_100056.log

Either way, as long as the new ones show up, it's all good.

Cheers!

[AnimalMother92]

Nice, thanks MadDog :thumb:

[MadDogX]

Noticed some missing items on the RSS, is that normal?
Like all of these:
ARMA2_OA_Build_100496.zip ARMA2_OA_Build_100496.log
ARMA2_OA_Build_100409.zip ARMA2_OA_Build_100409.log
ARMA2_OA_Build_100385.zip ARMA2_OA_Build_100385.log
ARMA2_OA_Build_100296.zip ARMA2_OA_Build_100296.log
ARMA2_OA_Build_100258.zip ARMA2_OA_Build_100258.log
ARMA2_OA_Build_100257.zip ARMA2_OA_Build_100257.log
ARMA2_OA_Build_100056.zip ARMA2_OA_Build_100056.log

That's because I manually added build 99806 to my database for testing purposes (not sure why I picked it... I guess because it was the last one to be reported by the old notifier). Build 100544 was the newest when I first got the detection working, so it was the first new one to be written to the database automatically. My script only compares the newest build number to the latest one in the database, hence the gap. :)

[MadDogX]

Update: Betas releases are now also tweeted. Just follow @<hidden> @<hidden> (https://twitter.com/Arma2Betas) on Twitter.

[oktane]

Nice job! @<hidden> or something might have been more intuitive to a person that sees it mentioned or finds it on twitter, unless they read the description. Seriously though, this work is greatly appreciated. I had an RSS for betas too, long ago, which was shut down when the 506th group closed. It had all kinds of problems with godaddy security restrictions and stuff, pain to host. But this fills in the gap and takes it to the next level!

Maybe it could run as a google app or amazon cloud service some day too, that's what I was looking into doing. I'm glad you did it first though, because I have zero time. :)

If you haven't already, make a new thread for this so that you can control the OP/First post with updated information! I updated the old RSS feed thread with your post.

Also, I made this a while back, if you need to 'do things' when new items appear in the RSS feed. https://github.com/oktane/rssRunCmd It's what I use for the noBlur processing when your feed has a new item. :) (config (https://github.com/oktane/rssRunCmd/wiki/ArmA2:OA-Beta-RSS-Config))

[MadDogX]

Nice job! @<hidden> or something might have been more intuitive to a person that sees it mentioned or finds it on twitter, unless they read the description.

Yeah, in retrospect that may have been the wiser choice. At the time I thought it might be nice to keep it more generic (not referencing any particular game) in case I wanted to add beta notifications for Carrier Command, Arma3, DayZ etc. in the future. But really, it would be better to have a separate account for each one of those, so people can follow them individually.

In fact, I've just realized it's possible to change the name of a Twitter account, so I might just do that. :D


If you haven't already, make a new thread for this so that you can control the OP/First post with updated information! I updated the old RSS feed thread with your post.

My thoughts exactly, but to be safe I actually asked a moderator before posting the announcement, and his advice was to add it to the existing thread. Interest in this topic seems to be pretty low anyway, but if it picks up I'll ask again.


Also, I made this a while back, if you need to 'do things' when new items appear in the RSS feed. https://github.com/oktane/rssRunCmd It's what I use for the noBlur processing when your feed has a new item. :) (config (https://github.com/oktane/rssRunCmd/wiki/ArmA2:OA-Beta-RSS-Config))

That's pretty cool. I'll make sure to let you know if I ever have to change anything that would require you to change the config. ;)


EDIT: Twitter account has been renamed to @<hidden> (https://twitter.com/Arma2Betas). :)

[oktane]

I would say screw the moderator. You created something new from scratch, that merits a new thread, regardless if it was a recycled idea. I'm sure that every member of this forum would agree with that too. This is a digital bulletin board, are we conserving resources? Give me a break. Your creation is much wider in scope than this topic it is posted in. It deserves one simply so that you can have a first post, which you can update and provide documentation/links etc. You think someone searching for a beta email notification is going to find this thread, read all the way to the 5th page? No, they are are going to try to subscribe to the OP's email thing and be dismayed when it doesn't work. :D

I would put a post in the Beta forum, since that's what it's about.

Seriously, don't let anyone, anyone diminish what work you have done for this community, this game, etc. There are many takers and few givers. If the mod doesn't respect that, he doesn't deserve to be a mod.

[MadDogX]

Finally a new beta! Mails went out, Twitter tweeted and RSS was updated, so it seems everything works as it should. :D