What’s up, what’s down, and other updates.
Let’s start off with the Telegram Channel – https://t.me/PlasticFantasticDeals
First time using Telegram, so not sure if i setup everything right, but looks to be working. There is a plugin that talks to a bot, that auto posts everything from Puke Alpha to the channel. This includes both posts and blog entries (though i have only tested posts so far).
Auto post is set on a two minute delay to give me a chance to catch/edit any goofs/mistakes, and seems to be working fine. Formatting leaves a lot to be desired, and will definitely need to be worked on, but – it works 🙂
Reddit – https://www.reddit.com/r/PlasticFantasticDeals/
Not quite sure how to handle Reddit yet. As of right now the automation for Puke Alpha to Reddit is live through IFTTT. How their recipe will handle formatting, and whether it will work at all is yet to be seen/tested. But we should know soon enough. The one problem with IFTTT that i see already is that it’s a live service, and not a plugin. This means that they run these automations at whatever frequency they preset. From some of the documentation it looks like it will be around 15 minutes, but from the comments it looks like it’s more in the 30-45 minute range.
The better the deal, the faster it seems to disappear (“random free crap” is usually gone in a blink of an eye), so a 45 minute gap is quite a lot. There are other (mostly paid) plugins that handle this part better, which brings me to my next point……
Discord and Facebook. (Facebook group – https://www.facebook.com/groups/plasticfansticdeals )
Still haven’t gotten to Discord. Started playing around with Facebook automation, and got stuck.
While there are not that many options and some clear winners when it comes to plugins for something like Telegram, for Facebook there are choices galore. Too many choices. Choices with too many options.
I kind of went down this rabbit hole of checking them out, and before i knew it – it’s middle of the night, and “holy shit, where did the day go” 🙂
I’ll give it another go today. The same plugins that handle Facebook tend to also handle Discord (some also do Reddit). Once Facebook automation is setup, getting the rest of them going should be fast.
And finally – Newsreaders.
I use Feedly (free version) on a daily basis. It’s by far and away the most used app on my phone, and the number one clicked bookmark in my desktop browser. An alternative to Feedly is The Old Reader, which i have setup as backup.
Both work with the feed from the site, and work well. In fact, just in terms of formatting it seems to work better than any other method. Mostly because it’s the only one that currently pulls in the product image. There is some kind of a bug/conflict (or a setting i need to check/uncheck) that prevents the featured image from being pulled when posting on other platforms, which is “not ideal”. Feedly and Old Reader are the only two platforms that don’t seem to have that problem. The one problem with both is, again – the delay. Feedly was about 2 hours behind on the last deal i posted.
The ultimate goal here is to have Puke Alpha act as source. Reddit, Facebook, Discord, Telegram, etc, will all act as satellites rebroadcasting the source as soon as possible. This way no matter which platform you’re on, you can get notifications fast, and not miss out on the best deals. Not there yet, but getting closer.
Ok… that’s it for now.
First deals should be posted soon, and (if everything works as it should) should auto show up on Telegram in about two minutes, and on Reddit in hopefully not 45 minutes.
Let’s see how it goes 🙂
