Plan monitoring of a page I may check for changes
Plans how to watch a public page for changes with a light check, alerts and a stop rule, preferring feeds and notifications.
Task:
Plan how I get notified when [the thing I care about] changes on a public page.
Context:
The page is [page description] and I care about [which part of the page]. I want to know within [delay] of a change. I have [tools or skills], and the page owner is [a company, a public body or a person].
Rules:
- Offer the lightest options first, in this order: an official notification, feed or newsletter, a monitoring service I would pay for, and last a small script.
- For the script, use a conditional request that lets the server say nothing changed, a check no more often than [interval], and a stop on any block message.
- Compare only the relevant part of the page, so ads and timestamps do not trigger false alerts.
- Say how I decide whether the page owner would mind this, and when to ask first.
Result:
A numbered plan of at most 5 steps, then a table with the columns option, effort, cost and risk of false alerts for the first three options.