Webpage Update Notification

[Wai_Wai]

Webpage Update Notification
-- An advanced checker to notify changes occurred between visit

I would like to have a program which can keep track of different webpage. When the pages change, there is an alert/popup which will notify me. It is useful to track changes like new replies in particular boards, site news, version update news etc.

However the problem is a single unrelated change in a page would trigger the notification. For example, a random ad in the forum which will always trigger the alert. I wonder if the check can be more advanced. For example:

• alert only when the selected part of the webpage is updated
• decide the threshold on how many changes are needed to trigger the alert (helpful to prevent small unrelated changes from mis-triggering)

Do you have any program you can recommend?
I can pay for the program as long as it is powerful and suit my needs.

[caveman8fb]

A program using wget and string searches would probably work, the creation would take some time.

[SirDice]

Some scripting would be able to do that. Use the GET method with the additional header If-Modified-Since:. That would indicate a change in the page itself (and not any linked pages or any other inserted page like ads).

Perl in combination with libwww (LWP modules) will make short work of this.

[nihil]

There are also the tools that the website management software provides?

1. Subscribe to threads
2. E-mail notification
3. New Posts
4. Today's Posts

I would also advise a little caution as some websites don't like you using external "tools" on them?