Nav links

Sunday, 14 December 2014

Monitoring web pages for changes

rssIf you're a regular user of RSS feeds then you could probably come up with a handy use for Page2RSS. It's a free service which monitors the web page you specify, and details any changes it finds in an RSS feed. You don't even need to register. Just enter the URL to watch, and it'll return the RSS address to subscribe to.

I have previously used Yahoo Pipes to watch for intermittent changes to a council page about works near me. Setting that up required time to learn how to operate Pipes, and to customise it to my satisfaction. Page2RSS has no customisation options, so it may not produce the precise RSS output you desire, but in many cases this is not necessary. Often the Page2RSS feed notification will just be a prompt to visit the changed web page itself. For a free, simple service, Page2RSS is perfect.