The recent changes have focused on enhancing user experience, improving the functionality of the platform, and making it easier to navigate through all the latest rugby news. Below is a breakdown of the changes that were recently implemented, providing you with a better idea of what’s new on the site.
Four hour updates
One of the most significant changes I’ve made is reducing the update interval from six hours to four hours. Previously, the content aggregator refreshed every six hours, meaning you would get the latest news four times a day. While this schedule worked well initially, I realized that more frequent updates were quite straightforward and would not present too many downsides.
By switching to a four-hour update cycle, the system now checks for new stories six times a day, ensuring that the latest news, match reports, and player updates are delivered even more quickly.
Eventually, the goal will be as short a window as possible. But for now, taking costs into consideration and not wanting to hammer websites too harshly, this rate will work.
Related Posts and Tag System
I’ve introduced a new feature that allows you to easily find related articles and explore content through tags. Now, when you’re reading an article, you’ll be able to see related posts that might interest you. Whether it’s the same team, player, or topic, these suggestions will help you find additional relevant content.
Infobox on the Homepage
To give more context about what Rugby News is and how it works, there is a quick infobox on the index page. It’s a small change but one that provides more transparency to users, especially those new to the platform.
Entity Links and Matchup Features
In an effort to make the experience more interactive, I’ve added support for entity links for matchups like Scotland vs Australia, as well as nice URLs for certain entities, like the All Blacks at /allblacks. This means that when a particular player, team, or competition is mentioned, you can easily click through and explore additional content on that entity.
Updates to the About Page and Content Summaries
I’ve added more content to the About page to give visitors a clearer picture of what Rugby News is all about. Additionally, we added a note on article pages to indicate when the summary has been provided by RugbyBot, making it clearer how our automated system generates summaries.
See you next month!