TrendChecker 0.2 Update: new account, speed improvements+ free upvotes | + Task Request Winner

What is TrendChecker?

TrendChecker is a bot that tells you how high your post is in Hot or Trending. To use it you just need to send 0.001 SBD/STEEM to @trendchecker with your Steemit.com url as the memo.

Design Contest

On 28 March 2018 I posted a Task Request for a logo, thumbnail and cover. I have to say that I did not expect so many designers to show up.

Thanks for your amazing contributions!

@famil, @redmusic, @arkhamknight, @marlon241982, @amirdesaingrafis, @jefz, @jmromero, @rvilov, @abdulmanan, @isabella394, @ivannewgate89 and @berkorasen

The first winner is @jmromero. You can check out his post here. Congratulations!

The second winner is @rvilov. I have chosen his profile picture.

It was really hard to decide who gets the one utopian.io upvote and I sat down for quite a while and tried all the different designs. I may even switch the designs in the future…

Currently, I’m asking if two winners can be rewarded by utopian.io. If this is not possible @rvilov will receive some personal SBD from me. However, if he gets rewarded by utopian.io @redmusic and @arkhamknight will receive the SBD reward because their designs were also really good!

New Features

1. Bot Account

First of all, TrendChecker now has his own account. I believe that is an important step in making the bot popular. I’m really careful about what I post on my main account and do not want to spam my followers. On this account development updates like this and weekly statistics will be posted.

In order to attract more users, the bot will act as free upvote bot in his infancy. Every posts which gets “trendchecked” will get a tiny upvote by this account and maybe by my main account. Furthermore, the bot will also post a comment to promote itself. I do not want the account to look like one of these spam/scam bots so leave your feedback about this in the comments below.

Obviously, you now need to send your request (transaction) with the memo to @trendchecker.

2. Speed

The bot is currently still hosted on my Raspberry Pi 3 although this will also change soon. The performance is not optimal and one request takes between 25 and 40 seconds.

To reduce this waiting time I first decided to drop promoted posts. No one uses the build in promotion feature anymore. This alone should theoretically already reduce the time by more than ⅓.

In addition, the bot will only check for the top 50 posts instead of top 100 because this extra information is basically useless. Most users do not scroll down past 50 posts so most humans won’t ever see your post if it is down there. This should also reduce the time by quite a bit.

I tested the bot with my recent Python Bot tutorial: https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@wil1liam/how-does-trendchecker-work-or-steem-python-bot-tutorial-part-1.

Before: 29 seconds

After the changes: 21 seconds

Honestly, I expected a bit more but I believe this figure could be reduced even more with a faster host.

3. Donations

The feedback about the bot was overwhelming. I even got a few donations… Thanks!

@ilyastarar suggested that I should set a minimum fee of 0.005 to earn some SBD/STEEM daily. I don’t want to force people to pay for the bot because it should help the community and it would slow down the bot’s growth. However, the bot now only sends back 0.001 SBD/STEEM. If you appreciate the bot you can send more but you do not have to! If you mistakenly send the wrong amount write me a comment or contact me on Discord (wil1liam#8715).

Upcoming

1. Website

I originally chose transactions as an interface because it is the simplest to develop and cheapest to host. I didn’t need a webserver and learn another API for Discord or Telegram. Furthermore, the user doesn’t need to have any third party applications installed.

However, a website is the best solution because it’s customizable and offers endless features. For hosting I chose uberspace.de. It is a German web hosting provider which a few characteristics:

• you can choose want you want to pay (minimum: 1€)
• you have to do everything yourself (no website builder, etc.)
• you have to register your own domain somewhere else

It may be off putting to some people but for me it is cheap and a great learning experience.

TrendChecker will then somewhat work like @resteemable.

You will need to replace a part of the url with something else. This new url will be the url of my website. The website will then use the url as the input and find your rank in Hot or Trending.

I will probably choose the url trendsteemit.com but I'm open for suggestions.

Before it is ready, I will need to get it running on the web server and do some styling with bootstrap. Should be finished in less than two weeks!

2. Hosting

Before the website comes online I will host the existing bot on the web server first. This will enable better speeds and reduce downtime. It should be done in 2-3 days.

Small changes

• Better visibility/ readability:

• fixed random error that caused the script to stop

Commits

• website prototype
• automatic comments + upvotes
• speed improvement
• readability
• shutdown error fix
• donations

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Thank you all for your support! Please leave any feedback and suggestions in the comments below!

@wil1liam

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Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors

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