Espresso - undiluted monthly compendia

[whole diary]

[grahame]

What were we discussing on the forum last month?   How about 10 years ago last month?

As part of another project, I have been looking at automated monthly summaries and bring to you our Espresso page bring you up to date on what happened so far this month. A pulldown menu at the base of the page lets you step back to any month since the forum was founded - examples for last month - feb 2020 and 10 years ago last month. [edit - 22.8.2026] - neither these extra links nor the pulldown are currently operational

Very interesting to see just how much has moved on .... and just how much remains the same!

[stuving]

I'm still puzzling over what this is meant to do. Should the listed topic links lead to an item posted in the month selected and shown? I expected so, and it would, usefully, provide a way to reach a known date in a long thread (which is very tedious to do otherwise).

But it doesn't do that - or at least not often. For a start the link leads to the top of a page, maybe some time earlier, but this is unimportant. If the thread stopped being used soon after the chosen month, you get what you asked for. But if it is still in use, you jump to the last page. That's usually - I have had other things happen, but can't pin down what I did to produce them.

[grahame]

I'm still puzzling over what this is meant to do. Should the listed topic links lead to an item posted in the month selected and shown? I expected so, and it would, usefully, provide a way to reach a known date in a long thread (which is very tedious to do otherwise).

But it doesn't do that - or at least not often. For a start the link leads to the top of a page, maybe some time earlier, but this is unimportant. If the thread stopped being used soon after the chosen month, you get what you asked for. But if it is still in use, you jump to the last page. That's usually - I have had other things happen, but can't pin down what I did to produce them.

You have located an unintended feature (a.k.a. bug).  I have updated the software to give more useful results (a.k.a. fixed the bug) and it should now jump to the post(s) made during the month you have selected.

[grahame]

A further couple of enhancements from http://www.passenger.chat/espresso (which be default gives you current month to date) ... the menu at the bottom also lets you select "All Year" now, and allows you to select a particular board of interest.

The URLs this generates can be bookmarked / shared ... for example http://www.passenger.chat/espresso.html?month=00&year=2012&board=19 will always lead you to all the "Heart of Wessex" posts from 2012.

Edit - now diverts to
https://www.passenger.chat/espresso.html?month=00&year=2012&board=19 and pulldown menu needs re-instating

[grahame]

After being quietly suspended for a while during a denial of service attack, I am re-enabling the espresso facility. I have also automate the default so that it becomes month-to-date without me having to go in and change it manually at the start of each month; I still have to remember on 1st January each year to update the year!

This is not a facility that gets huge use, nor would I expect it to be - but if you want to find out what we were talking about  in (say) March 2012, it will help. 

Espresso now has an https wrapper which will help ensure that members don't get lots of security warnings in their browser when they use it, and may also help our search engine and AI feed visibility. I will be keeping an eye open just in case it generates significant server loads.  And I will be adding back the facility to navigate around it better too.