Last Updated on October 3, 2024 by Mathew Diekhake
When I first read about Website Watcher, I thought what a great tool for web administrators who want to monitor their competitors. I thought that this would be quite a niche tool. However, when I read its own description and saw it say it can be useful for students who want to check exam results etc, I realized that its potential extends much more than only web admins. Vovsoft’s Website Watcher allows you to stay updated with changes that are made to most webpages, including feed pages such as RSS, etc, for any changes that are made to websites that you want to monitor.
WHAT IT IS
Vovsoft Website Watcher 1.4 lets you monitor webpages, including traditional webpages of websites and other webpages such as feeds, to check for changes. You can add a site/webpage you want to monitor on the Vovsoft Website Watcher 1.4 interface, and it will remember what the HTML code looked like when it scanned it and notify you of any changes when they occur.
It wasn’t clear to me whether they meant literally any change on a webpage such as new posts being published to a website’s homepage, or if it was only related to things like development changes, etc. I recommend the developers make this clearer in a future version so people like me can more easily understand exactly what it will notify us about because I’m not interested in a tool that pings me every time a website publishes a post, but maybe someone else is. I assume Vovsoft Website Watcher 1.4 doesn’t notify you every time a website publishes something; rather, I think it’s going to be whenever there is a change to the coding in some way. But I could be wrong. The example Vovsoft uses of checking student exams does suggest that it will notify you regarding all webpage changes. If that is the case, then maybe Website Watcher 1.4 is most useful for webpages that aren’t homepages. That might be why they chose to use the term “webpages” in the description; once a webpage is published, they don’t tend to change much; the webpages that make the most changes by far are the homepages. A traditional RSS feed will only notify you when something new arrives on the homepage; Website Watcher 1.4 may aim to notify you every time there is a change to a webpage after it has already been published; that may be the difference.
DESCRIPTION
The interface was small and simple. There was nothing in the URL list by default; however, I clicked the Add URLs button, and inside were some default options stored that I could add to my list. I liked that they included examples to help demonstrate how the tool works. I added those example URLs for my review and will monitor those sites for weeks to see the results. There were also Load List and Save List buttons next to the Add URLs button. This meant I could upload a list of sites that may have already been saved to my computer. I could also save a list if I had created it within the Website Watcher interface.
There was also a traditional File menu where I could select the same options from a drop-down menu. I liked this inclusion for those who are used to using a file menu. But basically, that was all the features on the interface. It was all about adding the URLs and watching and waiting for data changes. When a webpage changes, it is listed next to where the URL is on the interface, to the right under the last Change column.
CONCLUSION AND DOWNLOAD LINK
I’d never heard of anything like Vovsoft Website Watcher when I reviewed its software. I pondered for hours about the possibilities of this tool and potential similar tools. I can see use cases for a website-watching tool that literally watches everything after the original publishing of a webpage. I can also see the potential for a website-watching tool that only monitors changes related to the development side of webpages: new features, link changes, etc.
- Price: $19.00
- Version reviewed: Website Watcher v1.4
- System requirements: Windows 7, 8/8.1, 10, and 11 (32-bit and 64-bit)
- Download size: 5.5 MB
- Website: vovsoft.com
October 3, 2024 @ 21:00
Website Watcher is not the kind of tool that you can review in a day and be done with it. I’m going to have to keep it on my computer for a few weeks, keep monitoring it and eventually update the review accordingly with my new opinions. I’ll publish my review for now as is after having spent a day with it. But some of my sentences are certainly subject to change. And I’m sure I’ll be adding more experiences of my time with Website Watcher than is currently available on the day of publication.