Website updates: Progress with the Steam API, automatic images, and my first time using Digg

It was about time I posted some updates to the website. At the moment, I have no idea how much money the Google AdSense ads are generating because, like all Google webmaster tools, it takes ages to update, and I'm still at €0.00 earned. But as soon as I know something, I'll write a post about it. Now, let's get down to business.

I've continued making progress with the Steam API. My latest advancements have allowed me to directly read subscriptions like GTA+, although not EA Play (it works differently). And I've also recovered the bundles, allowing me to show you the calculated prices based on the games you own from the bundle. However, due to limitations of my outdated server, I can only calculate the discounted prices if the other games in the bundle are also discounted.

By including the Korean store Stove, I decided to expand the database to read Steam games and DLCs that don't have English as a language option. Doing this almost gave me five simultaneous heart attacks because in just a few hours I went from having about 75,000 records in the database to almost 82,000 records, but the server held up and the database compression is still working.

You may have noticed that in the news articles I added some automatic images. The truth is, I wanted to show you an image for each news item that wasn't as shoddy as the ones gg.deals uses now (they look like they were made in Paint), but I'm not an artist, so I programmed a first version of an image builder where I take the store logo, the game covers, and put it all together into one image that I can use for the website and social media.

Changes on social media. On Reddit I've added a text post for daily deals, and I've also made my debut on Digg, although this social network doesn't yet have an API, and I'm still not sure if it's worth posting there because they've put absurd restrictions in place, like a maximum of two links per post.

That's all for now. I hope to find out in the next post whether Google AdSense ads are financially worthwhile, because it's not the same to focus updates on a server that's in the red as it is on a profitable one. Because if the numbers are in the green, I'd like to develop things on the website to expand the social aspect, like helping you with exchanges or group purchases, but if they're in the red, I'll have to resort to the dark side and include unofficial stores, applying a complete website redesign.