In Report 1, I mentioned how I was able to get an app working locally on my laptop within several hours. To recap, this is an app to collect news items exposed through feeds and create a searchable archive that can be used in research. In my next iteration of the app, I changed the database (MySQL to MariaDB) and deployed it on a server. The app is now available here (URL is temporary, trying to think of something besides some form of “newsarchive.com”, but that may be where I end up). I also had Claude create some user documentation which is linked at the top of the app.
For the most part, Claude provided the instructions for how to deploy the app and connect to the database, and the instructions were mostly correct. If the instruction failed, I pasted the error into the Claude terminal, and usually Claude came up with a correction. The biggest problem was trying to get a cron job set up to check feeds once per hour – the provided job entry was not working. After some web searches and Gemini checks/fixes, Claude figured out that part of the command left out a dash on a switch option – ugh! I hope that has been fixed now…
Issues that I have seen have been due to the input feeds (NYTimes feeds have some duplicate stories across their feeds). Also, since I have only been collecting data starting today, the archive is someone small, and only has feeds from two sources so far (NYTimes and ABC News). It was disappointing to find that CNN does not have feeds any more…. I am planning to work up to adding at least one new source a day, but will need to find feeds!
All feedback is welcome – give it a try!