What does boxtracker do?
BoxTracker is a user post aggregation tool for vBulletin forums. ie: it lets you track user posts. At the moment, the script is primarily watching the Gearbox Software Forums.
Why?
Curiosity mainly. In the case of the Gearbox forums, it also provides an excellent resource for keeping up to date with Gearbox Developer posts (for when they release little tidbits of information!)
How is BoxTracker powered?
BoxTracker uses custom PHP scripts to load vBulletin user profiles and scrape them for posts. Any posts retrieved are automatically added to the BoxTracker database. The update is currently scheduled to run every 3 hours, pending further testing (and possible enhancements) the final schedule should run every hour.
What's next?
Who knows. I'm curious to see how well the tool can be implemented on vBulletin forums outside of Gearbox Software. If you've got a vBulletin forum and you want to participate, i'd love to hear from you. I'm also looking at implementing an RSS feed to make it easier to keep up to date (depending on demand. Send me an email if you're interested...)
If you've got any other thoughts and suggestions send them to contact[at)relicszero[dot)net!