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Biggsmash - Version 1.0

:: 27/6/2007

Welcome!
After a lot of hard work the site is finally finished! Welcome to biggsmash. This site has been a small pet project to help myself get back into a programming mood after a year off working in the Education sector. What is this website? Read on for a quick FAQ:

Digg content
Yes, this site has digg content (that's all for now). What is this site for? people who want these features:

  • Faster - Less images, ads, and ajax page loads.
  • A pictures section - A lot of people have been wanting this for a while. Implemented by listing all stories with 'pics' or 'photos' in the title. Admittedly it does pick up some stories which are not about photos/pictures.
  • A all stories - including videos - section - Another thing a few people have been wanting, but digg hasn't implemented. Here you can view all topics, including videos, on one page.
  • Direct RSS feeds - If you like reading digg stories via RSS, but don't like having to go to through the digg comment page to read them, use these feeds to go directly to the stories. Each page here has an equivalent RSS feed which links directly to the digg stories.
  • Direct popular stories links - like the RSS feeds, the Popular stories on the right hand side link directly to the stories, rather than the comments page. The comments page can be reached by clicking the digg's box.
  • Popular stories are not buried - Once a story hits the front page of digg we record it and keep showing it, even if it gets buried. This is because I get frustrated when I read a story, then try to find it on digg to read the comments and it has mysteriously disappeared.

How does it work?
This site uses the PEAR digg API module to record all of digg's promoted stories to a mySQL database. It then creates xml & rss feeds which are served to you via AJAX on the sites javascript frontend. This is done to keep the site fast (each page load is completely static content, no DB queries. This site is hosted on shared hosting).

Will there be future updates?
Sure when I get round to it. A couple are almost finished but I wanted to get some feedback first.

As far as I am aware, this site does not violate any of digg's API terms and conditions.

Please enjoy the site. Feedback is appreciated.