Home >> FT Blog >>

The scraper I wrote has a bug, it will look the project as closed if GAF site is not working properly.

I was using

if($content == '' || eregi('temporary unavailable', $content)){}

to break the block. Seems this is a stupid method. Now I will add another checker to check the file size of the page on GAF. If the file is very small, the script will break too.

Sorry for the inconvenient, I will try to avoid the issue.

This is that they said:
“GetAFreelancer is undergoing a major network upgrade. We estimate that we will be back online by 11:30 pm EDT”

Update
GAF came to us 15 minutes before. Hope it will work as usual.

The current website freelancertool.com is just a portal to GetAFreelancer and Scriptlace, all the projects and buyer informations come from these two websites. The goal of the site is to provide an easy way to select projects / select buyers at first glance.

Freelancertool.com was built for some personal reasons.

The first reason is that sometimes I bid on project posted by bad service buyers, I didn’t find this because I was in hurry(I became nervous if there’s no project to do). So I wonder if there’s a way to see the reviews and rating just in the list of projects. Which will help me to decide whether to bid or not. But unfortunately, neither GAF nor Scriptlance provide this feature. The only cool site I found provide this feature is Joomlance.

I have a bad habit, I do like to work with north america buyers. I think it’s by reason that I have worked for many good buyers from America and Canada. So this is the second reason why I need to build my own website.

The third reason is the sorting, on Scriptlace I can sort the columns bids, avg bid etc while on the old GetAFreelancer website, there’s no way to sort the projects. So I want to build unifying interface. GAF added this feature in the last update, they are working hard but still no way to see buyer summary directly in the project list. By the way, I really don’t like the new layout of GAF, the big header graph on homepage make the site unprofessional. I stick to it that what the provider want is just a clear and easy-to-use interface.

So these are all the primary reasons why I build this website. And sure, all the outboard links are affiliate links. I hope them may take some money to me as I need money to buy bandwidth, maybe this will happen in the future.

GAF updated it’s layout this weekend, the new design looks more WEB2.0 Seems they are trying to build a more user friendly interface. But I reaaly think the old layout is clear enough.

Hope I will be used of the new design.

When I was out of town for my wedding, the internet connection is poor. So sorry for that my site is not working for GAF projects in these days at all.

I came back 2 hours ago and fixed all the scraper asap. Now it’s working again.