1. What the hell is HALOader?!
2. What the hell is RSS / XML?!
3. How do I find my RSS / XML link on Bungie.net?
4. I keep getting a "RSS / XML link not valid." error when I signup, WTF?
5. I have signed up, but haven't recieved my confirmation email, now what?
6. Ok, now I am all signed up, but when I go to my stats, it says "No games to display"...
7. How often should I login to see my stats?
8. What if I have some ideas that could help the site?
9. Why are there ads and a donate button?
10. Where does donated money go?
11. What do I get if I donate?
12. What is Jaian.com?
1. What the hell is HALOader?!
HALOader is a RSS feed reader for stats from Bungie.net. When Halo 2 came out, Bungie decided to take Xbox live functionality further with stats tracking. HALOader takes advantage of this. The only downside to Bungie's RSS feed is that it expires after 7 days. HALOader overcomes this by putting all of the stats in a database!
2. What the hell is RSS / XML?!
Taken directly from Bungie.net -
An extra bonus for registered Bungie.net members is the ability to subscribe to an RSS feed for your personal stats. RSS is way of getting news or headlines from web sites in a format that's readable by special RSS reader software. For Bungie.Net, you can subscribe to your very own RSS feed that gives you an up to date listing of all the Halo 2 games you've played in on Xbox Live. To get this functionality, you need to first link your Gamertag. Then go to your "My Stats" page and look for the orange "XML" icon. That's the link to your RSS feed. You probably need a RSS reader to get any value out of this so go to your favorite search engine, get one, then follow the instructions provided by the reader.
For additional help with RSS feeds, these links might be useful:
3. How do I find my RSS / XML link on Bungie.net?
It's easy! You first have to link your gamertag on the Xbox site, then the same on the Bungie site. Once that is all done, log into the Bungie site and click on "My Stats"...
(
note: you must be signed in with your .NET Passport)
Then click on the orange box labeled "XML"
Then when that page loads you will see the XML file, this is the RSS feed. You need the link to the RSS feed from the browser.
Copy and paste the
entire link, make sure there are no spaces.
It should look like this:
http://www.bungie.net/stats/halo2rss.ashx?i=123456&k=1234567890
(your numbers will be different)
That's it!
4. I keep getting a "RSS / XML link not valid." error when I signup, WTF?
Make sure that the link is formatted correctly, the signup page will not allow bad links. If you can find the right link, see FAQ item #3.
5. I have signed up, but haven't recieved my confirmation email, now what?
First check your SPAM filter if you have one, emails from this server shouldn't get caught in the filter, but might. If you can't find it there you can always go back to the Signup page and Click on the "Resend confirmation email" or just click
HERE.
6. Ok, now I am all signed up, but when I go to my stats, it says "No games to display"...
This can mean a couple of things. First, RSS feeds usually won't let you access a feed more than once or twice per hour. The get around this, and not piss off Bungie, HALOader caches the feed for 1 hour.
Secondly, if it has been more than an hour and your stats still don't show up, it could be the Bungie site. The RSS engine is still in beta and acts up sometimes. They always get it working again, but sometimes it takes a little while.
In either case time almost always solves this problem.
7. How often should I login to see my stats?
That is up to you, HALOader now has the ability to update the entire site every hour, so you can player your games and login anytime to see them here. We are currently implimenting a manual update function that will allow you to manually update games as long as your feed is not cached.
8. What if I have some ideas that could help the site?
HALOader is always being developed, so new ideas are very welcome! Post any new ideas in the
HALOader Forums.
9. Why are there ads and a donate button?
Websites always cost money to run, so these are here to help with the costs. We hope to offer an ad-free version of HALOader with more stats and functionality for a small fee in the future. Please know that there will always be a free version of HALOader!
10. Where does donated money go?
Any donated money goes toward the connection cost and server upgrades. HALOader along with Jaian's webgame Domain Knights recently was able to upgrade the server from a 1GHz Celeron to a 2.8GHz HT Dell server. As any type of web application, these things do cost money to run, we currently are paying al of the costs to keep HALOader and Jaian alive, so any help is always appreciated!
11. What do I get if I donate?
Right now all we can offer is an icon by your gamertag in the players view as well as and ad-free version of the site. Later upgrades like custom HALOader signatures will also only be available to donors.
12. What is Jaian.com?
Jaian.com is home to Domain Knights, a multiplayer, browser-based hacking simulator. Jaian is AltF8 and subcypher, then me Gravity - the bastard stepchild. AltF8 specializes in ASP coding and web based game development. subcypher is the other half of the brains, thinking up things to drive AltF8 crazy, and he is a hell of an admin nazi. Gravity (me) is an animator / graphics d00d that has just stepped into the code world with HALOader.
