How to share a tracked site with others

Versionista now lets users share the entire revision history of a tracked site with anyone. (Read the general Press Release here.)

To enable, simply login to Versionista, click on the domain you wish to share, and check the box labeled "make this site archive public". The site will then be public to everyone at the URL listed below the checkbox.

This feature is particularly useful for Webmasters who wish to offer full edit transparency to viewers. By inserting a simple JavaScript snippet, any tracked Web page will automatically include the date of the last edit, and a link to the revision history of that document.

The JavaScript to do this is as follows:

<script src="http://versionista.com/md5.js"></script>

<script>
document.write('<scr'+'ipt src="http://versionista.com/pub/1/36/x'
    + hex_md5(document.URL) + 'js"></scr' + 'ipt>')
</script>

<script>
displayVersionistaLink("View this page's revision history.<br>");
displayVersionistaCompareLink("Last recorded edit");
displayVersionistaLastStamp(": ");
</script>

Of course, you must replace the highlighted URL with the one specific to your account and the tracked site (the JavaScript is automatically created for you if you look in each site page).

The result of this script is the following:

You may change the strings in the JavaScript to alter the words used. You can include this anywhere on the page, and put it in a frame, div, or whatever you like.

Include this script on every page of your site that you are tracking. It will automatically include the revision date per page, and link to the edit history for that page (the script recognizes the page that it is on to determine these things).

Some notes:

• If you uncheck the sharing box for a site in your Versionista account, public access to that site will be instantly revoked.

• The only pages included in this public display will be those which you are actively monitoring. "Unmonitored" or deleted pages will not appear.

• Similarly, if you delete a particular version of a page, that version will not appear in the public display.

• If you include the JavaScript on a page of your site that is NOT currently tracked by Versionista, a date of last edit will not be shown; a link to all publically visible tracked pages for that site will be included.

• This feature shares the entire site. If, instead, you wish to share only a single comparison, and NOT expose the entire tracked site to the public, you can do this through a different mechanism. Just login to your account and find the comparison which you wish to share. Look for the "share" link, which will create private URLs for you to share with others.

• The value of this feature is to provide transparency to readers. To this end, it's useful to include the public versioning primarily on those pages whose edits will be most useful for end-users.

• As the site owner, you may apply any number of filters to suppress new alerts/revisions for changes that you deem irrelevant.