Feature/automate sponsors page

[ChanceM]

Resolves #54 - Adds a param to config.toml for number of days to look back.

[CGBassPlayer]

This looks great! Worked well in local testing as well

[elreydetoda]

So...first off I want to say if we do decide to proceed with this, the logic for how @ChanceM implemented it is solid! I honestly think that the way he did it was the best way anyone could have 🥳, so very very nicely done @ChanceM! 🥳 🎉

Besides some minor aesthetic (only a few of them am I requesting changes for) stuff and some questions for clarification, there are some quirky effects from automating the sponsors updates directly from the JB episodes. This is by no way anything that @ChanceM could affect with this PR, but is a larger conversation that probably needs to be had about how JB publishes ads on each episode and the scraper.

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Downside to automation

So, one of the biggest downsides of using the automation is not being able to make small tweaks in verbiage like how @gerbrent just did with #447.

I personally don't think that's an issue as long as

1. the JB ads (that are published) are worded in ways that work with the website in mind
2. the scraper always updates the ad with the latest version.

Situation 1 issues

current issues (left side is this PR & right side (if applicable) is main website :

• For right now the podcast episodes for LUP (example) don't point to the right place (according to 447)
  • currently this PR would be a partial regression of update sponsorship info #447 since it's pointing to just tailscale.com.
• Another small thing would be you can't add comments with MD
  • I don't think this is bad, just something of note
• might have to "blacklist certain sponsors since Office Hours uses jupiter.party as a sponsor which is not currently listed:
  
  • also, slight side-note the title case is weird if www in-front (which a future sponsor might have)
• Different name in episodes than typically/currently used (Linode vs Linode Cloud Hosting (e.g. episode)):
  
• Duplication of sponsor name in description, which is an example of how JB's currently only thinking of what looks good on the episode pages for ads (could probably be tweaked for website):
  
  • fixed with: cefc682

Situation 2 issues

Currently it's a known issue (but I don't think it's documented anywhere) that a sponsor's description could change between scraper runs. This is because the scraper will select the first episode it can parse which isn't already added to the SPONSOR global variable for the corresponding show (logic is here).

If we were able to pull the most recent episode it would negate the largest overall issue, because then JB could update their ad and it would reflect on the website (technically only for the most 5 recent episodes though with our current setup).

I've added this issue/situation to my tasks listed in JupiterBroadcasting/show-scraper#20 as an OOP enhancement, because we'd be able to prevent this if we could say "only use the most recent sponsor's description" instead of leaving it to chance. This doesn't technically currently affect us at all because the sponsor content isn't overwritten if it already exists (since we're doing the LASTEST_ONLY environment variable for the GH action in this repo).

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small aesthetic stuff

inconsistent {{- or -}}, intentional?

delete all the content from _index.md

Lose a bit of spacing that I personally liked to structure the hierarchy of the page (not a designer though 🙃)

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Other info:

• Currently there is an out of date sponsor (on the main JB.com), and in this case the link still works (other future sponsors it might not), but this PR would remove that link.
  

[gerbrent]

Great stuff! I was remarking to Chris just how great this is as we were driving down the road on the last leg of our JPL Road trip this week... thanks @ChanceM !

[gerbrent]

Text wrap seems static, fixed at a specific number of characters.:

PR

Current JB.com

[gerbrent]

There is a "Jupiter Broadcasting" section that is omitted from the PR version that would be great to integrate.

Jupiter Broadcasting
Linode - receive a $100 60-day credit towards your new account.
[Linode.com/jupiter](https://linode.com/jupiter)

This section is quite helpful for network-wide sponsorship links, and doesn't really appear in episodes regularly.

Having a way of adding non-automated links occasionally would be helpful aswell, for instance as described in #458

[ChanceM]

Text wrap seems static, fixed at a specific number of characters.:

PR

Current JB.com

This can be removed but I felt the line lengths where a little too long. Its generally recommended to keep line lengths to 45-80 characters.

[elreydetoda]

Awesome! Everything looks really good still 🙃 . One small thing to help us find and update this section once the JB ads are a bit more mindful of the website's automated collection.

Besides that and the addition to handle JB network wide sponsors through the _index.md, I think it'll be ready (from a code perspective, but @gerbrent might still have feedback for the aesthetics) for a merge 🥳

BTW, I didn't pull it down (this time) I just looked at it in GH from a purely code perspective.

[gerbrent]

nice changes @ChanceM ! Will get to testing this later this week... seems just about ready from what I can tell.

[elreydetoda]

I think overall this looks good to me 😁 🥳

Made a small comment, which also outlines the process (which you'd already done once) for adding network wide sponsorships.

There are still 3 things outstanding

• @gerbrent's comment about the line breaks (don't know where we've fallen on if it'll be removed or not).
• the manually adding sponsors mentioned here
  • I imagine they could follow a similar process I outlined for network wide memberships. instead of using the _index.md for the sponsors page, they could use the _index.md for the corresponding show page.
  • Since you're already using those here you could probably just append those to the array if they exist with a hugo with
• resolve merge conflict
  

[ChanceM]

@gerbrent Do you want me to remove the line length wrap? (limited to 75 ch in the current pr) reading line length is recommended to be 45-80 ch?

FOR JB: Should there be a blocked sponsor list to remove Jupiter.Party as it is currently listed under Office Hours?

[gerbrent]

thanks @ChanceM ! Great questions!

Line length: I think we should revisit the line length more globally, so keeping line length limiting OFF for now is ok, knowing we can then (as a separate PR/Issue) apply that line limiting principle to all pages that require it in a cohesive way. (I'll let @elreydetoda elaborate w technical)

Blocked sponsor:
Lets not implement that in this PR, in favor of getting this live, but yes certainly could be a great feature to add in a separate PR. i.e. ok if Jupiter.Party is listed under Office Hours for now... iterative progress!

[gerbrent]

@ChanceM - you're super fast! ; )

[elreydetoda]

Only small suggestion since we'd added the site wide sponsors section.

[elreydetoda]

Awesome! I think I've already said it multiple times, but nicely done on implementing this feature @ChanceM it was a really solid implementation to start with and still looks awesome!

(small comment on how we can add "permanent" sponsors per show)

Issues created from this PR:

• Sponsors Page Enhancements #474
• Line length shortening (sitewide) #473