![](https://i.imgur.com/SEm0LBl.jpg)

Hello to everyone in Steem-land! I hope you all had a wonderful new years holiday, but now it's back to work so I'm kicking off the new year with some updates to the [Steem Bot Tracker Website](http://www.steembottracker.com) which I hope will help bot users and owners alike!

## New indicator for bots which provide a bid API
Ever since I first launched the bot tracker over 3 months ago (wow has it really been that long?) I've had to deal with trying to accurately determine which bids are accepted in each round by each different bot. This is a much, much harder task than it sounds since every bot works a little differently and there are tons of different scenarios that come up.

About a month ago I decided to try to approach this problem from a different angle - rather than having the bot tracker try to figure out which bids the bots do or do not accept, the bots should supply this information to the bot tracker instead.

So to achieve that I created an API spec that any bot can use to provide a list of exactly which bids they have accepted and will bid on in both the current and previous bidding round. This API was included as a default feature of the post promoter bot software, so any bots using that should be able to provide this information easily, and some other bots have also implemented this API on their own as well.

The bot tracker website has always used this API if one is available, but there was no way for users of the site to tell which bots provide this API and which do not. I have now just added a new indicator icon next to the bots which provide a bids API so users of the site can easily see it.

![Screen Shot 2018-01-02 at 10.23.58 AM.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/hpiynhbhq/image/upload/v1514907220/m6crfmam7ue1wwvple6h.png)

This is important for users because it means the data shown on the bot tracker site should be 100% accurate for those bots, since they themselves are reporting which bids they have accepted.

My advice to any users who are new or inexperienced with using voting bots is to only use bots which have both this new icon and also the automatic refund icon, since they mean that the information shown on the site is accurate and you will receive a refund if you make any mistakes.

## Changed pre-vote / front-runner icon
This is a minor change, but worth mentioning. The previous icon for bots that have a pre-vote / front-runner group was just a check mark which was both not really a great icon and also too similar to the new API icon, so I changed it to something I think is more fitting:
![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/yabapmatt/bottracker/img/frontrunner.png)

## Added Max Post Age Column to Bid Bots Table
As those of you keeping up with the Steem voting bots news may know, @grumpycat recently made a post calling for bots to limit the max age of posts submitted to 3.5 days. I'm not trying to get in the middle of any flag wars, and I'm not taking any sides nor condoning or condemning any behavior, but at the very least I thought that the max post age that each bot allows should be shown on the site so users don't submit posts that are older than allowed.

As an aside, I do think that changing the max post age accepted by bots to 3.5 days or thereabout is a good idea since it supports the use of vote selling services as post promotion tools rather than instant profit generation tools. I am considering making that change on the @postpromoter bot in the near future - not in response to any threats, but only because I support the idea.

Anyway, I have manually entered the max post age information I could find for all of the larger bots, but if it says 'unknown' or is incorrect for your bot please update your settings using the bot owner config tool and the site will pick up the changes.

## Bot Owner Config Tool Updates

![Screen Shot 2018-01-02 at 10.56.09 AM.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/hpiynhbhq/image/upload/v1514908580/fqaxt8kfqxzoywan7bqx.png)

For all of you bot owners out there (there are quite a few of you these days!) I encourage you to keep your bot settings updated in the json_metadata of your bot account. You are free to do that yourself or use the [Bot Owner Config Tool](https://s3.amazonaws.com/yabapmatt/bottracker/config.html) provided on the bot tracker website.

Three new settings have been added since the last update:

1. As I mentioned above, you can now specify the max age of posts that are accepted by the bot. Again I strongly encourage all bot owners to update this setting as soon as they get a chance. At the very least it should reduce complaints for invalid bids.

2. Separate minimum bid amount settings for STEEM and SBDs - now that STEEM and SBD prices are all over the map, bot owners can specify different minimum bid amounts for each currency and those settings will be displayed on the bot tracker site.

3. There is now a "disabled" checkbox which you can use to de-list your bot from the site for any reason. Once your bot is back up and running you can uncheck the box and it will appear on the site again. This one will really just reduce my workload of manually updating things when bots go down.

Thanks for your support!
As always I want to thank everyone who has helped and supported me in creating this tool. I love that it has been able to help so many people learn about and use vote selling services to promote their content and grow their following and earnings on the Steem platform. Please stay tuned for more updates in the coming weeks!

Links to relevant commits:
- [Added new settings and icons](https://github.com/MattyIce/bottracker/commit/50964ae2820b69e0f9e2592445abe6475a4023a7)
- [Added separate settings for min bids in STEEM and SBDs](https://github.com/MattyIce/bottracker/commit/6ca82c26c427837bb8f1f089b301ae2b6c62674e)
- [Added minified JS](https://github.com/MattyIce/bottracker/commit/2c302c21e55b305bc9ce0aa916ee2c77cc96a783)

<br /><hr/><em>Posted on <a href="https://utopian.io/utopian-io/@yabapmatt/steem-bot-tracker-some-new-updates">Utopian.io -  Rewarding Open Source Contributors</a></em><hr/>