This page explains a few advanced concepts present in Releasebot: how the catalog is organized, and how releases are dated and sorted.
How the vendor and product hierarchy works
Releasebot is organized as: Vendors > Products > Sources.
Every release notes source is mapped to a single product, and every release from that source belongs to that product.
When a vendor has only one product or a single release notes source, we create a "General" product that mirrors the vendor itself, so there is always a home for those releases.
For example, Notion has:
- Notion — the vendor page
- Notion > Notion — the "General" product
- Notion > Notion Developers — a separate product for developer-focused updates
When you follow a vendor with multiple products, you will be asked which ones to follow. We usually recommend starting with the "General" product.
How releases are dated
Every release has two dates, and the difference between them matters for sorting:
- Release date: when the vendor actually published the release, as stated in the source. Some sources do not include a clear date, so this can be missing.
- Date added: when Releasebot discovered the release and added it to the catalog. This is always present.
These can differ a lot. We might discover a release weeks after it was published, or a vendor might backfill old entries that we pick up all at once.
How releases are sorted
Different surfaces sort by whichever date makes the most sense for that surface.
Your feed (dashboard)
By default, your feed at releasebot.io/dashboard is sorted by date added, so newly discovered releases always surface at the top, even if their release date is old.
You can switch your feed to sort by release date using the "Sorting by" control above the feed. This orders releases by when the vendor published them, which is handy when you care about the actual timeline of a product rather than when we found each entry.
Catalog pages
The vendor, product, and category pages under releasebot.io/updates are sorted by release date, falling back to the date added when a release has no known release date. This presents each product's history the way the vendor published it.
Email and RSS
The email digest and RSS feed surface releases by date added, so newly discovered releases reach you promptly. To avoid resurfacing very old releases that we happen to discover late, both apply a rolling cutoff (roughly the last month) based on the release date.
Questions?
Drop us a line at [email protected].