This replaces the long broken download facility, so you can now download contacts for a specific year or your entire list.
NOTE: use your main Wota site callsign and password to log in to the data application
The facility is definitely beta mode, so please ensure you have backups of your uploads. Also if there are any issues please post them here so we are all aware of them. I plan to add the ability to check your score for the 2026 2m/70cm challenge when I get round to it!
That’s amazing Mark. The website hasn’t really changed much since it was first done. This is a great thing. Any chance of adding in a map to show activated and ones on the ‘to do list’?
Just to reiterate you use your main WOTA site (the old one) callsign and password to log into WOTA Data (not your discourse credentials which are different). The callsign is case insensitive.
I get this page using the direct link or from the WOTA site . I’ve tried Firefox and Brave browsers . I am using a Linux Ubuntu operating system . Would that make a difference ? Tried on windows 11 also .
Just checked now and it is working again, without me doing anything, so there is definitely something in the mix that is causing intermittent issues. I’ve experienced enough flakiness to mean that unfortunately I’ll need to find a better hosting solution. The main issue is that I have to run a specific type of VPN tunnel to allow an arbitrary server to attach to the database and that seems to be very temperamental, meaning that a lot of times you’ll get a database connection timeout the first couple of tries when connecting to one of the applications.
So please bear with whilst I come up with a better hosting solution. It would have been very convenient to run everything from my home server, but I experienced the 404s before and there was no apparent reason why that was happening, unless there is a DNS issue in the pipeline somewhere.
There was a DNS issue, there is probably a meme in there that DNS is the root of all evil.
Anyway, depending on the network path DNS was either resolving using IPV4 or IPV6, and IPV6 wasn’t working. So I’ve removed that configuration, and it looks like that change has propagated (DNS is a distributed system which takes a bit of time to propagate).
WOTA Data is running on one of my home servers and predictably whilst away it suffered a hard drive failure whilst I was on holiday.
I’ve been gradually adding features and think that being able to download a markdown table of contacts from an activation directly which can be pasted into an activation report would be useful. I use my ADIF processor for that but it is simple enough to implement directly.
You may notice that there are discrepancies between the league tables on WOTA data and the main site. i’m working on that. The main site relies on a table that is updated when you click the ‘update’ button on your home page table, the WOTA Data site will rely on the activator and chaser tables directly so will always be up to date.
It’s all looking great Mark .I noticed the facility was down the other day , but when I came to use it on Tuesday evening it was fine .
These upload features may increase the amount of participation in WOTA ? It seems like a lot of people from outside the area particularly, activate the SOTA and don’t register the WOTA ref as well .Also , I find I tend to only work 40 or 20m when it’s also a SOTA summit . I’ve noticed in my relatively short time in the hobby that amateurs like to chase /P activations particularly if there’s a WAB square or trig point to be had as well as the summit ref , and I suppose using SSB more should increase awareness of the Wainwrights ? BOTA is now very well supported in the UK and over seas.
Note that @G8CPZ has found a discrepancy with the way in which WOTA Data processes passwords compared to the main WOTA site.
The upshot is that if you use symbols in your password then it may not work with WOTA Data. If you find your password works with the main site but doesn’t work with WOTA Data please consider changing it to one containing letters and numbers only.
Current industry password advice does allow for the use of phrases rather than randomly generated passwords, or set your random generator to a longer string without symbols. You can use an online password generator such as this one and uncheck the symbols option - the tool will indicate if it is a strong password. Alternatively a phrase with three or four unrelated words also suffices. Write your password down physically and store it somewhere safe or use a password management tool.
I’m sure I’ll get to the bottom of it, but because the main WOTA site is doing something weird with the password before it is encoded and it is running on such a legacy platform I’m not able to sensibly update that to do the right thing. Eventually the plan is to sync the password storage across all applications including this discourse server.
