How can I automate checking death notices for a specific name?

A few things to consider: Does the website have an API? Is it static or dynamically generated? If the content is static, like HTML directly in the source, then Python with requests and BeautifulSoup is perfect. If it's dynamic, you might need something like Selenium to get the data since it allows you to run JavaScript in a browser. You can check how the site loads content by using your browser's dev tools. If you’re unsure, you can send me the URL, and I can help you figure it out!

Python is a great choice for this kind of task! You'll want to look into using the BeautifulSoup library for web scraping, which is exactly what you're aiming to do. I'd recommend starting with the free course 'Python Programming 2025' up to at least part 5, and then checking out 'Automate the Boring Stuff with Python'—it has a whole chapter on web scraping. Both resources are free to access online.

You don’t necessarily need to parse the data for names—they're unique enough that a simple search will do the trick! You can use requests to fetch the page and then search the body for the name you're interested in. If you find the website dynamically generates content, look for an API endpoint that might give you the data you need. Once you have your script ready, tools like cronjobs (or scheduled tasks on Windows) can help automate the process further.