A quick post just to let you know what’s going on with WordBay as there has been a looong radio silence from me. Part of the reason was that my company (the one I actually make my living with!) landed some big contracts in spring of this year and it has taken most of the summer to finish the work, so I have been ludicrously busy, hence have had no time to do any of my programming work “on the side”.

The other reason was that around that same time I got The Letter from EPN. GASP! SHOCK! Yes, my EPN account was terminated, with reasons cited which I will not go into except to say that I certainly had not been engaging in said activity, in fact I doubt I currently have the technical knowledge to do so. However, what is more likely is that someone either maliciously engaged in some sort of black-hat activity using my campaign ID (my CIDs are not hard to find out, let’s face it) OR someone using the generosity option in WordBay did something dodgy, thus implicating me too.

Whatever happened exactly, my account has been reinstated after a whole summer of sporadic communication with EPN. Again, without going into the details, I guess they realise I wasn’t up to anything fishy, but I was strongly advised to discontinue the “revenue sharing” (generosity) scheme asap to avoid any future trouble - something I had been planning to do anyway, as mentioned my last post at the beginning of this hiatus.

So I have now killed my campaigns relating to WordBay revenue sharing, and am very grateful to all of you who supported my development of WB in this way, but I will in the near future be putting out a new version of WordBay that ends this scheme. I have to think about some way to support WB, so I may include some other option - I need to think about that - otherwise I fear I will not have the necessary motivation to keep developing WordBay. But more on that when I have come up with some solution.

Also, there is a BETA version still in the pipeline (with loads of help from Chuck McB, an invaluable member of the community) with lots of new features - an earlier post offered a test version for you to download. This version has totally been on hold due to the above-mentioned circumstances, but I now hope will be finalised sometime in September. Stick around!

Posted on August 20th, 2010 by markowe
Filed under: Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

I HAVE NOW PUT OUT A VERSION 1.26 OF WORDBAY WHICH ADDRESSES THE ISSUE DESCRIBED BELOW, YOU DO NOT NEED TO APPLY THIS FIX NOW, JUST DOWNLOAD THE NEW VERSION 1.26 OF WORDBAY FROM THE LINK IN THE SIDEBAR.

Thanks to a user for drawing my attention to this. A small change is needed to the WordBay plugin, relating to the enforcement of one of the EPN terms of service which, I must be honest, I never noticed before. See the article on the EPN blog here.

I will put out a new version ASAP, but will outline the change for you to make manually in the meantime.

YOU MUST MAKE THIS CHANGE. EPN THREATEN TO TERMINATE ALL ACCOUNTS NOT COMPLYING WITH THIS BY JUNE 8TH!

Edit your buy.php file and change the line that says:

header("Location:$newBuyUrl");   /* Redirect browser to the new address */

to read:

header("Location:$newBuyUrl",TRUE,301); /* Redirect browser to the new address */

and save and reupload.

Basically if you want the explanation, by default this PHP command performs a 302 (temporary) redirect and EPN say that their terms have always stated that it must be a 301 (permanent redirect). I really don’t remember reading that, and no-one ever brought it to my attention, but there it is, we’d better assume EPN are not bluffing about terminating accounts as we know all too well that they are ready and willing to do so. By the way, there is no historical reason why WordBay was doing a 302, not a 301, I simply did not register that the default was 302, else I would have coded this in right from the start as a permanent redirect makes more sense anyway.

I fear many will run afoul of this, I know that there are people out there running ancient versions of WordBay and do not follow this blog or update their sites, and this equally applies to people running other eBay scripts which are using 302 redirect - I know that this issue affected BANS and phpBay too. Even though the software writers will update their code (some already have), a great many people will not upgrade and could end up banned, and there’s not much anyone can do. Pass the word on, though, if you know of anyone like that…

Posted on May 12th, 2010 by markowe
Filed under: Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

Apologies if you downloaded the initial version of the BETA and got an instant failure! There was a small issue which I have now corrected. Download 1.3.1BETA from this link!

Announcing a new, improved (but still BETA) version of WordBay!! Download here (NOT available through the plugins repository). Please remember this is BETA - use at your own risk, reap the potential rewards and let me know of any problems you notice.

Firstly I have to say a BIG THANKS to “ChuckMcB”, a WordBay user and regular commenter on the blog who took the bull by the horns (the bull I was studiously avoiding) and did a HUGE amount of work himself on the Wordbay plugin. Together with Jez Collins, the guy who wrote the geotargetting routine (and an image link cloaking routine which I never put in the production version, but will do at some point), Chuck has definitely confirmed Wordbay as a community open-source project rather than the work of one guy (me) and I am VERY glad of the help. Many of the changes he has made are things that have been nagging me for a long time, some of them were his own initiative and many of them were cleanups of my shoddy code. In fact, a GREAT part was about fixing little bugs and inconsistencies in my code, so even if it looks like nothing spectacular has been done for this version, I assure you the plugin works a lot more predictably and error-free!

New features:

Here is a run-down of new features for you to try out:

- new improved backend, updated to match WP2.5 look and with all the messy instructions hidden - now click the question mark next to each heading to toggle the help text.

- new warning if you have not entered a campaign ID

- new Default search text option - the “No listings to display” text now provides the option of clicking through to eBay, with a search for your chosen default search term. Before, your user might have just stopped there and given up. Note, this currently uses JavaScript and thus may not work for a small number of people.

- new Hide duplicate items option. This is a problem in some niches, with sellers listing the same item multiple times. This routine filters out items that have a repeated title.

- new Link target option - a much-requested option: now choose whether links open in the same browser tab/window or open a new one. You can try the other options too if you know what they are for.

- impression pixel now included in pages. Oh yes, finally! This is also geotargetted. Finally find out what your CTR is! Though what with bot-filtering and the vagaries of QCP you wonder how informative this will be! This is automatic, no option to set in the backend, you should just start seeing impressions turning up in the backend.

- Advanced settings. Wordpress recently deprecated Magpie as its internal library for fetching remote feeds and moved over to SimplePie, a more richly-featured and better-maintained library. WordBay has been rewritten to utilise the SimplePie library. What does this mean for you? Well, not much, eBay listings will look exactly the same, but this has allowed me to add a couple of feed-related options related to caching. These are explained in the backend, but if you don’t know much about caching then just leave the settings as they are. The only thing you need to note is that now the eBay listings are NO LONGER cached in the database as they were by Magpie, which was causing a variety of problems - now, cache files are stored in a ‘cache’ directory in the WordBay plugin folder, which is created automatically. Again, you need not worry about this, unless it looks like there are way too many files in there, then you can just delete the whole directory and let me know so I can fix it if it’s a bug! It is possible you will need to change the permissions on your plugin folder or the cache folder with a chmod 777 - otherwise the cache files may not get written at all. If you see no speed improvement or files in the cache folder then this could be the problem. Google around to read up on chmod.

Also: this is more behind-the-scenes stuff:

- WordBay.css file is now only loaded if the page requires it, i.e. there is a [wordbay] tag, saving some overhead

- the check for an existing CSS file is now done behind the scenes upon plugin activation/installation, so you don’t have to refresh the admin page any more in order to restore your saved CSS file.

- the India program has been relegated to a “bracketed” country, meaning you may be able to fetch listings and geotarget it, but you will not make any earnings, as the EPN India program is closed as of 31st March 2010

Known issues:

Currently there is just one issue we know of that’s worth mentioning: eBay doesn’t seem to support the Minimum bids option any more. Try it and let us know if this is the case. Also, any other options not supported in the feed I should know about!

Didn’t make it:

Sorry, some much-requested features just didn’t get in:

- per-post settings

- option whether to ‘cloak’ rover links or not

- choosing ’sort by’ options other than default “Ending soonest”

If you’re feeling nosy, you can have a look in the code for a more complete list of changes and wish-list items.

Please post bug reports here, or via my contact form. I plan to continue working on this version until we can release a new-and-improved 1.5 version, perhaps with some of the features added that didn’t make it this time.

Also, it is becoming clear to me that I can no longer consider WordBay all my own work and I plan to start phasing out the generosity option. This option is also a little iffy after changes to the EPN TOS last year, so I do not want to run afoul of EPN. However, I do need to find SOME sort of unobtrusive, opt-in way of allowing people to support WordBay or I fear that the project will die. As I keep saying, it’s the small number of people sharing revenue with me which keeps me motivated to invest time in the project, but like I say, it wouldn’t be fair to claim WB as all my own work any more.

I think that’s quite enough writing - I look forward to your feedback on WordBay 1.3 BETA!

Posted on March 31st, 2010 by markowe
Filed under: Uncategorized | 14 Comments »

Please download the new version of WordBay via your admin dashboard or the link on the site sidebar. This update is critical if you have geotargetting switched OFF! There were two major areas of fixes:

RSS-related “fixes”

After continued discussions about the possibility of WordBay somehow not generating RSS feeds properly and possibly accounting for a reduction in clicks on the part of some users, I sat down on Sunday and took another in-depth look at the RSS feed parameters and the results produced by them. I do want to point out once again that the RSS feed is NOT properly (or at all!) documented by eBay, thus all scripts using the eBay RSS feed have effectively reverse-engineered the feed to one extent or another to determine the function of the different parameters. After painstaking work I now have a detailed list of many of the parameters and what they do. I had never actually written them out like that before and you will not find this list anywhere on the net to my knowledge - my “competitors” are probably keeping it to themselves, but I plan to publish these in a subsequent post. But what I wanted to know, and some users too, was is there anything about the RSS url generated by WordBay which could cause “rover” (affiliate) links to not be generated or tracked properly?

The upshot of my investigation was as follows. Comparing the feed url (the “rss.api” one) produced by the EPN feed generator, with the feed url produced by WordBay, and remembering that each parameter affects the results of the RSS search in some way there are the following difference:

Category 1 (differences in parameters with known function)

- some 6 parameters supported by the EPN generator that are not supported by WordBay, e.g. “Search description as well as title”, “Auction only/Bin only” etc. (I just never got round to including these) and thus are omitted

- some 6 parameters supported by WordBay but not by the feed gen, e.g. “Min/max price”, “Min no. of bids”. These I originally reverse-engineered from the eBay Advanced Search page and appear to work as advertised. They are probably omitted from the feed gen for simplicity’s sake.

I believe neither of the above category of parameter can have any effect whatsoever on click tracking.

Also, however, there were:

Category 2 (differences in parameters of unknown function)

- 2 or 3 parameters (catref, from and saaff) that are present in both, but whose function is unknown (like I say, no docs). saaff appears to specify the affiliate network, i.e. it is always set to afepn in the feed, and I though, hey-ho, what if this is not set in WB, THAT could affect tracking! However, a brief check confirmed this has long been present in WB - false alarm.

- 2 parameters present in the feed gen URL that were NOT present in WordBay’s URL and whose significance is undocumented, together with the meaning of the the values assigned to them. These I added, with the values supplied by the feed gen (which do not appear to vary).

- 5 parameters present in the WB URL (reverse-engineered from Advanced Search) but not present in the feed gen URL which are undocumented and which I thus deemed unnecessary and dropped.

In this second category of parameters of unknown function I can be less sure that one of them does not have anything to do with tracking. However, I think it unlikely that the changes I made will change anything: a) we still have no firm evidence that invalid (untrackable) links are being produced through the feed in WordBay and b) it is likely that provided the campaign ID, i.e. the afepn parameter (and probably saaff) are specified, rover links are being produced correctly.

In addition, I took this new version of the plugin and refreshed a listings test page a total of 30 times - 10 times each for US, UK and DE eBay sites, and did not get anything but valid “rover” links every time. I also tried this (though somewhat fewer times) with v1.22 and got the same result.

I also created a test campaign and tried to get some clicks tracked (yes, clicking my own links - so ban me) but these were not tracked at all, probably because I was logged in to eBay or something, so this proves nothing really.

But if there is any chance that this will make any difference I am glad I took the time to investigate this and clean up the code in WB. Keep me posted. At the moment I still tend to be of the opinion that EPN’s tracking is up the spout. I have tried to be as transparent as possible regarding the WB code, whereas we have no insight whatsoever into the workings of EPN and QCP…

Geo-targetting-related fix

Oh man! Hangs head in shame! It turns out that geotargetting has been fixed permanently ON for all users ever since it was introduced way back when, and all for the want of a single “=” in the code. That’s quite a biggie, and does explain some vague complaints from way back when that it was behaving oddly. So SORRY!! In my defence, it is very hard to test and debug geotargetting as obviously I cannot hop over to another country to do so, and also I live in a non-eBay country, but I am surprised this was not picked up sooner.

In my opinion this is not a major disaster - the IP database IS fairly accurate on the whole, perhaps you might have lost a very small percentage of visitors who were wrongly targetted, and on the other side perhaps you had some Norwegian visitors who might have bought from US eBay (say!) but I don’t think there are too many of those.

Anyway, it’s fixed now.

I have also added (from 1.22 actually, but cleaned it up a bit) a strong suggestion in the admin backend for people to subscribe to the feed for this blog as these kinds of critical updates are happening frequently, yet there are people out there still using some absolutely ancient versions of WordBay, which can’t be good!

Let’s stay in touch, I have a feeling the RSS click-tracking saga is not over yet…

Posted on March 2nd, 2010 by markowe
Filed under: Uncategorized | 25 Comments »

A thousand apologies to anyone who happened to download my initial 1.21 version and got their CSS file chewed - I somehow managed to delete a vital line of code, arrrghhh! Should be fixed now. Sorry, sorry, sorry! If it’s any consolation I did the same to two of my sites before realising…

After a flurry of error reports and lots of really helpful comments from users, I have revised the WordBay code and eliminated some small (for some people not so small) bugs and added a couple of little features I hope you will appreciate. Man, I haven’t spent this much time on WordBay development for a long time..! Many of the bugs are a result of some scrappy coding on my part from way back in the early versions of WB, so I am surprised they haven’t surfaced sooner!

Download the new version from the link on the left, or update from your WP panel.

Changes are as follows:

Bugs eliminated (we hope):

- the problem some users were having with path to the countries.txt file not working. Now believed fixed, see end of this post for explanation.

- some changes to ensure the WordBay plugin path is got properly in other places too, like when saving the CSS file. Might be the cause of some errors people have been having with 404 errors when saving the CSS, but need to continue to monitor that, please let me know.

- removed a spurious part of the url obfuscation routine that I realised COULD cause a potential bug (in a very small minority of cases). Now WB no longer tacks “buy” and “cheap” on the end of the URL. I never liked that anyway. At some point I would like to add a better encryption routine, but no time now…

- fixed the SILLY bug where every time you update your setting some more forward slashes get added to the single quotes in the css file, and those only in my comments! I finally discovered stripslashes(), sigh…

Features added:

- FINALLY added the product title to the URL, so now the URL looks like:

http://www.mysite.com/wp-content/plugins/wordbay/buy.php?buyurl=Alpine-IDA-X303-iPod-Sat-HD-Ready-AM-FM-CD-Car-Deck___aHR0cDovL3JvdmVyLm…

People asked me to do this aaages ago as it could have a positive effect on SEO (though I doubt it - a Google-slap is a Google-slap) and it also has the added benefit of pushing the ugly bit of the URL a way off the end of the browser address box. Maybe I should add another long line of “______” and push it right off!

- also added the product title to the “title” tooltip for links, so now when you hover over any of the product links, you get the little tooltip. Helpful and could have SEO benefits too (again, call me sceptical…) I could have added “Buy ” before this, or “…for sale” on the end or something, but that would be a matter of taste…

Hope this does indeed fix your bugs and I hope you like the new features too. Plenty more feature requests and ideas out there, but they will have to be done as and when my regular job, hobbies, not to mention 4-month old son allow me!

Oh, and if you want an explanation of the countries.txt path bug, well I was specifying a full http:// path to the file. However, when using the PHP file() function, not all servers allow you to specify a full URL for security reasons, because it could be used to access an external file. Specifically, fopen wrappers is disabled on some hosts in the php.ini file, so I had to use a native PHP method of finding the “internal” path. This also applies to put_file_contents, which is also subject to this limitation. This function is used by the CSS retention routine, so COULD be the reason for some bugs that have been happening there.

This SHOULD have eliminated some of those major bugs! But I am sure you will let me know if it hasn’t, though

Posted on February 24th, 2010 by markowe
Filed under: Uncategorized | 6 Comments »