Go and get the new version of WordBay, v0.998 (oh, so close!) The following issues have been resolved and functionality added:
- geotargetting timeout errors resolved (we hope). Thanks to Jez for this solution. The problem before was that users were reporting occasional timeouts when geotargetting was switched on and the HostIP server happened to be working sluggishly (not that common, but still…) But now, hopefully, if the HostIP server takes longer than 2 seconds to respond (should be long enough) then WordBay will just revert to the default country, rather than hang up or produce an error. Let us know if it is working, because HostIP has been working fine, so we haven’t been able to test it.
- nice “mouse-over” effects added. A user requested this and it was pretty easy to implement so thought I would add it. Now in the back-end, under Display options, you can choose to have the whole background of an item change colour when you move the mouse over it, and change back when you move off it. This will only work if you specify both a “Mouse not over” and a “Mouse over” colour. Additionally, you should make sure that the “Mouse not over” colour is the same as that specified in your CSS file for .firstlocaleitem background-color, otherwise when you move over it will change colour and then change back to a different colour than what it was, which you don’t want, I imagine.
- buy.php can be relocated and renamed. This was something I’ve been meaning to do for ages and since a user mentioned it again recently I thought it was high time. In Display options you can now specify the exact path to your buy.php file and change its location, as well as its name. So for example, you could move it to the root of your domain and call it shop.php. In that case, you will specify the full path as: http://mydomain.com/shop.php. Makes it look neater than: mydomain.com/wp-content/plugins/wordbay/buy.php and there may be a footprint issue too, where search engines start spotting the “buy.php” pattern, though that’s getting a bit paranoid in my opinion! Just remember to use the full path as I have demonstrated above. If you leave the field empty then it will continue to use the buy.php file located in your plugins/wordbay directory. One concern with this is if we ever change anything in the buy.php file (not planning to, but who knows…) then you will need to remember to copy the new one to where you have moved it.
Well, I am sure you will be only-too-prepared to let me know if anything is awry with this version 
Keep on earning with EPN, won’t you!
Posted on November 17th, 2008 by markowe
Filed under: Uncategorized
This is great! Can hardly wait to start playing with it. Thanks for the responsiveness and hard work.
By the way, sometime ago I asked you about how the script could be embedded directly in a template. I’m currently doing it with BayRSS where I automatically load up a few items at the end of a post based on category. Any new thoughts on that?
Another topic to think about - BayRSS (apparently not supported or in active development any more) has an option to show Amazon products. I understand that PHPBay has added that functionality as well. It’s a much simpler feed that eBay’s - are you looking into going that direction at all?
Finally (since I’m on a roll), I asked this question in another thread I can’t find now - are folks using WP pages for Wordbay or are most building their Wordbay stores via posts? I’m just curious about SEO implications for each path.
Thanks
value “” is out of range. (10008)
Anyone else getting the above error today? Tried toggling geo-targetting but it doesn’t seem to be that.
Opps…seems other are having the same problem [ http://www.itsgottabered.com/wordbay/customising-wordbay/#comment-341 ]
the source around the error reads:
/buy.php?buyurl=&buy=buy&cheap=cheap’][ /a][/b][br /][siteId] value “” is out of range. (10008)
That code you posted, did you change the brackets just so it would display OK on the page here? Just wondering, because if it was in square brackets, that would be really weird!
Hey, could you post a larger chunk of that source code so I can get a look at it?
To stop it displaying as HTML in the comments here, you can escape it all by running it through this tool: http://www.blogcrowds.com/resources/parse_html.php and pasting the result.
I am still inclined to blame eBay for this error, as there doesn’t seem to be any consistency this end in the appearance of this problem! Though I am willing to be proved wrong, of course. Only, as someone pointed out today, eBay Advanced Search doesn’t seem to be offering access to the feed right now, which is strange - I wonder if they are “tinkering”…
Anyway, this problem really has to get solved, so I hope I can come up with something.
Test.
(Just tried to post a comment twice containing parsed code using the link you posted but the page just refreshed without my comment appearing. Here a copy of the text I tried to post: http://snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/6572 )
Anyhow
will post back when I see the error again.
Another small issue. I used the WP upgrader to pgrade WordBay this time. Afterward I noticed that the CSS had reverted to the original and my mods had been lost. Is this just a one-time thing owing to the new mouseover effects, or will it be necessary to “fix” the CSS every time an upgrade occurs?
Right second time, unfortunately - this has been an annoying quirk for a while now. I will think about how to resolve that. Funnily enough, I just commented on this today here: http://www.itsgottabered.com/wordbay/customising-wordbay/