10 Responses to “NEW VERSION: WordBay 0.96 - now display in columns!”

1. Wordbay Rocks, on June 17th, 2008 at 8:05 pm Said:

   Nice update!! Is there a method to alter the Wordpress search to do the searches through WordBay to get Ebay results? You have an option to add a WordBay search engine but it sits at the bottom of the posts. Most visitors would go to the normal search bar in the upper sidebar that is built into Wordpress. If anyone has a good way to mod the Wordpress search window, post the solution please.

2. M vroom, on June 17th, 2008 at 11:04 pm Said:

   Wonderful feature. I’m gonna have to play around with it a bit.
   Thanks again for the time you put into this.

3. markowe, on June 18th, 2008 at 1:14 am Said:

   Glad you like it guys!

   WordBay Rocks (nice name ) - YES, this eBay search can be done easily, if you already have a search page created. I keep meaning to publish the hack because I had already implemented it on some sites of mine, so now is as good a time as any. How to:

   Go into your WordPress template and find the code for the regular WordPress search box. It should be in a separate template called Search Form (searchform.php) and look something like this:

   <h2>Search</h2>
<form method="get" id="searchform" action="<?php bloginfo('home'); ?>/">
<div>
<input type="text" value="<?php echo wp_specialchars($s, 1); ?>" name="s" id="s" />
<input type="submit" id="searchsubmit" value="Search" />
</div>
</form>

   You need to make some very simple changes, basically to one variable and to the search landing page which you have already created. But you can just copy-paste the code below over the old code (save the old first, just in case!) and just make sure you insert the path to YOUR search page you hopefully created when you installed the plugin where I have written “/MY-SEARCH-PAGE/”. Not the whole path - the home page is automatically inserted, just add the “sub-page”, making sure it is enclosed on both sides with forward slashes as below.

   <h2>eBay Search</h2>
<form id="searchform" method="get" action="<?php echo get_settings('home'); echo "/MY-SEARCH-PAGE/"; ?>">
<input class="text" type="text" name="WBsearch" id="s" size="20" value="<?php echo wp_specialchars($s, 1); ?>" />
<input class="searchbutton" type="submit" value="Find it" alt="Submit" />
</form>

   Should work great! Let me know!

4. refurbished psp, on June 28th, 2008 at 3:06 pm Said:

   Mine would not work untill I chnaged the subdirectory name from wordbay to WordBay

   Thanks for the plubgin

5. Binh Nguyen, on July 28th, 2008 at 7:35 am Said:

   Hi there, I’m testing your plugin on http://apmart.com/. I like your idea and work.

   So far I already done 16 changes to your plugin in order to display as it’s now on apmart.com. But that’s nothing to be proud of compare to you being able to create the plugin at the first place.

   Actually I’ m not here to brag about being able to modify your code, but to ask you a few questions and hope you will help me.

   1. I notice that wordbay doesn’t sort the result by ending time. I guess it’s because the RSS return non sorted results. Do you know how to fix this problem?

   2. Your code is using spaces as indent, and that’s creating too much white space in the code file. I wish you could reformat the code to use tab indent instead. I did so and am enjoying a better code format, but it’s so much hassle to reformat again and again everytime you update your plugin.

   So far are 2 issues. There are more to talk about and to work on.

   Thanks for the plugin.

   Kind regards,
   Binh Nguyen

6. Binh Nguyen, on July 28th, 2008 at 7:56 am Said:

   Oh, never mind about the problem #1 because I found out that I modified your URL string wrongly. But still wonder what exact query is for sort order?

7. admin, on July 28th, 2008 at 8:08 am Said:

   Nice one Binh - I was nosing around the other day looking for sites that had implemented WordBay and I did actually happen across yours and see you’d done a nice job hacking it, I mean improving it! The Time Left thing is neat since I guess you had to subtract the EndTime from the current time to get it, something that I just couldn’t afford the time spent to do.

   1) Have you tinkered with the feed parameters at all? Sorting should currently be hard-coded by the parameters fsoo=1&fsop=1 for “Time Ending: soonest”. I couldn’t say what it’s sorting by on your site, but here are all the parameters:

   
fsop=1&fsoo=1 - Time Ending: Soonest
fsop=2&fsoo=2 - Newly Listed
fsop=34&fsoo=2 - Price + Shipping: highest first
fsop=3&fsoo=2 - Price: highest first
fsop=11&fsoo=1 - Distance: nearest first
fsop=32&fsoo=2 - Best Match
fsop=33&fsoo=2 - Category


   This is changed on line 93 of the current version of WordBay (0.96) where you will see it hard-coded. If it is already set to fsoo=1&fsop=1 then I’m darned if I know what’s wrong, except that the feed is not well-documented and is quirky, so there could be all sorts going on that I can’t control. But it’s working fine on all of my sites, I just went through and checked, so I can’t help thinking you might have changed something.

   Allowing control over sort parameters from the back-end is yet another To Do and I am waiting to see if Google is going to let up on eBay listings sites, cos at the moment it’s really making it hard for me to justify investing time in this.

   2) Sorry about the spaces - I use a little free program to format the code, didn’t really think about it. Would probably save some Kb too, so I will try to format the next version with tabs.

   As I say, I am just pausing a little with this for now, until I see what eBay is doing with eBay RSS sites, cos at the moment some of my sites are just flatlining. Actually, I am writing some code to make use of the eBay API for another unrelated project of mine, so potentially I could look at a API-based version of the plugin in the long-term, re-using some of the code. This would be MUCH more flexible. But that’s a way down the road…

   Thanks for your comments and participation!

8. Binh Nguyen, on July 28th, 2008 at 8:33 am Said:

   Thanks for that answer. May I continue another question? what is that xx number before the &fsoo=x for?

   Also, I’ve been working on the API too. Look like we have very common interest and knowledge here.

   The good thing about the RSS is that it’s free and unlimited at the moment. Yes, you are right, we need to wait to see what’s eBay reaction about it. I guess they won’t do anything against us because after all it’s for their own benefits.

   I don’t have too much time to hack around.

   Do you ever think about making the parameters as the wordpress post/page custom field instead? That will give up a whole new world of functionality.

9. admin, on July 28th, 2008 at 12:36 pm Said:

   Oops! Sorry, that was supposed to say fsop= before each of those parameters. i.e. you need fsop and fsoo. I copy/pasted them from somewhere without being too careful about it!

   Yes, the RSS is unlimited, whereas with the API you have to mess around getting certified if you want to really start racking up lots of calls. But then all this preg_replacing with the RSS is a bit silly… I don’t want to get too technical either, though, maybe just to allow a bit more flexibility in the look and feel because eBay RSS feeds are all-too-recognisable. Including by the GoogleBot, it seems

   Thanks for your suggestion about using custom fields, I ought to look into that because I want to implement per-post parameters - it’s high time! - and that would be a simple way to do it. I must admit, I haven’t looked into the technical side of it, but if I manage to bodge this plugin together with my PHP (lack of) knowledge, I suppose it won’t be too hard

10. Binh Nguyen, on July 30th, 2008 at 10:14 am Said:

    Thanks for your answers. You do have a big kind heart.

Leave a Reply