Announcing a new version of WordBay with a feature which quite a few people asked for - namely, the option to specify seller IDs and only list items from particular seller/s. I personally have not yet had any need of this, but I guess some of you are promoting particular sellers.
Just go in the backend and there is a new field below the category listings, where you can specify the seller ID/s - further explanation is in the backend itself.
Note of course that if you are using this new option, then you cannot limit the dispatch location to a single country, at least not if you are allowing geotargetting to override the dispatch location, otherwise you can figure out what will happen: a location will be specified OTHER than the one your “chosen” seller/s are located in and you will get no listings. However, your choice of eBay country site should NOT make a difference - all sellers are available through all the main eBay countries. It’s another matter whether they will dispatch to all of them though, so maybe this option is not so compatible with a geotargetted site…
Let me know how it works - I HAVE tested it, but I can always miss stuff!
OK, lots more things to work on - next up will probably be a backend set of CSS options, or some way of preserving the CSS file so it doesn’t get overwritten every time you install a new version of WordBay!
Posted on March 26th, 2009 by markowe
Filed under: Uncategorized
Just called back here to check if I can call wordbay from within a template with php ….and noticed that there was a new version out, wordpress just has v1.0 listed and the .zip file you link to in your post seems to be v1.0 as well…
This WordBay plugin works great, Thanks a lot!
Thank you for this plug-in, I am using it on a couple sites. I do have it set on the 5%, but if I start doing well, I’ll set it higher.
Thanks again!
Hi.
Been using Wordbay for awhile. Nice plugin. Couple questions
1) Any reason you have not included some of the options available on the EPN RSS feeds page? Like sort order, search header/text, etc.? Seems like it would be pretty easy to add those options/selections, and it wouldn’t really effect anything but the feed itself.
2) Do you have any experience/insight into the eBay related products/searches API? It would be really cool to see a list of potential searches come up as alternatives. (I envision a page of listings come up with “related searches” links at the bottom?).
Thanks
Hi 3dogs (mind if I just call you ‘Three
Glad you like WordBay. In answer to your questions:
1) Yes, it’s pretty simple to implement most of those parameters, but it does take a little bit of time for each one and the back-end gets progressively more unwieldy. It’s mostly a time issue though - I have tended to implement things that people have been most vocal in asking for because I only have limited time to invest in WordBay. So I could definitely include other options in the future - just keep shouting loud enough
2) Yes, I know a bit about the API and have considered completely reworking WordBay to work with the API rather than the feed - that would offer LOTS more flexibility - for one thing, sites done with such a plugin would stop all looking the same, because you can display data just about how you want. Also, as you say, you can add any number of features like related keywords, switching categories - really more or less anything eBay can do. However, that has a few problems:
a. Time, again - it would be a fair bit of work to rework the plugin, which I rarely have. I would have to consider charging or some other model to make it worthwhile. However, then you have to provide some sort of technical support which I can’t really do - I am not even a professional programmer.
b. WordBay is fairly stable now - shame to start messing with it! This would have to be a new “branch” of the project maybe.
c. Anyone wanting to use it would have to get a developer code from eBay - I couldn’t allow mine to be used. I think pretty much anyone can get a code automatically, so it’s no problem, but one more hurdle.
Well, I will think about it. Amazon and CJ also have APIs and it would be tempting to combine all this somehow… One day soon, maybe in August when I get some major projects behind me in my real job, I will sit down and see what could be done.
Thanks for the suggestions.
Thanks for the responses. Sorry it took awhile to respond again. Not sure if I mentioned this, but every time I install Wordbay I get this really weird error when trying to post - something about countries.txt not being found (it’s there in the folder). It’s on line 16. I got around it by changing that line to
$cFile = @file($path); // read in file
At least it doesn’t error out now.
I’ve been playing around a bit with a free eBay tool I downloaded. So far I’ve gotten it to do a couple of the things I asked you about (related searches, alternate searches). The site is helpusfind.com. I’d be willing to share some of what I have with you if you”re interested. (I’m pretty much a procedural coder - not so much object oriented - so it’s really pretty simple code). Right now I’m using it to show Amazon and eBay. Looking at some of the other feed options.
That error is weird, haven’t had it before - maybe it’s something to do with your specific hosting configuration, though that’s a wild stab in the dark. Will try to look into it when I get time.
The tool you’re using looks interesting - I guess it doesn’t use the feed, but rather the API, so you have to have a developer code? I suppose apart from useful options, the important thing is for your site to not look generic and automated, which is hard with any tool like this. Once I get a bit of time to work on WordBay I will see if I get a chance to have a look at this too…