There has been quite a hubbub around the net concerning some kind of change to the eBay RSS feed that WordBay is based on. In particular you can read the thread on the EPN forum here. It seems that many product links were ending up at some kind of “not found” page and obviously this was drastically affecting people’s sales and earnings.
While I haven’t quite figured out what the actual problem was it seems to have something to do with the way certain plugins “cloak” links by encoding them, and the problem seems to have most notably afflicted BANS-based sites. As far as I could determine, all my WordBay-based sites are working fine, BUT I DO notice a big slump in clicks and earnings from around the time these changes apparently took place.
I would like to hear if any WordBay users have had this problem - while I am not actively developing WordBay at the moment due to the “QCP crisis” I don’t want to leave WB users in the lurch if there is some kind of problem.
As for further development of WordBay, well, as I say it is on hold at the moment (so apologies to any support queries I have not answered, though I try to get back to you all). I am currently working on some completely different stuff which is for my own consumption! However, I am improving my coding skills along the way, and I can still see WordBay getting a major re-write at some point. Just don’t hold your breath 
Posted on February 2nd, 2010 by markowe
Filed under: Uncategorized
My UK based sites are working fine.
(Having problems turning off geo-targeting to test if it’s working for US visitors, may have to go in via tor to test)
Glad to hear things are working. Hm, that geotargetting… I sometimes wonder if it was worth the bother, I earn VERY little from clicks coming through geotargetting.
In my dashboard was a update for the wordbay plugin. I updated my wordbay and this message comes upon my site. I added the domainname.com for site and blank, in the settings the countries don’t show in the dropdown menu.
Warning: file(http://www.domainname.com/wp-content/plugins/wordbay/countries.txt) [function.file]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden in /home/blank/public_html/blank/wp-content/plugins/wordbay/WordBay.php on line 21
I removed the wordbay.1.16 and reuploaded the 1.15.
Eloise, sorry to hear that, that’s a bit odd, the 403 error means your server is not giving you permission to read the countries.txt file. Where did you say you added your domain name?
Actually, if you don’t mind, could you download 1.16 again and try to install it? I have made a very minor change which COULD have been the cause of the problem, I would be interested to see if that has sorted it out.
It is still there it just move to line 18.
Warning: file(http://www.bestvarietyshop.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/wordbay/countries.txt) [function.file]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden in /home/content/blank/blank/html/blog/wp-content/plugins/wordbay/WordBay.php on line 18
When I try to delete the plugin in my admin I get this message below and have to go to my cPanel file manager to delete it.
Plugin could not be deleted due to an error: Could not fully remove the plugin(s) wordbay/WordBay.php
Also the dropdown menu is not working under “Referral locale” ” Item location” “eBay site ID”
The warning show up below this.
eBay product categories NEW - action required! Specify a product category code for each country you plan to target. More info below.
My Site is displaying ebay listings fine.
but when I click for more info on a listing I am directed to a login page, not the listing.
great plugin buy the way.
cheers
peter
Mark, are you aware that the RSS feeds have been updated in the past few days? From what I understand its for all countries, where previously the update was just the US. http://www.ebaypartnernetworkblog.com/en/news/rss-feed-is-being-updated/
Ever since then I had a drop in clicks and revenue as I do draw some traffic from UK and other non-US countries. At this point Im not sure if WordBay is effected or not, could you please look into it? This is what I wrote on the EPN forum:
Is anyone here using WordBay and had problems since the RSS feed update? Im only using it partially on my site so Im not sure if there is an issue thats causing the drop in clicks and earnings for me. How can I find out if the feed parameters are transferred correctly for the click reporting? The auctions via wordbay are all showing fine on my website and when I click on them I do get to the correct destination. But from what I read on another thread here about BANS or phpbay that doesnt have to mean a thing?
And later on Feb 17:
Im still not sure because looking at my transaction report for the past few days I do see some things reported from wordbay clicks but strangely, most of them date back to February 12 as the latest. I only have one from February 15 but no revenue is reported from that click. Hmm, Im leaning towards that there are some problems, there should be more reported for after the 12th.
Did any one else update to the new version. Because in the updated version I don’t have a choice of countries, the dropdown menu is not working, there is no country to choose.
Eloise Curry, (sorry in advance for snooping about but..), are you sure you updated to the new version?
The ‘WordBay readme.txt’ in your wordbay folder seems to indicate it’s v1.15. (as there is no mention of v1.16 in the file’s change log section). I would suggest re-downloading the .zip file again.
After I couldn’t choose a country, I went to wordpress plugins and found the previous version 1.15 and reuploaded. when I tried the automatic upgrade it told me the upgrade failed because of an error. That when I downloaded and unzip the file and ftp it into my pluging folder, after I
activated it and went to the settings page, there wasn’t any thing in the Referral locale: or Item location: or eBay Site ID. that is why I went back to the 1.15 version.
Eloise, I am pretty baffled as to the source of your problem. I would say it’s a problem with your server configuration, except it’s weird that version 1.15 of WordBay works while the newer one doesn’t. Just to explain, the reason you don’t get the country dropdowns is simply because the plugin is not opening the countries.txt file. This happened AFTER a change I made whereby the plugin should get the location (path) by the “official” route, not the way it did before. So let’s try eliminating some basic possibilities:
First and most importantly, do you have WordPress 2.7 or above? If not, upgrade asap! I have now established that the my “official” method was introduced with 2.7 and so the plugin may not work at all with older versions! I am sorry I never realised that earlier, but in any case it’s advisable to always have the latest version of Wordpress!
The wordpress verison was 2.91, I just upgraded to the 2.92 and tried to upgrade the wordbay plugin, I still had to ftp the plugin. and there is no change in the countries menu, I can’t select a country. I removed line 18
$cFile = file($path); // read in file, the 403 error was not there any more but the menu still didn’t show up.
Bah… that would have been too simple, right… Yes, you can’t delete that line, it won’t work any more. OK, well next question, is your plugin in the directory:
http://mybloghomepage/wp-content/plugins/wordbay/countries.txt
…where mybloghomepage could be http://www.example.com or http://www.example.com/example, (i.e. in a subdirectory, it shouldn’t really matter)?
And in your Wordpress dashboard under Settings, are the Wordpress URL and Blog URL the same, and do they match “mybloghomepage” above?
This problem MUST be something related to your blog paths…
I click on one of the categorie on my blog, and got this message.
value “” is out of range. (10008) I have changed my .htacess file to just the rewrite for the wordpress. Is any one else using from the US.
Before the change my setting was geo targeted. In my dashboard setting for wordbay. This is the warning also.
eBay product categories NEW - action required! Specify a product category code for each country you plan to target. More info below.
Warning: file(http://www.bestvarietyshop.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/wordbay/countries.txt) [function.file]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden in /home/content/b/e/s/blank/html/blog/wp-content/plugins/wordbay/WordBay.php on line 18
: -1
(category codes)
The countries are not shown, like in the verison 1.15
Eloise, did you look at my previous comment about the site URL settings? All the other problems you have are related to this, to the way WordPress is getting the location of your plugin and the countries.txt file, especially since the problem arose after a small change to the way (the PROPER way!) the path is fetched. As you seem to be the only one with this problem I am guessing there must be something specific about your setup and we should try to find what that is, so please check out my questions above.
You wanted to know if my plugin in the directory
http://mybloghomepage/wp-content/plugins/wordbay/countries.txt
my site is a subdirectory my base site is http:/www.bestvarietyshop.com
my wordpress site is http://www.bestvarietyshop.com/blog
and the plugin is in the blog directory
/blog/wp-content/plugins/wordbay/countries.txt
I compared the to files the 1.15 to 1.20
1.15 change from
function country($path){
$path .= “wp-content/plugins/wordbay/countries.txt”;
$cFile = file($path); // read in file
to
1.20
function country(){
$path = get_bloginfo(’wpurl’) . “/wp-content/plugins/wordbay/countries.txt”;
$cFile = file($path); // read in file “this is where I keep getting an 403 Forbidde line 18 ”
There is no problem with the 1.15.
@Eloise - I am pretty sure I have fixed this bug! Check out: http://www.itsgottabered.com/wordbay/2010/new-version-v121-bug-fixes-and-minor-new-features/ for the explanation and the new version v1.21 which should solve your problem!
Mark everything was looking ok until I clicked on an auction link.
and the page could not be displayed. I copied the link in the address bar
http://www.bestvarietyshop.com/blog/buy.php?buyurl=WOMENS-PLUS-SIZE-2X-OUTFIT-SHIRT-PANTS-CLOTHING-LOT___aHR0cDovL2NnaS5lYmF5LmNvbS9XT01FTlMtUExVUy1TSVpFLTJYLU9VVEZJVC1TSElSVC1QQU5UUy1DTE9USElORy1MT1RfVzBRUWl0ZW1aMjcwNTM0Mjk4OTU5UVFjbWRaVmlld0l0ZW1RUXNzUGFnZU5hbWVaUlNTOkI6U1JDSDpVUzoxMDE=
All the settings was still us. I didn’t change back to geo targeted, I was going to see if the plugin was working.
Eloise, please make sure you installed the new version of buy.php, not just WordBay.php! If I was you I would deactivate WordBay, delete the contents of the plugins/wordbay directory and then reupload all the plugin files. I hope that’s all the problem is because I change the buy.php file somewhat so it wouldn’t work now if you haven’t changed it.
I’m glad I solved the other problem though.
P.S. There is something odd about your link, I decoded it and it is not a “rover” link, it’s a “cgi” link. That’s not right. That’s down to the RSS feed though, wonder if that’s why some people are losing sales?! I managed to reproduce the problem once on one of my sites, but when I tried it again the links were fine.
Anyone wanting to try to spot this problem, you can copy the link from
“aHR0 …” to the end (including any = signs at the end) and decode it at:
http://www.opinionatedgeek.com/dotnet/tools/Base64Decode/
They should be links pointing to rover.ebay.com etc., NOT cgi.ebay… That is worrying. Can anyone else spot this problem, You can see it without decoding because those CGI links are much shorter when encoded than the rover ones.
Also, I have spotted a stupid omission - my mistake. Try clicking on the Sign up link and you will see. That’s what I get for rushing out changes. I will fix this asap. The situation is fluid, as they say…
Mark when I tested I the plugin in the options I left my Campaign ID blank. this is the decode http://cgi.ebay.com/WOMENS-PLUS-SIZE-2X-OUTFIT-SHIRT-PANTS-CLOTHING-LOT_W0QQitemZ270534298959QQcmdZViewItemQQssPageNameZRSS:B:SRCH:US:101
This is the decode after I reuploaded and added a makeup campid I hope it don’t belong to any one.
http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?icep_ff3=2&toolid=10005&campid=5336043643&customid=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bestvarietyshop.com%2Fblog&icep_item=350318105476&ipn=psmain&icep_vectorid=238401&kwid=902099&mtid=824&kw=rss
Aaaa… I wondered whether that might be a possible reason, but then I got the same problem one my sites which DO all have campaign IDs. Well, I HOPE they do!
Does that mean your links work now?
You should get the new 1.22 I just put out - small but important change to make sure the Sign Up link works properly.
Mark I am still having problems.
Now I get this when I click on an auction link. Warning: Header may not contain more than a single header, new line detected. in /home/content/b/e/s/bababa/html/blog/buy.php on line 10
Am I the only one having problem. Maybe it Godaddy, the admin is so slow when I active a plugin, clicking on a link is slow. I told them about it and they told me they don’t support wordpress.
Sorry Mark, I still had the buy.php from the 1.15 verison. I think it working now. I hope.
Oh, well that’s good. But let me know if there is any problem.
That’s an unfortunate attitude on the part of Godaddy. But I guess what they mean is you can run Wordpress on your hosting, but they can’t provide support for it. But I had the same problem as you - I was with Netfirms originally and everything ran incredibly slowly. It’s always a problem with shared hosting, but I can honestly say Bluehost is great, usually pretty fast and doesn’t have lots of silly security restrictions. That’s why I promote Bluehost on my site!
I added 1 blog cache plugin it seems a little better. I had been thinking about changing host. If I decide to change I will be looking at Bluehost.
Thanks