WordBay was designed to make it simple and quick to set up a eBay niche site using Wordpress. Any confusion is probably down to my inability to explain clearly. If anything doesn’t make sense, please let me know!
WordPress installation
If you do not yet have hosting, or a Wordpress blog, see here first, else skip to Installation.
1) Get hosting and get a domain that you want to use for your niche site. You may have the former already, but if not I can recommend BlueHost – I have used them for over a year and am very happy with them. Another popular host is www.GoDaddy.com, who also currently offer .info domains for $1.19 (bargain, or what!?). That’s where I bought www.vintage-point.info (neat, huh?), which I will use throughout as my example.
2) Install the latest version of WordPress in the root directory of your site, or in a subdirectory of an existing site if you prefer. I can’t give detailed instructions on this here, but it should be very simple through the SimpleScripts or Fantastico utilities in your control panel. During installation you will have given your site a name and specified other details. I called my site Vintage Point and added the catchline The home of vintage and retro (very original, I know!). Your WordPress dashboard can then be accessed via http://yoursite.com/wp-admin.
3) I would also immediately suggest the following adjustments to your WordPress setup:
i. Options (or Settings) -> Permalinks - choose Custom and use the following format: /%year%/%postname%/
This will ensure you have SEF urls – though don’t do this on an existing site if you hadn’t already! You’ll mess up all your links! You MUST do this if you want to have a search/results page.
ii. Install a sitemap generator like this one and set it up so that Google is kept up to date about your site, and that your pages are indexed as often as possible, since they will frequently be changing.
iii. Settings/Options -> Discussion – untick “Allow comments” – you probably don’t want user comments generally – there’ll be more spam than it’s worth.
iv. Also, if you are making a dedicated niche site, then you may want to go under Reading and make your front page a default static page, rather than a blog, unless you plan on blogging of course.
4) Find a nice template for your site, I have used Old Lamp, as it fits with my vintage-retro theme, though if you visit my site, it’s still unfinished probably, this is just by way of demonstration, you will need to do a bit of customizing if you want to make a proper BANS-style niche site, like getting rid of some of the sidebar stuff etc.
5) It also helps to join eBay ( 
) and you MUST be a member of the eBay Partner Network if you want to earn money from WordBay!
Installation
WordBay is installed like any other Wordpress plugin.
1) Download the latest package from the downloads page.
2) Upload the whole directory into your wordpress plugins directory (usually, yoursite/wp-content/plugins). The plugin must reside in a sub-folder called WordBay as supplied in the zip file, else it WON’T WORK - the obfuscation file (buy.php) won’t be accessible. If you want to move this, you need to change the relevant code in the plugin, but don’t bother for now.
3) Go into the Wordpress admin panel, find Plugins and WordBay should be listed. Click Activate to activate!
4) You are ready to roll!
Using WordBay
1) You need to configure things in the Options/Settings panel, so find Settings -> WordBay and tailor things to your own requirements. Most of the options are self-explanatory so I won’t repeat things here, there are quite detailed instructions in the admin panel, BUT…:
2) You will need to be a LITTLE bit careful with the Number of columns setting because each template is different in width, and there are other possible variations with fonts etc. You may need to edit the wordbay.css file and change “height: ??px;” setting in the .firstlocaleitem class. This height setting should determine the maximum height for each item listed (probably at LEAST 200px, especially if you choose to display the CLICK NOW button) and ensure you get a neat grid, with no text overflowing. You may also find you need to reduce the numbers you have in padding: in the same class from 8px to perhaps 4px. You should also make sure the column count you have chosen works for 1024 x 768 or even smaller resolutions. Realistically, even on my 1440 width display and a fluid-width template I can’t get many more than 3-4 columns in.
3) …if you want to have a search page and use the search box and “expanded search” link, you MUST create a search page. This is done simply by creating a New Page called Product Search, Lamp Search, or whatever else you want. I just called mine Vintage search. You don’t need any content on that page, though you can put some short text or something, like I have.
You must then copy/paste the permalink to this page into the field provided in the admin panel, where there is lots of red text! In my case it is http://www.vintage-point.info/vintage-search/. As it says in the admin panel, and I repeat, you MUST have SEF permalinks activated for this to work!!
4) To insert eBay listings into your posts or pages is really simple: write a new Page or Post in Wordpress. Let’s call it Green vintage lamps and let’s write a few lines of text as our content - “Lovely green vintage lamps”. We are also going to add the following code in the content:
[wordbay]green vintage lamp[/wordbay]
This is our search code, and is pretty self-explanatory, but we will look at this in more detail in a minute. First hit Publish and go to your site and have a look at the post or page you have created.
You should get an eBay listing corresponding to your search terms, and to the parameters you set in the admin panel. If not… erm… go back and check the instructions. They are pretty straightforward, so there should not be anything that can’t be solved. If your search terms are too narrow, that could be a problem, and the category you picked may limit things too. If you chose to display the search box and “expanded search” link, try these to see if they are working.
By the way, you will probably want to change the colours - these are set in the WordBay.css file - hopefully there will be a small tutorial in the future on how to do this, but it should be pretty simple to figure out.
By using eBay search terms and creating new pages/posts for different items/products, you can quickly build up an eBay niche site, and if you have entered your EPN details properly in the admin panel. By the way, when you do this, please consider setting the Generosity quotient to something, well, symbolic (more than 0!) at least. In doing so a small percentage of your impressions will go to the author of WordBay (me), who has invested a lot of time in the project, when I really should have been doing something else, and it would warm the cockles of my heart to see a few pennies as a result of my hard work!
WordBay search terms
As you probably figured out, the tags [wordbay]fish[/wordbay] inserted anywhere in your page body text will search for all products with “fish” in the title. However, it is difficult to target searches with just this, so here are some more tips:
[wordbay]green lamp[/wordbay] - this is logical AND – space between the words means all products with “green” and “lamp” in the title.
[wordbay]”green lamp”[/wordbay] – exact phrase match – means the exact phrase “green lamp” must be found in the product title
[wordbay]lamp -green[/wordbay] – AND NOT – searches for all occurrences of ”lamp”, but minus sign excludes any titles with “green”. No green lamps here!
[wordbay](lamp,“bedside table”)[/wordbay] – OR – brackets apply logical OR (also AND/OR I think) to all items in the brackets, whether single keywords or phrases, i.e. this will find all items with either “lamp” OR “bedside table”.
By the way, supposedly you are not suppose to put spaces after commas or minus signs, so it’s best to stick to that just in case. Here are a couple more examples:
[wordbay](“old lamp”,“old telephone”) -green[/wordbay] – find all items with either “old lamp” or “old telephone” in the title, but excluding “green”.
[wordbay]lamp –(book,CD)[/wordbay] – this will search on “lamp” BUT will exclude “book” and/or “CD”. This type of search is especially useful as it allows you to eliminate most of the junk/irrelevant items like “My Old Lamp CD” and narrow the search down to just actual lamps! Though some of these searches CAn get quite long, and there is supposedly a limit to the number of terms. Just experiment, what can I say.
There is more help on the relevant eBay page.
Well, what are you waiting for!? Get building and get earning!!
hi, i have tried using wordbay 0.96 with WP 2.6.1
after activating wordbay and setting Generosity = 100% (i am not with ebay), columns = 1, and the rest of the settings are left untouched,
i still cant get the ebay listings to be displayed.
the wordbay tags are displayed as is in the published posts..ie
[wordbay]gameboy[/wordbay]
any idea what went wrong?
thanks
sorry…i just realize there’s a clash between wordbay and another plugin i have
the listings are out after i deactivated all other plugins except wordbay
good work with wordbay!
thanks
Spring, sorry for not responding sooner - I was a-holidaying. Glad you got it working, though I couldn’t say why it would clash with other plugins. One of those things I guess. Good advice for other users - it’s always possible that two plugins might clash, so if things go wrong try switching off some plugins and seeing what happens. All the best.
This is a great plugin and I am using it on my newest site http://makeavideo.net/sony-handycams.html
The only problem I am having is getting the search feature to work. I have created a search page as instructed but no matter what term I search for no results are found. I am using WP 2.6.2.
Do you know what the problem may be?
Thanks
Hi, glad you find the plugin useful and good luck with using it!
When I look at your site something is definitely not configured right because you are effectively getting a 404 error, which means it can’t find the right page - have you entered the full URL to the search page in the WordBay options? You should make sure the search URL is set to “http://makeavideo.net/search-for-more-items” in the WordBay Settings under Show search box. I am almost certain something has gone wrong with this.
Also, on a different subject, I’m not sure why your product column is so narrow and overflowing into the search box. Maybe you have tried to have two columns but your content area is simply not wide enough to contain them? Seems to me a one-column display would work best on your site.
Hope this helps… If not let me know.
Okay, I set the columns to one (1) so it looks much better. But I am still having the problem with the search page not being found. I have the correct URL in the Show search box area: http://makeavideo.net/search-for-more-items
Any other suggestions?
Thanks.
I got it to work! I just shortened the name of the page from “search-for-more-items” to “more-items” and it worked. I think I have a plugin installed that removes “unnecessary” words from your URL so it must be affecting the way the URL is read by Wordbay.
I got it to work! I just shortened the name of the page from “search-for-more-items” to “more-items” and it worked. I think I have a plugin installed that removes “unnecessary” words from your URL so it must be affecting the way the URL is read by Wordbay.
Anyway, great plugin!
Crumbs! I’m glad you got that figured out, because I would never have got that in a million years! I thought perhaps you didn’t HAVE a page called that - sometimes people forget to create one, or the permalink is wrong.
I see it working now - all the best with the site!
Hi. I’m getting some odd results. I have Wordbay embedded in a post page for a specific 2 word phrase. Nothing shows up when I view the page. However, when I type the exact same phrase in the (embedded) search box, and the search page displays, I get products. What’s different between using the wordbay tags and the wordbay search?
Also, it looks like ebay stores are not included. Can they be?
Intentional or not, I figured it out. The “regular” listing included minimum bids, the search defaulted minimum bids to zero
Hi, I tested the plugin, it’s a beautiful job!
Thank you!
I only have one question:
Why can I show 2-column product list?
I set the column to 2 in setting page, but in webpage there is only 1 column, Need I change something in somewhere?
Sorry, typo!
Question is :
How can I show 2-column product list?
I already set the column to 2 in setting page, but in webpage there is only 1 column, Need I change something in somewhere?
Hi, glad you like it!
I can’t be sure without seeing it, but that is all you should need to change. However, it may be that the ‘.firstlocaleitem’ class in the CSS file has a height which is too low to accomodate the whole item so it is being forced into one column - maybe try changing the height to a greater number?
Other than, it’s just possible that the padding or margins are too big for your content width and are forcing one column as well.
Let me know if tinkering with those doesn’t solve anything and I’ll try to think what else it might be.
Thank you, I will try that.
Hello,
I love your plugin, but when I chose the show search box, but the search box isn’t showing. All that is showing is the words “Product Search”.
Is that anything I need to put to display the search field?
Sorry to hear you are having problems. I quickly checked to see that there wasn’t a problem with the latest version of the plugin, but it’s working fine on my sites.
That’s a strange one, I haven’t heard that problem before. Are you sure that your CSS is not doing something weird with the <form> or <input> classes? If you look in the HTML, under the H4 header “Product Search” can you see code like:
<form method='get' id='searchform' action='XXXXX'><div><input type='text' value='' name='WBsearch' id='search' />
<input type='submit' id='searchsubmit' value='Search' />
</div>
</form>
…where XXXXX is the link to your WordBay search page (which you have hopefully created)?
I have to admit that this is bad markup on my part, having a DIV with no class or ID - perhaps a parent DIV is passing on some inappropriate settings to the form div and hiding it in some way?
Let me know if it’s not that…!
Hi. Great plugin. I’ve been using it for a little while now, and I have a couple questions/requests. (I thought I posted this once, but I can’t seem to find the post, so maybe not
I’m using the Amazon part of BayRSS to add a bit more pizzazz to the listings. I have the Amazon feed at the top of the page, followed by the Wordbay two column feed. It looks like the Amazon products are more “featured” (since the normal Amazon feed is bigger and has the product rating, etc), followed by a more “normal” store inventory. I really like it - works well. Is there any way this type of combination could be implemented with Wordbay. That would be really slick
(I tried using the AZLite plugin to do the same thing, but it seems to collide with BayRSS. Since I have a number of posts that already use BayRSS I can’t inactivate it, so AZLite is out of the question for now).
I have also used SimplePie on some websites for feeds from other programs (Buy.com, Overstock.com). One really nice feature SimplePie has is the ability to automatically include a .php file when it runs. Inside the file you can do stuff like override text (change “Bid Now” to “Place a Bid”), override fonts, change image sizes, etc. This would be another slick thing to add to WordBay.
Thanks,
Walt
Hi Mark,
Thanks for replying. If I look in the html, the code for the form and submit button is there.. but it just doesn’t show up on the page.. maybe it is some parent div id passing that is messing things up.. but its too messy for me to figure out.. not too good with code.
Hope you can put the search in a div class or id of its own in the next version so I can test it out.
Oh you mentioned in the wordbay.css something about making the corners rounded.. how do you do that?
Thanks for a great plugin! Very much appreciated!
Hi. me again. How should I add Wordbay directly to a template file?
@GreatCoolDeals
Sorry your having this problem. I can’t guarantee it will fix itself if I add a class to the CSS file for the search box. I’m not even sure I want to do that, because I have left the CSS for others to modify for their own site - I am no designer… I would suggest someone who is clued up on CSS (don’t know how much of a CSS-wiz you are, I’m not) has a look at your code to see what settings might be affecting the search box. It sounds to me like the height of the form or div is being set to 0 somewhere, but it’s just a guess…
@DogSupplies
This WAS supposed to be an eBay plugin, so I am not sure if it will ever become an all-singing all-dancing affiliate plugin. I’ve got too many other irons in the fire…!
Yes, the Amazon combination sounds nice. Another way I want to implement a featured item is to grab the visitor’s search keywords that they came to the site with and try to find a product that exactly matches and make it a “featured product”. Bit sneaky… To include Amazon products I would have to use the Amazon API, otherwise known as Amazon Web Services. I have some Amazon API code lying around which I could adapt very quickly to WordBay I daresay, but I am not sure how I distribute this because I have to include an Amazon Web Developer key and wouldn’t be keen on including my own. Users would maybe have to get their own key from Amazon in order to use that feature… Again, I’ll think about it
As for using WordBay directly from the template as a PHP function call, we had some private correspondence about that - I will look into that as soon as I get some time to work on WordBay as I guess it would be quite useful. I would also like to use WordBay as a widget in my template, so I will try to do it.
Hi, Mark:
I installed the plugin and have it fully functioning on a new blog i created, but on my veg blog it is not working.
I am getting some ERROR CODE on the page instead. Any idea what could be the problem?
Missy.
Hi, that is strange - someone else is complaining of a similar problem over here: http://www.itsgottabered.com/wordbay/wordbay-bugs-and-to-dos/
So I suggest you come over there and see if we can figure it out.
Is there a way to list items by a specific seller?
Hi Donovan,
There is no built-in way, but if you want to tinker with the code in the WordBay.php file (please make sure you have a backup copy of this to hand for if something goes wrong!), you can make the following changes. Find the line that says:
$first_otherparams = '&fsoo=1&fsop=1&output=RSS20&catref=c5&sacur=0&from=R6&fbd=1&saobfmts=exsif&fls=3&sabfmts=0&saaff=afepn&ftrv=1&ftrt=1&fcl=3&sacat=-1&fss=0&nojspr=yZQy'; // These are additional parameters that are hard-coded. We won't fiddle with them for now. Don't even know what all of them do.
and select all of it, and paste in THIS code to replace it:
$first_otherparams = '&fsoo=1&fsop=1&output=RSS20&catref=c5&sacur=0&from=R6&fbd=1&saobfmts=exsif&fls=3&sabfmts=0&saaff=afepn&ftrv=1&ftrt=1&fcl=3&sacat=-1&fss=1&nojspr=yZQy&saslop=1&sasl=XXXX,XXXX,XXXX'; // This will now ONLY work with the sellers specified by the xx's!.
Where you see the XXs at the end, replace them with your seller ids, separated by commas as I have shown. You can have up to 10, I believe, no more than 300 chars.
Please not, I have NOT tested this, sorry, I just don’t have time at the moment, but I am going on what I know about eBay RSS and it should work fine - let me know. And for the technically minded, what I have done is:
- Change parameter fss=0 to fss=1 (From Specific Sellers)
- add saslop=1 (INClude the specified sellers - you could EXClude them with saslop=2)
- add sasl=xx,xx,xx (parameter specifying names of sellers)
Note - do this at your own risk, but give me all the credit if it works
Note, this hard-codes the specified seller into your WP plugin, so you cannot use that installation of the plugin for anything else after!
[…] Re: wordbay question you should find all the info you need right here WordBay Installing and configuring WordBay […]
Mark,
First off, thanks for your help and for making an excellent plugin! But I wanted to know if the seller ID that we need to insert is the sellers name or do I need to get a specific ID#? Is this the ebay/cj PID or something else? I tried putting in just the sellers name and store name, that didn’t work. I’m stuck. Thanks again! Donovan.
specific seller –> modified codes as suggested but getting no item returned.
I tried different title words and even blank trying to call the items, no luck:
[wordbay][/wordbay]
Have I missed anything?
Donovan and “DIY”, sorry for the slow response. Maybe I was being hopeful about this working as easily as I thought. But also, have you made sure your product category is relevant for the types of product?
If yes, then I need to have a look at this. I will try to do so ASAP and let you know. I would have included this functionality in the current version, but there was this major bug to fix…
Hi, I just tried out this method and it worked for me. Here is a sample:
fsoo=1&fsop=1&output=RSS20&catref=c5&sacur=0&from=R6&fbd=1&saobfmts=exsif&fls=3&sabfmts=0&saaff=afepn&ftrv=1&ftrt=1&fcl=3&sacat=-1&fss=1&nojspr=yZQy&saslop=1&sasl=dauntlesssearch
This is a friend of mine who goes by the seller name “dauntlesssearch”. I get listings just from him when I do this. Does this differ in any way to what you were doing?
I went to make sure i had the correct product category set, then I read “I am still mystified by eBay Motors - this only seems to be available if everything else is set to US.” what does this mean. What must I do to set everything to US? Of course I am using eBay motors.
Hi Donovan, sorry for the confusion, “everything else” is misleading, it’s an instruction left over from the old version and I’ll have to get rid of it. All it means is to make sure you put eBay Motors in as your Site ID, and to choose a category for eBay Motors in the list of country/category codes, not sure why it still says US - you don’t have to specify any product category under US as long as you are using Motors, since Motors IS US, as far as I can see.
I said Motors was a mystery because it behaves strangely, something like a hybrid between a category and a site in itself, but if you do the above you will be fine - choose eBay Motors as your site ID and then for the eBay Motors product category enter a category from the list linked to there, e.g. 6024 - motorbikes, or just -1 for all categories. I have checked this and it works fine, so I hope this helps Donovan.
The weird thing though is that there isn’t an option to choose UK eBay Motors, since UK has its own Motors site. Rather, UK eBay Motors come under the category listing like any other product. So you choose UK as your Site ID (NOT Motors) and then specify your UK category (not Motors, again) as, say, 422 - Motors and Scooters. Unfortunately, there is not a more detailed list there, with makes etc. This needs to be got through the API, I guess. Maybe at some point I need to write a script to pull all those off, cos eBay really isn’t helpful sometimes…
One page, multiple searches? is that possible?
i’ve tried doing it on a draft page, and it seems to only be getting the first wordbay search.
1. Banefire
[wordbay]Banefire[/wordbay]
2. Path to Exile
[wordbay]Path to Exile[/wordbay]
3. Noble Hierarch
[wordbay]Noble Hierarch[/wordbay]
it only puts banefire.
any help is appreciated
Hi,
Thanks for a great plugin which is working almost flawlessly for me .
The problem I am having is with the click through links which are taking you to the ebay homepage and not to the selected item. This is only happening on the frontpage of my site though, it seems to be fine on the other pages.
Any help/advice would be much appreciated.
That’s weird, I’ve never heard of that happening before. I just had a look at your site and the same happens to me. But I’ve checked my own sites and am not getting the bug.
I am looking into it and will let you know what I discover.
Lee, I see you changed the name of “buy.php” to “purchase.php”, which is fine, but I can’t help feeling that you might have changed something in the code, the bit where it replaces the word “ebay” with “cheap”. Still doesn’t explain why it only does it on the homepage, but in any case I am gradually thinking this is a tacky bit of code on my part which has potential of making things go wrong. Let me know, or better still, send me a copy/paste of your purchase.php file via my contact page - http://www.itsgottabered.com/wordbay/contact/ and I’ll see if I can spot anything.
Mark,
I apologize for being such a pain, it’s just that I prefer to use your plugin and can’t seem to get it to work. I’m going crazy trying to figure this out! I’ve tried doing what you said but haven’t been successful. This is the test website: http://hypersports.org/ebay/ . I currently have another plugin working on the real website: http://automotionhawaii.com/ebay/ , but don’t like it very much. I’ve tried using both the seller name and ID to no avail. Could you try on your end and see if it’s a eBay motors thing or a problem on my end. Sellers ID is: RAZO-Direct or 55486132. I get no results with the plugin, I do however pull up the items when I click on: “Click here to see similar items.”. So I know it can work.
Hi, not a pain, just a case of me getting round to help out!
So you were trying to do our little hack to include the above seller, right? When I go to your site I get a bug saying “The category selected is not a valid category for this site. (86) ” This means that the geotargetting is picking me up as some country other than your default and using your default category ID with that country, even though they actually differ.
This problem was fixed in the new version of the plugin - if my hunch is right, then that would mean you haven’t got the latest version either (1.0)? So you should probably get the new version to make sure geotargetting works properly in any case.
However, still not sure how this is affecting your listings. But when you “Click to see similar items”, what that does is show all items with NO minimum number of bids. Have you set a minimum number of bids in the backend? Maybe that’s filtering out this user’s items, because, say, none of them have bids? And when you click “Click to see similar…” that’s showing them because it shows listings regardless of the number of bids.
Let me know if that helps.
Me again. I just noticed also that when I click on the category code link in the Wordbay settings page, the category code for the “Parts & Accessories” category is different in the US and eBay Motors category link. US= 3142929 and the eBay Motors= 6028. This is bananas! I’ve tried both in either category and a combination of all, including -1.
That did it!!!!! it was the minimum # of bids!!!!! Thanks!!!!!!
ugh! I can’t get the plugin to show more than 15 items, is there another setting besides the “Maximum number of items to show in listing”, that I need to be aware of. I currently have it set at 60.
Hi, glad that worked Donovan!
Sorry, couldn’t get back straight away - my “real job” got in the way!
I am not sure why it will not show more than 15 items - you are sure of course that there ARE more than 15 items for that keyword? Also, are you using “new” eBay search when looking on the site? Because, as I discussed here you will unfortunately not get as many results through RSS (which WordBay) uses, as through new eBay search and there’s nowt I can do about that until eBay does… If it’s not any of that then let me know and I will dig deeper.
Hey Mark!
I really appreciate your help. I am using the code you had given me to use the eBay Sellers ID rather than a search term. There are definitely more than 15 items, about three times that.
Is there a way to show the entire contents of a certain ebay store without having to put the code in for each individual product. Thanks in advance.
Hi, first, apologies to Donovan - I couldn’t come up with any “better” explanation about the limited number of products and have not had the time to dedicate to WordBay the last few weeks. If I figure out why that is happening I will try to fix it, of course.
Marcus, unfortunately no. With the RSS feed, that WB uses, you can basically apply any search option that is available on the eBay Advanced Search page - it’s just a case of my implementing it in the plugin. However, there appears to be no option to specify the particular eBay store - sorry…
Thanks. No problem
Good Morning - When a user clicks on the product or “more details” I would like it to open in its own window. I’ve looked through the code and probably just missed it (ametuer coder here) - could you please tell me the line where I should make the change so that the ebay item is in its own window? Thanks so much.
I am getting intermittent “Sorry, no items available to list.”
is there a reason for that.
using 1.05
how do I debug?
Hi Ron,
Sorry not to reply earlier.
I am not sure if I have detailed all the possible causes of “Sorry, no items available to list.” anywhere else on the blog, but probably we have been over most, so I will try to compile them here.
1) Firstly, I am assuming that when you use the exact same keywords (just minus the “wordbay” tags) to search the actual eBay site you DO get results? If not, then you need to go back and check how your search terms are formed - more complicated searches, with a lot of brackets and minuses, can easily be messed up so they return no results.
2) Check you are not using “new” eBay search to compare results with what you think you should be getting using WordBay. See this post for a more detailed explanation of why this could leave you with no results.
3) Check you have the right product category set up, or better still, just use -1 (i.e. All Categories) and be clever with your choice of keywords. If you have inadvertently set the category to Grand Pianos and you are searching for vintage toothbrushes, obviously things will go wrong.
4) If you are geotargetting and defaulting to US, but you actually access your own site from the UK, say, or particularly from a non-English language locale, then you will actually geotarget for the country you are currently in, and that eBay site may have no reference to the keywords you are looking for. So make sure WordBay doesn’t “think” you are in another country. This could also potentially happen if there is a wrong geo-ID on the part of hostip.info, whose geotargetting service we use. You can go to that site and check how it identifies you - if it says “China” or something, that could be why!
That’s everything I can think of right now - I have certainly made all these mistakes myself at some point or another. But let me know if it’s still not working and we’ll have to try to get more creative!
I’ve downloaded your plugin (v1.05) and installed it … its working, but it is only displaying adds from ebay.de !??!
I live in the UK and hostip.info says I’m in DE which is not correct, but I have turned OFF Geotargetting and set “United States” as the default item location and ebay site, but still it wants to display ads from ebay.de ?? why??
Thanks in advance for your help!
I’ve been going through the threads and I am still having problems getting results to show for some items only.. When I am, say, looking for Blackberry Bold replacement batteries, I get no results.
This is not the only item that it occurs with, but one of many. There are also some that do work….Any help on getting this resolved would be greatly appreciated
[wordbay]Blackberry bold replacement battery[/wordbay]
Thanks, I’ll include the plugin in my new site Jackson Guitars.
I will be using another ebay plugin other than phpbay
I can’t seem to make a site that Ebay will approve of.
Reels
Sorry to hear it Mullikin, believe me, none of us has a clue right now what eBay is looking for from it’s affiliates. I’m glad I applied when EPN just opened, they were taking anyone then
I guess try to read their guidelines carefully, or see if you can find some good-performing sites to see what the “secret” is. It’s all about engaging the visitor to start buying from eBay, not just sending random traffic that occasionally makes sales. Now how you do that, I don’t know…
Hi I’ve just installed WordBay. I’ve been trying it out and I think it’s great, but I’m having a problem with the geotargetting. I’m in the US but my site and products are in the UK. I’ve turned off geotargetting and set the country to UK everywhere, but I am still getting US times and prices in US dollars. Can you help please?
Thanks for a great plugin
Hi Confused (good name, though quite common
),
OK, * thinking cap on * - geotargetting always makes my brain hurt.
Well, there is no way that I know of, if geotargetting is switched off, for results to be displayed in any currency or from any site other your default settings.
UNLESS, pages got stored in the cache in dollars and are now being displayed in perpetuity. Since Magpie RSS is not actually part of WordBay, but used for getting the eBay RSS data, can I refer you to this very simple explanation of how to clean out the cache (which some users have said can get very big), and how to stop it cacheing in future? http://www.cybercoded.net/disable-magpie-cache-wordpress/
I personally don’t see much point in cacheing RSS data anyway, at least not for more than a few minutes, as the whole point of RSS is to provide the user with fresh data anyway! Anyway, if this is over your head, just follow the instructions and let me know if it helps. If not then I need to brainstorm some more.
Hi, thanks for replying. I tried running the Clean Options plugin that was recommended but it said No RSS options were found. Also, the original listings wouldn’t have been in US dollars because they came from eBay UK, so something must have changed them based on my own IP address. Do you know if Wordpress has geotargetting somewhere that could be overriding it? I will check. Anyway please let me know if you think of anything else, and thanks for your help.
Hmm… OK, that didn’t work…
Well, I am stumped as to how geotargetting could still be acting on your listings. If it is unchecked in the options it just doesn’t get applied. OK, will see if anything else springs to mind, and just make sure you definitely don’t have any of your settings on US, particularly the “listings” setting, obviously.
Does this work with WP2.9.2? I am having zero luck in getting any results with this plug-in.
I figured it out, I had to define a product category code.
Glad you got it figured out, yes, v2.9.2 was the last version I actively tested it with, though newer version should work too.
[…] Lite versions works on tags. This means that just like with Word Bay we insert our keywords between the tags that call the plugins functions which are […]