I will try to keep an up-to-date list here of bugs, issues, wishes etc. I appreciate all your feature suggestions, many are very good, many have been implemented in the past, just please remember, I develop WordBay very much part-time and cannot promise any quick action. Gushing promises that you will share revenue with me often help things along 
- implement impression tracking
- allow individual sellers to be specified (coming in v1.1)
- allow some parameters to be changed on a page-by-page basis using the [wordbay] tags
- obfuscate eBay thumbnail link
- make it possible to edit css settings from the backend so they are saved and not overwritten when a new version of WordBay is installed! (a little more complicated than it sounds - not a quick fix, unless I think of one!)
- change time zone either to user-specified, or perhaps to show “time left”. Partially implemented, time changed to reflect eBay local time. Was stuck on PDT before.
can we place the [wordbay]ffffffff[/wordbay]
Inside the template instead of in every post?
I tried but cannot do it..
Hi - I’m afraid not - WordBay takes the actual CONTENT (the post or page text) and parses it to find the tags. The template is not parsed.
What did you want to do - have the same listing on every page? Maybe we can think of a workaround.
How hard would it be to add options to [wordbay] such as “show x numbe of items” or “show buy it now only” so for example, if I just wanted to show two items [wordbay 2]my items[/wordbay]?
That would add even more coolness to this already-cool plugin.
Hi.
Glad you appreciate the plugin.
What you are talking about is basically what I meant above by changing parameters on a per-post basis. The way it would work would be something like:
[wordbay:2:5:1]more ipods[/wordbay]
where the 2:5:1 would represent different parameters.
This is the top priority for me to do now, and you are not the only person to suggest this so I can definitely see it as a need (hey, I would like that on my sites too!)
This would take about a day of programming which I justr haven’t been able to find, and would mean tangling with regular expressions, which I HATE! Also, it means that the tagging format would get very cumbersome and it would need a JavaScript popup window to insert the tags for you direct from the WP editor, which I don’t have the first idea how to write, so I would have to
stealfigure out that code too.So hang on in there, I WILL get this done in the next month or so, just need to find time amongst my other work (I’m not a programmer at all by trade, as I have mentioned elsewhere on numerous occasions!) If you’re building some sites, keep working on the backlinks and the unique content in the meantime
I have a problem with a photos: they do not display in all browsers:
DISPLAYING photos:IE 6.0, 5.5
NOT DISPLAYING:
FIREFOX 1.5.0.12; 2.0; IE 7.0;8.0
I get the text ok, but no images.
I think plugin is great, don’t get me wrong, but nobody wants to help me with the photo issue because it also gives me 108 errors when I try to validate page:(
I really think your plugin gives a very sleek alternative to BANS, so if you could help with this problem I would really appreciate it.
page:
http://www.wellbeinggoddess.com/home-spa/where-to-buy-hot-stone-massage-kit/
Thanks for this wonderful plugin.
I suggest:
1. the parameters to go inside the Custom Fields instead,
2. the [WordBay] parameter be processed only to find the desired location on the post/page. If the post have no [WordBay] tag, then the listing should be added to the post content automatically using filter.
Hi Mark,
Thanks for the exciting plugin.
Anyway, I have a request about this plugin. Inserting tags in post made blog got bad indexing in search engines. I prefer use custom field to insert products that generated from wordbay, but how I can setup this plugin, so I can easily typing keywords (with tag?) in custom field value?
Thanks
Hmm…how about rewriting the title on the search page for the search query?
i.e. someone searches for “ipod touch”, then the title of the resulting search page where all the listings are returned will become “Search for ipod touch | my website title”
I currently have no idea on how to tweak this rewrite on my own.
Hi Sam, sorry for the delay in responding - I had put my WordBay cares on the backburner while away on holiday!
Good idea - do you mean the “title” in the sense of the top bar of the browser? Or the title, as in the title of the post?
Assuming you mean the latter, you need to edit the header.php file in the template designer/editor, whatever that part of the backend is called now in WordPress, and find the line:
<h1>
the_title();
</h1>
and replace it with the following lines:
<h1>
<?php
$my_title = 'Product search';
$blog_title = get_bloginfo();
$title=get_the_title();
if ($title !== $my_title)
{echo $title;}
else
{$sterms = $_GET['WBsearch'];
if (!isset($sterms)) {echo $my_title;}
else {echo "Search results for: '".$sterms."' at ".$blog_title;}
}
?></h1>
I’ve tested this myself - it works on my test blog, you get “Search results for: ‘men’s slacks’ at SlacksWorld”, or whatever. Hope that’s useful.
Binh and Hans - likewise, sorry for the response in replying.
I like the idea of using the custom fields, and only using the tags to locate the actual listing in the post, though this would once and for all limit us to ONE listing per page, and I keep thinking about making it possible to insert multiple listings on one page (like little “auction ads”, or something).
To be honest, I have not looked into custom fields yet - I think they are a recent addition to WordPress? Probably not too complicated though (WordPress rules!) so I will investigate.
Hans, I REALLY doubt that the search engines object to the [WordBay] tags. I’ll tell you why: because as long as the plugin is activated, the tags do NOT appear in the content. They are parsed out by the plugin BEFORE the page content is even displayed, and the listings are put in its place, so there is no way a SE could even see them
I suppose what COULD happen is you could forget to activate the plugin and then the tags WOULD show up in the content. I see that quite a lot, with people trying out different things on their blogs. But even then I don’t see why the SEs would object - I can’t believe humble WordBay is on anyone’s blacklist yet!
Oh boy, there is another question I didn’t see, from Maga, about photos not displaying.
Did you ever get that resolved? I have no idea what that is about, I haven’t heard that one before. And photos were displaying fine in my Firefox 2.0, though I haven’t tested the others. The images are displayed by the eBay feed itself, my plugin doesn’t really do anything to those, so the only thing I can think of is that maybe there is another plugin interfering?
Let me know if it’s still a problem.
Hans, I REALLY doubt that the search engines object to the [WordBay] tags. I’ll tell you why: because as long as the plugin is activated, the tags do NOT appear in the content. They are parsed out by the plugin BEFORE the page content is even displayed, and the listings are put in its place, so there is no way a SE could even see them
Sorry admin, but Hans is right. You can have a look here: http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=SU&q=site%3Aapmart.com%2Fcars%2F&btnG=Search
Used Cars Under $5000 | APMart Auctions
These are the auctions for cheap cars and used cars between $4000 and $5000. [WordBay],6001,4000,5000[/WordBay]
apmart.com/cars/used-cars-under-5000/
This is due to the All-in-one-SEO pack plugin generating the META description for the pages/post. Yes, WordBay didn’t have chance to activate before the information is passed on. However, the content is properly indexed and cached with the listings.
Custom Fieldsis good. It’s especially good to declare other search terms such as category, price, bids, etc.
Hi!
Thank you so much for this GREAT plugin! It works like a charm!
Two things I would love to see in the future versions is the thumbnail link obfuscation and an option to open ebay links into a new window so the person doesn’t leave my site!
I suppose the open in new window option shouldn’t be too difficult and if you need help with the thumbnail obfuscation, I can send you BANS so you can see how they’ve done it. Just send me an email.
Thanks again! Hope to hear from you soon!
Glad you find it useful! Even more glad that it works
(well, you never do know..!)
As for the new window option, that could be very easily implemented. In fact, you can do it yourself - I described it somewhere else here, though can’t find where now :/ I will look at implementing this in a future version, though I am resting on my laurels just a tad at the moment.
I may just take you up on your offer for a peep at BANS - though the only way I can think of resolving the problem is by caching the images on my own site, which I thought was against eBay API TOS, but if BANS is doing it…
Hi Mark, thanks for the reply! I hope you’ve received my email.
Could you explain how I could open the links into a new window? If it’s not too complicated?
Thank you!
Hi Alex,
Yes, I will repeat the explanation I posted somewhere else:
If you want to make links open in a new browser tab/window you need to edit the line (no. 208 in v0.96) that says:
$description = str_replace ( "<a ", "<a rel='nofollow' ", $description ); /* Add "nofollow" to all hyperlinks */
and change it to read:
$description = str_replace ( "<a ", "<a rel='nofollow' target='_blank' ", $description ); /* Add "nofollow" to all hyperlinks */
I must admit I haven’t tested it, but it should work, fairly straightfoward HTML stuff - I will include this as an option in a future version, but if you make this change yourself now you may need to re-set it through the back-end in the new version. Cheers!
Yes, the code for new window is working of course. I implemented it. You can test out here:
Used Cars for Sale
Look how mine is different than yours. (Improved I guess ;))
Hey Mark!
If I just add target=’_blank’ on line 208 it doesn’t work.
So I searched in your code for “nofollow” and found three lines on 208, 211 and 218. I added target=’_blank’ after all three nofollow and now it works!!! Wahoo!!
Would adding target=’_blank’ on all three lines create a problem?
One last question. Would it be very difficult to remove from the ebay listings:
(0 Bid)
End Date: Thursday Sep-11-2008 20:00:00 BST
Bid now | Add to watch list
Remove all or any of the items above? Very complicated? This would clean up the listings and might increase the clickthrough.
Thanks for your help!
Remove End Date and everything else below the title:
$description = preg_replace (’#End Date(.*?).*#is’, ”, $description);
It took me very long time to figure that out and apply that on http://apmart.com
Goodluck,
Binh
Holy crap that code I pasted didn’t display properly. Try this:
$description = preg_replace ('#End Date(.*?)<br\s?\/?>.*<\/td>#is', '</td>', $description);Hey Binh!
Thanks for the response! What you have on your apmart.com is exactly what I want! But I wasn’t able to get it to work.
Where should I put the code ?
$description = preg_replace (’#End Date(.*?).*#is’, ”, $description);
On line 188 ? Should I replace something with your code?
THanks for the help!
I’m not sure which line number it is. I modified the plugin to the point it’s not much same as the original one… But I’m sure it’s before this line:
$description = str_replace ('cellpadding="8"', '', $description);Thanks for the cool plugin
Here’s a possible bug. In the latest version (0.995), even with the locale and dispatch locations set for “United States”, the “eBay Site ID” defaults to “Canada (English)” and I see no option to change the eBay Site ID to US (I’m from the States and a US member of the EPN program).
Any ideas? Thanks.
Arrghh! Thanks for that! CORRECTED! Glad someone spotted that so soon - can’t believe I managed to leave out the entire US
Just redownload from the same link in about 15 minutes time - I haven’t added an extra version number, hopefully not too many people downloaded it!
Would it be too hard to implement searching in both the title AND description? Searching in just the title can really limit the results being returned.
Hi, to be honest I never really thought about what it was searching on!
Yes, it should be possible to change this, though in my past tinkering with the eBay API and suchlike I have always felt the results given by searching on description to be a little unpredictable.
If you want to do this though it will have to be a hack for now until I implement an option for it in a future version.
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 add the parameter “fts=2″ to the list, e.g.
$first_otherparams = '&fts=2&fsoo=1&fsop=1... etc.I haven’t had a chance to test it but this ought to do the trick - let me know.
PERFECT!!!
Thanks so much! I was trying to figure it out earlier today as well but couldn’t get the RSS search feed from eBay to work.
Yeah, I will have to agree that sometimes searching the description can add in unrelated items but at least this gives a lot more listings. On some of the pages I had it wasn’t showing any listings at all but now I get the full 18 that I have it set to
Thanks again.
Great! Glad it works!
You can “steal” those parameters (well, it would help if eBay actually documented them) off the eBay Advanced Search page by looking at the source code and seeing what variable name and value is passed for each setting
!
Eighteen products, wow! I probably wouldn’t put that many myself for fear of my listings outweighing my content. Google is getting very fussy about affiliate sites - I just had an simple Amazon search site dumped to position, like, 99999 from around 30, presumably because they didn’t think it provided enough value (give us a break, haven’t finished it yet!)
Hi, can you tell me what this error means?
value “” is out of range. (10008)
Maybe I’m unclear about what goes between the wordbay tags
Thanks!
Hi - hmm, never had that one before!
It does sound as though the keywords are not getting parsed properly. Are you using any special characters between the tags, like [ ] etc?
Actually, can you give me an example of tags you have used, so we can see if there’s anything obvious. Usually you can copy exactly what you put between the wordbay tags and paste it into eBay Advanced Search on the particular eBay site you are targetting and you should get the exact same results you would get if the plugin was working properly! So try that and see what you actually get!
[wordbay]real estate book[/wordbay]
Here’s the link with the error
http://www.unsoldproperty.com/2008/10/real-estate-ebay/
Thank you!
Well, your tags are fine as far as I can see, and should be producing results. However, someone else has just complained of the same error too.
The problem is, these eBay feed errors are totally undocumented (in fact the whole feed is, which makes development a pain, you have to figure it all out yourself). So I can’t know exactly what’s causing this error.
However, typical reasons for getting the error seem to be basically when there are no results to display. A reason for this could be a choice of category with no products in relating to those keywords, or a choice of country that’s in another language and does not have “real estate books”. You should maybe turn off geo-targetting while you’re debugging this too, if you are using it, since it may be serving you results from the wrong country (that’s the problem with geo-targetting, you don’t know what’s being served in other countries!)
Can you double check which country you have chosen and which product category and make sure they are OK.
If that isn’t the problem, I may have to send you a “debugger” version of the plugin which will display some more detailed error messages and help us figure out what’s wrong.
Hey, just to update - there is a script called TWPAuctions, similar to WordBay, though simpler, with perhaps less options and MUCH shorter code! Well, I have found sites using TWPAuctions that ALSO have this error.
I wonder, what host are you using, and do you know whether they are running PHP4 or PHP5? That could be affecting some things - I think Kerosene (author of TWPA) had similar problems. I believe Dreamhost was causing problems for him.
Here are the tags i’m using:
[wordbay]vegetarian[wordbay]
I have since removed geo-targeting and the category i have chosen is BOOKS. But originally i had it set to ALL.
Please advise. This is a great plugin and i would like to use it on this blog. Also what version of WP is this compatible with?
Hi,
Sorry for not getting back quicker. Unfortunately I don’t have the time to give detailed support for WordBay but I will try to help.
One problem with your tags is that the second one should be [/wordbay], but I am not sure if that isn’t just a typo, since it wouldn’t work at all if you’d written it like that.
So, are you saying that now you have removed geo-targetting it works? Just trying to isolate the problem, not sure if it’s the geo-targetting part or something else.
Hi, Markowe:
I have removed geo targetting but it still does not work. Also the tags submitted above simply had a typo. They are set in the correct format.
Would you like a link to the page, so you can see the error i’m getting? If so, below is the page URL.
http://www.groovyvegetarian.com/store
Let me know. I appreciate your help.
Ohhhhhhh…. Sorry - I assumed you had the same error as another user, one of those 10008 Out of range errors. Oh, this is different.
Hmm, Houston we have a problem. Your hosting company has blocked remote file access and it depends entirely on your hosting company whether they can allow this for you or not:
Option 1: Contact your hosting company, tell them about this error and ask them if they can enable remote file access through PHP - explain that you want to use this plugin, not hack the Pentagon (oo, that’ll get me some interesting search traffic)!
Option 2: Wait till next week - Jez Hopkins, who has helped a great deal with the geo-targetting side of WordBay has put together a workaround. I think it was intended to solve a different problem, but might solve yours too because it uses a slightly different approach. But it’ll take a few days to put out a new version of WordBay - bear with us.
Sorry for the trouble!
Hi, Markowe:
Yiippee! I was able to get the store to display correctly on my veg blog with the new update. Thanxs!
However i want to change the colors in CSS file, and cant find which is the code that needs to be changed. I was able to successfully change it on another blog a few weeks ago. But on my veg blog i cannot find it.
I’ve been on your blog like an hour and cant find instructions on how to change the colors. Let me know.
Oh, that’s great! I was still scratching my head over that error - have you any idea what was causing it, because some other people have complained of it too?
Sorry about the lack of info on the CSS - I must admit I had rather left that to the individual user to figure out. I think a future development might be to change the colours and stuff from inside the admin panel because as someone pointed out (and as I have experience too!), it’s a real pain in the neck when a new version of WordBay comes out and you automatically update and overwrite your CSS file and have to do all the colours again.
But in response to your request, I have put a quick guide to editing the WordBay CSS here: http://www.itsgottabered.com/wordbay/customising-wordbay/
Hope it’s some help!
Hi.
I’m having BIG problems with wordbay!
I’ve activated it and configured the settings. Placing wordbay tags in my posts does insert ebay listings.
However, it completely wrecks my website display!
I’m using a 3-column template (vrooom), and this just goes bananas.
I have also tried “modernpaper”, with the same result.
The wordbay stuff should appear in the middle column with the posts, but causes the posts to spill over into column 3, so the column 3 stuff disappears.
So far down the page, the middle column then takes over the whole width of the page…
I’ve switched off wordbay for now, but it’s a real shame.
Sorry to hear you’re having trouble.
I suspect the problem is due to some relatively simple CSS trouble. Check this out: http://www.itsgottabered.com/wordbay/images/quirkycars-test-small.png (this ought to freak you out!)
No, I did not hack your site! Just used Firefox Web Developer tools to insert some html into the spot where you had your [wordbay] tags (just in my browser!)
This demonstrates that it SHOULD work, anyway. My suspicion is that you are trying to display multiple columns and maybe the main content column is just too small for them to fit? Let me know if you have tried just a single-column display (as set in the backend). Also, you ARE using the latest version, I suppose, not the ancient two-panel display version I published about 6 months ago?
Let me know if this helps and also, if you are around right now, maybe you could reactivate the plugin and I could try to see from your HTML and CSS what is going on?
Hi, Markowe:
I just assumed that when i upgraded to the latest version, this is what did the trick. Other than that, i i have no idea how or why it now works. LoL.
But i’m glad it does work, and although i don’t have a flurry of sales. I’ll keep working on it.
Thanks again.
Missy.
Earlier in the comments you said to change code to
$description = str_replace ( “<a “, “<a rel=’nofollow’ target=’_blank’ “, $description ); /* Add “nofollow” to all hyperlinks */
to open in a new window. Then someone mentioned changing other lines too. Is that correct? I’m not good with code and don’t want to start changing things until I know for definite.
thanks
Thanks for the great plug in,
I tried to add a page with the plug in for the first time. I put several general key word but “no listing found” message appears(such as “cat”"cat food”Cat toys”). Is this because of the theme or how do I modify the key word to show ebay listings? Thanks again,
Hi everybody,does the geo trick works on your website ?
I have visited a few wordbay sites on the i-net but i never seen my country (netherlands)
come up in the ebay listings.
Doesn`t work on my site either.
Any Tips ?
Thanks
John
Sorry for the lack of response guys, I keep excusing myself that WordBay is a hobby and I don’t get much time to support it, but still, I feel bad not replying to people’s questions.
Jack, yes, changing that line would be enough to make all the links open in new windows (if you catch any that don’t, let me know!) If you want to wait, I can add that as an option in an upcoming version (I know, promises, promises).
Ayh, I guess you gave up on this by now, but I wonder if the problem was the one that is hopefully fixed now - category codes only working for the US and therefore producing no listings when used with another country?
John, good question about geotargetting - to be honest I have had no opportunity to test this with the Netherlands, or several other countries. What if you go to http://www.hostip.info/ and look up your own IP address? If it does not identify it as NL, then that would be why. But I am still looking to hear some more comprehensive feedback on geotargetting - it worked pretty well for the countries we could test, but it is quite possible that some are escaping…
Hi there,
great plugin you have there! I’m kinda new to affiliate marketing and right now I’m torn between BayRSS and your product. Yours seems to be working better for now because it shows good chronological order for items plus I’ve been able to tweak it to the point where I like it on my site. You can see an example here:
Find 8GB Memory Sticks
However, there’s a few issues I have and I hope you can help me.
1)No matter if I have geo-targeting on or off it always displays listings in my country’s language (German) and also directs me to the country-specific ebay. I actually noticed this on your vintage lamp site too. How do I truly turn off geo-targeting? Can you give me the line in the CSS that I need to fix and how? I’m kinda split on the benefit of geo-targeting right now…and I’m wondering: It actually show me the american listing once I click on an item - it’s just in the specific language and via the country specific platform. But in effect, the listing is the american one (makes sense since there are no listings in Germany for “8GB flash drive”). So does that mean I (or you) would still get the US commission when a german wins the auction but the money goes to an american seller? If so then the whole issue is mute and the geo-targeting might actually benefit me. But if it doesn’t then I would want all my listings to display in english and for Ebay US, no matter what country the site visitor is in.
2) In the wordbay.php it says “/* Add “nofollow” to all hyperlinks */”. Uhm, this is surely desirable for all the affiliate links but what about other links I have on my page? Internal as well as external, like to other blogs for instance? I actually want these to be recognized by the search engines. From what I know crawlers love especially internal links. So is there a code I can use to ensure other links’ visibility?
3) In the cloaked affiliate links I don’t see my affiliate ID. Do I need to worry about that? These cloaked links are nice but seem a little long. Would there be a way to customize these and maybe include custom IDs (for ebay reports)?
4) Have you thought about adding pagination? That’s one of the only features I like better about BayRSS. (Now I’m aware BayRSS costs money whereas yours is free. Well, disregarding “sharing the love” but hey, it’s optional.
Ok, I know this is quite a bunch but I would greatly appreciate it if you could get back with me on these as soon as possible. It would help me make a decision whether I want to return BayRSS and get a refund or not. Thank you for all your hard work! All the best,
Dennis
Hi Dennis,
I fixed your link
1) Hmm, geo-targetting is a little difficult to get ones head round and certainly I am not sure myself how well it is working. I can tell you one thing, I got US listings in $ when I went to your site. Is that your default? So wait, you get German listings even on my Vintage Point site? Now that is weird, geo-targetting is OFF. However, I had on OLD version of the plugin installed there (shame on me), so maybe that’s why. Maybe try now, I would be interested to see if it still does this. Hopefully I can explain the listing issue though - you have to tick “Allow geotargetting to override…” for your dispatch country. This is because basically eBay is actually one unified system in a way, and you get listings from all countries whichever one you search, unless you limit this. So that is why you set geotargetting to match the dispatch country. Then you should only get items that are dispatched from, say, Germany. But yes, otherwise it just does a conversion, that is normal eBay behaviour.
Is your default eBay Site ID set to Germany? If so, that would explain why you get German results whatever you do. However, I got US results, which suggests your default is US, and your geo is ON (my country does not have eBay). If your geo is OFF, then I should be getting German results, if your default is German. Make sense? If that confirms something is wrong to you, let me know! It would be weird if Geotargetting was working even with the option switched off (but not totally impossible
). If so, that’s a bug I can and should fix quickly!
2) Just to clarify this, nofollow tags are ONLY added to the actual eBay product listing itself, WordBay does not tamper with your other content in any way, so if you are getting links nofollowed there is another explanation.
3) No, don’t worry about your aff. ID - you can do a few clicks and check the following day just to make sure if you’re worried. It uses a very simple PHP function to “encode” the link - BASE64 encoding. If you take the coded part of the link and type it in here: http://www.opinionatedgeek.com/dotnet/tools/Base64Decode/Default.aspx - your link is easily revealed, and I can see your campaign code - 5336215408. Yes, they are rather ugly, it was a quick solution, but the only other decent solution I can think of is to use a database, save the links and then create neat short links. However, this will create an overhead, slowing the plugin down, and plugins have a habit of slowing Wordpress down as it is, so I would rather not do this. The other option would be to use JavaScript to mask the links altogether, which is possible, but I don’t like it, it is too sneaky for me, I don’t like it when I run over a link and nothing appears at the bottom.
4) Pagination, sure, I considered it, I guess I was being lazy when I wrote WordBay and also I’m not sure if people really bother leafing through pages, but it WOULD give you more content for your site! I will consider it, along with the growing list of stuff people have asked for, but it would take time, so maybe don’t ask for that refund yet
Well, I hope that’s some help - I would appreciate any more feedback on the geotargetting thing.
Hi markowe,
thanks for getting back to me so quickly.
1) Ok, good to know that my default setting of Ebay US is working. You went to the 8GB site, right? Because I also have BayRSS set up on some other posts and there it definitely shows US because that’s what I’m seeing there too. However, the posts with your plugin I get the US listings in german language. If I understand you correctly that’s an automatic thing done by the actual ebay feed? Then how come BayRSS isn’t doing it? From what I know the author claims that geotargeting is on there as well. I wish he would communicate more with me, his information sharing is kinda poor considering that his plugin costs $37. But anyhow, this still leaves this question: I got your vintage site and still see everything in German too albeit these are american listings. So I click on a lamp and I get directed to ebay Germany and let’s say I bid succesfully on the american auction. What commission will you get? The Ebay US or the country specific? I think it’s important to settle this. Hmm, I guess only ebay can answer that, huh?
In your plugin I have default set to US and geo-targetting completely off. I also have it set to show dispatch from US. Also when I go to ebay directly I have it automatically set to go to US, and not Germany. Despite all this the post that uses wordbay shows me the american listings in German and directs me to the german ebay. As I said above, this might not be a problem and actually beneficial as long as the commission gets counted towards Ebay US. But I guess it would be nice to really be able to control this language thing. Just because someone accesses my site from Germany doesn’t means that he/she is or speaks German, you know? Actually it’s likely they don’t, otherwise they wouldn’t have found my english site in the first place. (Unless google indexes the german language listings on my site but I doubt that)
2) Whew, that’s a relief. I just checked the source code on some of my pages and you’re right other links don’t show up with “nofollow”. :o)
3) I think you kinda lost me there. As I said I’m pretty new to all this stuff. I would say I’m a quick study though. :o) It is good to show some sort of link and your wordbay links are definitely better than the ebay rover. Now I don’t suppose the search engines could sooner or later penalize links that show “wordbay” or “BayRSS” in them? I guess if it ever comes to that one can still install a fix. :o) Thanks for the link, after I figured out now what exactly the coded part is it shows me the “real” link with my affiliate ID. Cool!
4) Well, for products like flash drives pagination is a good thing to have because of the huge amount of listings with them. I’m pretty sure some readers would like to sift through more than just 8 auctions. Btw, that makes me wonder if you could also set up a feature to vary listings amount for posts, like something to add into the wordbay tags. For instance if I only want to show 4 items instead of the default 8 I could just add [wordbay]keyword,4[/wordbay]. BayRSS does this and I like that a lot. But yeah I’m probably gonna wait a couple more days to ask for a refund but for now I’m heavily leaning towards Wordbay, especially since you’re so helping. Your plugin would definitely be worth a nice charge. I think it’s great that you don’t though and instead leave people the option to share their revenue with you as much as they like. Thanks again! :o)
Hi mark, it’s me again. After playing around with the plugin for several days now I have to say I REALLY like it. I love how it seems to be “smart” about how it displays what listings. However, I have one more question that is important for me to settle. I hope you can get back to me on this soon.
Is there a code I can use or something to override my default country setting “including dispatch from”, just for a specific page? Maybe one can change the script in a way that one just needs to add an override country ID into a wordbay tag? This would be really neat for me as I have several listings with rarer items where I need to rely on my default setting “any country/region” yet I also have more common stuff pages that I want to have set on Ebay US. For latter I’ve been trying to filter out all keywords that usually pop up in the foreign listings but thats a lot of work and doesnt really eliminate them all. Hopefully you can help me.
Cheers,
Dennis
p.s.: Regarding my question in 1) from my previous post I don’t have an answer yet. I’ve asked on the EPN forum what country commission would kick in but so far no replies. Maybe I’ll contact an ebay representative but I guess it’s isn’t really that important. Just interesting to know.
Dennis, sorry for not being too quick about getting back (I seem to open every comment with that apology). Just too much on - and that’s one reason I chose not to charge for WordBay, because a price like that is only justifiable if I can provide customer support, and unfortunately I am just not set up for it…
1) Yes, I forgot to address that question, actually the short answer is, I don’t know - good question, if you find out let me know. I may have confused you though re: Vintage Point because after posting I went and changed everything to US, but put geo on. However I ticked “Geotargetting overrides dispatch location”, so it shouldn’t be showing you US results, albeit in German… hmm…
OK, I guess I need to get my head around the language/site issues some more, but I think there are some real limitations, like you can buy US items through German eBay, it will be in Euro but item names etc. will of course still be in English - not much I can do about this, but maybe there are some other tweaks available…
2) Cool!
3) Ignore everything I said! Basically, this was the simplest solution. Yes, we had discussed the possibility of Google penalising things it recognises as a WordBay footprint, but again, I don’t think they do this outright, there are other factors - a thin affiliate site is thin with or without the WB footprint. If this becomes a problem I will explain how to change the “buy.php” thing and one or two other footprint tell-tale signs so we can beat the evil Google! I mean lovely Google.
4) Yes, I understand about pagination - will definitely look into it. And yes, adding parameters like number of listings is a definite option and we’ve discussed it a number of times. It’s only time that has prevented me as it seemed a complicated new thing to code for. However, now I am leaning towards doing it with “custom fields” - every WP post or page has them and they let you put whatever values you want in there - it would be more elegant I think and much easier to program.
Re: charging, refer back to my comment above - I guess one side of me would like to charge, but the other side doesn’t want the hassle, and anyway giving things away give me a warm fuzzy feeling
Anyway, I am glad people appreciate WB and I imagine people are making a lot of money from it when you add it up, if the tiny fraction that share revenue is anything to go by.
As for your other question about overriding “dispatch from” settings… fraid not. That would be for the same project as the listing number idea you mentioned above.
Phew, time for bed. Do let us know here if you get an answer about the EPN country commission thing because I’d love to know too!
Hi Mark,
no problem about the delay. We’re all kinda busy here and there.
As for 1) I think that wordbay for one reason or another always displays listings (whether US or not) in the country specific language. In your example it makes sense that it still shows me american listings because no german auction would be listed under “vintage lamp” or something like that. With my page however I have found that terms like “USB stick” or “flash drive” are often used in other countries too so I have to be pretty picky about what keywords I include and which to subtract, at least as long a I have “dispatch from any region” set. Either way its cool that the plugin offers these features at all.
3)I’m really not too worried about it. I’m sure if ever needed I can figure something out myself going into the buy.php.
4)Yes, it would be very much appreciated if override factors could be included in a future release, especially country settings. For now I’m just going to work around this and filter out foreign keywords for my various pages. And as for pagination I’m going to use ebay generated links from their EPN site. All a bit tedious but it should be worth it.
Thanks again and keep up that warm fuzzy feeling
Dennis
p.s.: If
p.s.: If you ever do decide to charge I won’t blame you and be more than happy to pay. But as you said you would absolutely have to ensure customer support and availability. With BayRSS that’s a huge problem. I still haven’t received my refund nor any response. Another customer I hooked up with has been having the same ignored treatment for 3 weeks, also no money back. One of the BayRSS affiliates has now withdrawn his support for the product because of these issues. So I really want to warn people here not to buy that plugin and instead go with WordBay!
Just to let everyone know, I finally received my BayRSS refund probably due to public pressure. However, no word of apology or explanation from Azlan.
Well, that’s good to know, I guess. I would repeat once again that I NEVER had any attempt to compete with BayRSS - I hadn’t even heard of it when I started developing WordBay, but again, if you’re going to charge for a product you really have to be able to provide full support, and I knew I was never going to be able to do that with WB.
Hi Mark,
Is it possible to change the customid to a defined variable ($var) in the url?
i.e. http://www.mywordbaysite.com?var=myitem
Such that ‘myitem’ becomes the customid instead of the page url?
Please advise.
Regards,
Sam
I know you’re snowed under with your regular job, and really appreciate the effort you put into this excellent plug-in … was wondering … please …
For using WordBay on pages with a single page template but a different page for each brand or make (e,g, Ford, Chrysler, GM etc.) would it be possible to set WordBay to use the native WordPress Custom Fields such that (rough example)
- in the page template the user embeds the WordBay tags with a call to a custom fields string.
- when creating the page, the user enters a custom field name such as “wordbay-embedded” and enters the keywords for that page
- the results turn up as they normally would for a post with the usual [wordbay] tags and keywords
This would allow using a single page (or even post) template and simply adding the keywords as a custom field.
Pushing the envelope on that, perhaps a function to the posts tag (e.g. [wordbay, 12]) such that the tag sets the number of items to display, rather than a universal quantity for all posts (and pages if the above is achieved)
Really hope you can accomplish this - I would of course gush revenue share in your direction
Gaz
I get the following error:
Warning: file(wp-content/plugins/wordbay/countries.txt) [function.file]: failed to open stream:
I believe it is because my WordPress installation is not in the site root but rather in a folder (wp). Your plugin should pick up the path from the setting to allow for installs that aren’t in the site root.
Thanks for a great tool!
Hi,
I love your plugin and it makes th site look very professional, but I have one problem:
The Ebay listings will not display in ‘Archives’, only on main page and in post page.
Any idea why this happens? I use Techy People theme http://www.ofimdavarzea.com/
Hi Mark,
I have one question. I look at your site http://apmart.com and I found out that the search looks for items in ebay.
How can I put this behaviour in other site?
Thanks a lot!
Martin
Hi, sorry, apmart is not my site, it belongs to a guy who used to use WordBay, I don’t know if he still does, but check out his contact page: http://apmart.com/about/contact/
Similar to Jon back in Sept 2009. I’ve been getting these errors when updating a post with wordbay tags in it:
Warning: file(wp-content/plugins/wordbay/countries.txt) [function.file]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/mywebsite/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wordbay/WordBay.php on line 19
If I change line 15 to:
$path .= get_bloginfo(’wpurl’).”/wp-content/plugins/wordbay/countries.txt”;
then all is well again. This error just seems to be appearing on my v2.9.1 blogs.
Darn, yes, thanks, that bug never got ironed out. You did well to correct it - this bit of code was written by Jez who did the geotargetting code and probably isn’t so clued up on the ins and outs of WordPress. WP does indeed have the function get_bloginfo(’wpurl’) which will correctly get the path of your site - important if for some reason your wp-content directory is not where it’s expected to be. Anyway, good job, that’s exactly the change that is needed. I am uploading a new version, the first new version in months, not very exciting unfortunately!
Thanks for your continued input Chuck!
Chuck - good find
Markowe - yes, thatfix will become more important in WP 3.0 when it merges a lot of code with WPMU - wpurl is used a lot in the WPMU functions I’ve been playing with on existing sites, and if you’re using the subdomain install (as opposed to the subdirectory install) then it becomes even more critical to functionality.
That said, I’ve not had any problem with it on my 2.9.1 sites - maybe it has to do with the way you construct the various settings paths in wp-config?
Oddball one this, but good to have it cleared away.
Gaz
Odd, yes, you have to be really careful with those paths, but if I have missed any then it is “just” sloppy programming on my part. I haven’t been following the development of WP 3.0 but I guess I should - to see if anything is being deprecated etc. Oh, heck, the whole thing is not very neatly coded, I would need to do a major rewrite at some point, but really don’t have the motive…
Glad to help.
(The whole v2.9.1 may be a red herring, the error.log in my wp-admin folder has these errors going back to 21-Jun-2009)
When I updated to 1.16, I ended up getting the “countries.txt” error you guys are talking about. So I had to reinstall and go back to version 1.15. So my problem is the opposite.. I dont understand what’s going on. I’m using wordpress 2.9.1
I think the problem i had was with line 19 in the WordBay.php file
get_bloginfo(’wpurl’) .
That change you added actually might mess up some users.
It adds my domain name into the file path however im using a shared webhosting and my directory isnt called the domain name.
So when i deleted that added part and edited it back to:
$path .= “wp-content/plugins/wordbay/countries.txt”;
I dont have the problem.
Bah… there’s always something… I will have to look into this - get_bloginfo(’wpurl’) is used in a number of other places in WordBay to get the correct path to the blog - do a search within the plugin code and you will see that. It shouldn’t matter if you are on a subdomain, because it should still get the correct blog path - in fact that is THE failsafe way to do it! As a matter of fact, the blog I use to test the plugin out is installed in a subdirectory and works fine… So will have to have a look and see if I can replicate this.
Rob, would you mind trying to install 1.16 again and seeing if it works? Keep a copy of 1.15 somewhere (can be got from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordbay/) of course. I did a tiny change, there was a strange little quirk in there so I would be interested to hear if it’s working now.
Mark, Can you fire this one onto the wish list for the next version (selfish reasons: will save me having to hand code it on all my sites after I update….and others may benefit).
Change the “Sorry, no items available to list” text displayed (line 240) when there is no items returned to “Sorry, no items available to list. Manual Search?” (or similar). Ideally linking the “Manual Search?” text to a eBay search as defined in the admin page or just to the eBay home page. (If you add something like ‘+blank+result” to the custom ID stats freaks :-b can monitor the number of clicks coming through these blank searches).
ohh…while I’m here.
WordBay.css is still creating tonnes of 404s after an upgrade. Fair enough custom colors are preserved and the WordBay.css file is recreated when an admin visits the options page. How about going a file_put_contents on plugin activation. Alternatively you could adapt akismet’s akismet_admin_warnings function to get admins to visit the options page if WordBay.css is not found.
TIA.
@Rob, I think I’ve cracked it, I am pretty sure that this problem is due to a server configuration issue with some users. I will make a fix and put out a new version asap, stay tuned to the blog.
@Chuck, thanks for the suggestions. There are lots of scrappy little things in WB that need tidying up, back from its earliest days when I knew very little about PHP and had no real road map as to where I was going with it (like I do now :)). I will try to implement something like you suggest, I quite agree that there should be a link there to mop up any visitors that encounter an empty listing.
Also, that .css implementation is a little shaky, you are right. I believe saving the file on plugin activation was something I couldn’t figure out at the time so left it for the time being, need to look into it. However, I am not sure about the 404 problem - interesting, I haven’t had this problem at all, is it intermittent or happening every time? Might be another problem with getting the path properly… Hmm, or else it’s deleting the file and then trying to load it or something… But anyway, WB should always fall back on the copy of the CSS file in memory…
It’s easy to pick holes in other people’s code, I know you will not take it to heart (to be honest I hit as many DailyWTFs moments going through my own old code).
Anyhow, I upgraded two of my sites to v1.20 and never went near the admin page in both cases, but my 404 logs started filling up with entries for WordBay.css errors. As you say the custom css was still pulled from memory. I’ll watch the automated upgrade process a bit closer next time and see if WP deletes the WordBay.css file (can’t see why it would tho).
(ps. hate to do this but this bug is still kicking about, just a wee reminder as it’s non-critical, but I rediscovered it today poking about other people’s WB installs >;-) and found mind were the same)
@Chuck, pick away - I am a relative PHP amateur, and as for when I STARTED writing WB..! So I know there is dodgy stuff in there. However, I hope you will be please to read my new post - http://www.itsgottabered.com/wordbay/2010/new-version-v121-bug-fixes-and-minor-new-features/ - this fixes the stupid CSS slashes thing, but as for the 404 errors, I can’t reproduce those so can’t be sure I’ve fixed them, but would appreciate any comments once you have had a chance to test v1.21.