I will try to keep an up-to-date list here of bugs, issues, wishes etc.
- add another panel, for two eBay locales, like in the old 0.7 plugin.
- impression tracking not yet implemented!
- allow some parameters to be changed on a page-by-page basis using the [wordbay] tags?
- eBay thumbnail links not obfuscated. Not sure how to go about that other than caching the pictures or using a database, which I don’t really want to get into.
- requested by user: dynamic search so users can enter search terms and results are displayed within the WordPress page. Oo, nice idea. Let me think about that! done
- 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!