WordBay - new FREE WordPress/eBay plugin: create a niche site in minutes!

Oo, nice idea. I was thinking something similar - this is good for SEO too because Google often indexes these dynamic pages if you have Google code (Adsense, Analytics) embedded, thus expanding your content further!

I have added this to the wishlist and will give it some thought! Thanks for the feedback!

 

Update - I will include this functionality in the next update to WordBay. It's actually pretty straightforward (hoorah for PHP), but I definitely need to do some fine tuning on it, and to figure out how best to implement it so that people hang around on your site as long as possible I think a search box is definitely in order too...

P.S. All that link currently does is take you to the eBay page with the same search results, but with "minimum bids" set to 0, which means you get a wider range of stuff. Not very exciting though, maybe we could get it to offer an expanded list of search terms, like tags or something. Any suggestions welcome.

 

Hi,

I downloaded the plugin. It looks to be working.

But I can not find where to change my ID so I can track it.

Also how to do it if I have multiple ID's ( campaign ID's)

Thanks

 

Hi,

OK, this bit I kind of skimmed over a little bit in the instructions, so maybe I should clarify them. You need to edit the WordBay-config.php file, either offline, or in the Theme Editor if you find it easier.

Scroll down past the CSS stuff in the WordBay-config.php file and find:

/* WordBay - user editable parameters */

There are some general parameters and then the variables for the two panels. So most important of all you need to set $first_campid and $second_campid to your campaign ID/s. So you can have two separate campaign id's for the left and right panels. Was that what you meant by having multiple IDs? Or do you mean for each page of listings? If you mean the latter, no, I haven't implemented this yet, but that is an idea - I will put it on the wishlist, but I guess it will take a while. However, if customID's actually start showing up in tracking stats (see question below), then what we could easily do is make the CustomID field reflect the current keywords, or the page title. Then you would have a perfect idea of what page the click came from. Sound good? It would be much easier to implement than a separate campid for each page, since then you would need a new tag like [campid]533765765[/campid], or whatever.

You also want to set the other parameters too, of course. I have also included the option to set CustomID, but I can't for the life of me find where CustomID even shows up in EPN reports? I can't see it displayed anywhere, so I am guessing it is not properly implemented yet?

 

Is it geo targetted ?

 

No, currently it is not geotargetted - the reason is that ebay Publishers Network does not yet seem to explain how to geotarget RSS feeds (which is obviously how WordBay gets product data), or even whether this is possible. If at any point it becomes possible to do geotargetting with this implementation, well, I would love to include that option in WordBay. If anyone knows better than me, either with regard to RSS feeds, or via the full eBay API, do let me know.

P.S. The report analyser is great, Kerosene! Shame I haven't migrated my earning sites to EPN yet (I want to use WordBay, so I keep tinkering with it!), so no sales to analyse :/

 

does it have a wordpress admin backend/interface ?

 

Unfortunately not - I guess for a wider audience I would need to turn it into a valid WP plugin, but at the moment I have no idea how to do that, I have never looked into it I don't really want to spend ages writing a backend component right now - I don't think editing the WordBay-config.php file is a big deal anyway.

 

markowe: I sent you a PM. I wish to develop this into a valid WP plugin after seeing the demand here (of course the plug in will still be free).

 

yes that would be great. A plugin will help much for easy editing.

 

Cylai, thanks for being honest and approaching me first. GNU/GPL would in fact allow you to do this without asking me. However, as it happens I spent a sleepless night last night (man, the things I fret over!) and realised that by releasing under GNU/GPL I was essentially letting go of the product before even having the possibility of developing it to a release version (since this is still a BETA) and that this is a mistake. As the author I DO want to have the opportunity to develop this into a proper WP plugin, which WOULD be released as GNU/GPL when it's good and ready, but that I would be potentially denying myself control over this if I released the product now as it is with full redistribution rights.

So in short I have decided to change the terms of the license to a simple "Free for personal/commercial use but not to be redistributed in modified or original form" until I have done what I want with it. I'm sorry, I am aware that this is rather "rude" of me, but please put it down to my naivety (I told you, this isn't my main line of work).

However, I tell you what - give me one month, and if you don't see me developing WordBay to its full potential then feel free to nag me and I will very likely reconsider, as I ultimately do want this to be made available to the community!

Thank you for your interest,

Mark

 

Sure mark. Let's keep in touch.

I will use this concept to develop something else- for Amazon feeds perhaps

 

Oh yeah, sure, I mean the idea is pretty simple in essence, you can certainly use the idea, it's not THAT original

 

Nice plugin... keep building on it and I may even make a donation for such a good (free) addition

 

Hi, thanks - I haven't added a donation button yet Though I expect it will be hard to resist doing in the end. All this does take a lot of time...

 

Announcement:
Just to let you know that WordBay will almost certainly be turned into a valid WordPress plugin in the next release (or we may have one more release before then with a couple of new features, we will see). The current implementation WILL then almost certainly be deprecated.

However, if you have the current version of the plugin working and you are happy with the way it works then I would say "don't sweat it" - I am running this on some sites and am quite happy with it. The "proper" plugin will have to work differently - there won't be a special page template you install, rather you will simply insert the [wordbay] tags in either your post or your page, and if you have built with the old version you will have to change the template back to "page template" (the tags will continue working as they did). Also, there will be non-programmers using it, so I will have to add a few more features, including of course a back-end with default settings, plus eventually maybe some new tags to override these.

The first version of the valid WP plugin will probably also only have one panel to begin with, as the two-panel layout can break people's templates. However, I still want WordBay to serve the original purpose - the easy and quick creation of eBay niche sites, so I will continue to develop with this in mind.

New features in the pipeline:

- on-page search box which keeps the visitor on YOUR site
- possibly collecting visitor search engine keywords if they were referred from a SE and using them to generate a "find this" link (as SE indexing is always lagging behind your listings and visitors never quite find what they were looking for!)

 

Hey, what happened to your site!? It's down at the moment - I was just going to use it to check out some of my first EPN sales (using WordBay, the fantastic new, free WordPress eBay add-on )

 

A plugin would be great. keep updating us