Do you use Auction2Post [A2P]? If you don’t its a wordpress plugin which automatically implants listings from ebay as wordpress posts, including affiliate links through the ebay partner network from which you earn a commission. Its quite useful. Read my post about it here. Anyhow if you don’t use the plugin you can pretty much skip this post, unless you use a similar thing which is generating all kinds of nasty strings you don’t want in your posts

This post will show you how to sanitise your auction2post posts for annoying (and contract breaking) ebay auction strings, it even has 125 rules already in a file for import!

The problem

Auction2Post is great in lots of respects, its well written and does a prescribed job. Where it caused irritation for me is arguably after its done its job, after the wordpress plugin had created its posts. You see you can create posts via templates, which is great, it allows enough customisation for most, however I wanted a bit of text processing as often you are left with irritating auction footers and garbage text which make the user hit back or close at a displeasing rate (some of these ebay strings might actually make your Auction 2 posts sites break ebay partner network terms of service, its really worth sanitising your posts as I describe below!)

The Solution

This problem with Auction 2 Post and wordpress is one of the reasons Automated Editor was born, to give a bit more freedom in text processing, wordpress filters are great but I don’t think filtering hundreds of ebay phrases like that is effective.

If you want to cleanse your Auction2post posts of dirty ebay auction footers and the like here is how I currently do it:

1. Install Automated Editor plugin on the blog in question. (Get it here and install like a normal plugin.)
2. Go to the plugin (Auto Editor on its plugin menu) and read the disclaimer (big red box) and THEN accept it.
3. Download the rules file I have created (Get it at the bottom of this post) and unzip it somewhere.
   
4. Go to “Import/Export” on the Automated Editor plugin menu.
   
5. Choose the aforementioned rules file and hit import.
   
6. You should now have 125 or so rules in your rules list
7. Now go to Schedules on the plugin menu and then click Add New.
8. Scroll down and hit Select All (under the long list of rule checkboxes ebay1, ebay2 etc.)
   
9. Scroll down again and select Most Recent Post from the Target dropdown.
10. Make sure run option is on “After a post is published”.
    
11. Save it.
12. Turn on schedules.
    
13. Post a test post, either via A2P or manually, it should remove any of the 125 annoying (common) ebay auction strings it finds! Sorted.

Notes on this method:

• You will need the Full version (Ultra Pro) of Automated Editor, the free version is limited to 3 rules and this rules file alone has 125 ebay-string removing rules. It’s cheap though here.
• If you already have Auction2Post auction posts in the system you will have to setup a different schedule to operate on those, I usually set this up before I set any automation (it’s quite easy, just do the same thing and switch out “Most Recent post” for “all posts”, run it once then disable the schedule – you don’t want it operating on them all every time!)
• Currently this removes 125 strings I have found previously, mostly from uk auctions, I am considering writing a simplified version of this whole setup, an “Auction2Post Post Cleaner” which you can just activate and leave, perhaps with cloud rules, so watch this space. Good thing about the above setup though is you can continually improve your own rules file by adding your own strings.

Rules File

The link below offers a RAR’d version of my Automated Editor rules file which contains 125 x ebay string removal rules, yours for free Please however do use carefully, as with all automated-editor situations if you don’t understand what you are doing then don’t use it, this is for the people that understand the above problem and have the full version of the plugin.

Download Rules File
[Right click-Save as]

The post Remove unwanted eBay strings from A2P [Auction2post] posts with Automated Editor first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

So if your in the same boat and you have hundreds (thousands?) of RSS urls hard-coded into files across multiple servers I would recommend you get working, perhaps the following will be of use. I should mention at this point that Auction 2 Post users (and Bans, Wordbay etc.) will not suffer any fallout as they use the shopping api (which is sensible now, but back in 2006 wasn’t an accessible option.)

I have written a quick transformation script (js) which will take an old epn RSS url (http://rss.api.ebay.com/ws/rssapi?…) and transform it into a new one (http://rest.ebay.com/epn/v1/find/item.rss?…), if you only have a few urls to change over then it might be enough for you:

If you have a LOT of these urls in files (like I do) then you might want to use something a little more automated. In my case I wrote a complete FTP spider which flies for each and every file hunting for old ebay RSS urls, transforming them and updating the pages. This was fine in my case because mine were pretty standardly laid out, similar use etc. I wouldn’t recommend it if you use the extremity of the RSS parameters.

Anyhow as the FTP crawler was pretty huge of a code puke, I might release that separately at some point (it has other good uses ;)), here is the csharp for transforming old RSS urls into new ones though (Note: it doesnt deal with all the parameters, only the most common/ones I use regularly, it may need tailoring.)

static string transformEPNRSSUrl(string inputUrl)
{
    string transformed = "http://rest.ebay.com/epn/v1/find/item.rss?";

    //split url by ?
    string[] splitUrl = inputUrl.Split(new char[] { '?' });

    //split second by &
    string[] splitParams = splitUrl[1].Split(new char[] { '&' });

    //new params
    string newParams = "";

    //transform params
    foreach (string s in splitParams)
    {
        string retID = "";
        string retVal = "";
        string[] sV = s.Split(new char[] { '=' });

        //mostly :p
        retVal = sV[1];

        //see if tis required
        if (sV[0] == "sacat") { retID = "categoryId1"; }
        if (sV[0] == "satitle") { retID = "keyword"; }
        if (sV[0] == "afepn") { retID = "campaignid"; }
        if (sV[0] == "customid") { retID = "customid"; }
        if (sV[0] == "saprclo") { retID = "minPrice"; }
        if (sV[0] == "saprchi") { retID = "maxPrice"; }
	
        if (retID != "")
        {
            if (newParams != "") { newParams += "&"; } //for all but first
            newParams += retID + "=" + retVal;
        }

        //last few additions 24/06/2011
        if (sV[0] == "fts" && sV[1] == "2") { newParams += "descriptionSearch=true"; }
        if (sV[0] == "sascs" && sV[1] == "2") { newParams += "listingType1=AuctionWithBIN&listingType2=FixedPrice"; }

    }

    transformed += newParams;
    //following is some defaults for me, check these yourself, use:
    //http://woodylabs.com/scripts/ebay-epn-rss-url-converter.php
    transformed += "&sortOrder=EndTimeSoonest&programid=15&toolid=10039&listingType1=All&lgeo=1&feedType=rss";

    return transformed;
}

Use both the transformer script page and the csharp code at your own peril, it worked for me over hundreds of urls, mostly without a hitch, but thats not saying it will for you. Check your urls, after all each is probably worth £ to you. Visit the RSS urls and use the ebay tool validator to check the RSS feed has worked!

Just a quick mention of the positives of ebay deciding to rip out the old system (its not all a pain in the arse!):

• It reminded me how widespread my old ebay affiliate sites are, it was a good excuse to take stock and write FTPCrawler
• The whole system is much cleaner, parameter wise
• The introduction of multiple selection parameters is useful
• The new RSS generator is nice (as much as anyone uses the thing

The post Ebay Partner Network Changes RSS Urls (again) first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

You might have to scale it up a lot though, if you don’t choose good niche’s and good domains/designs. From the few I have put up the great domains/good sites do best, but then I did most promotion for them so perhaps that is biased. All in all I will keep A2P in my developers arsenal, for $69 or whatever for a lifetime licence – you cant go wrong with it. If you don’t make your money back and a lot more then you shouldn’t be trying to make money online.

The post Auction 2 Post Recap first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

1. Use getcwd to find the working directory (make a new .php file with two lines “echo getcwd().'<br />’;” and “phpinfo();”, ftp this to the root of your domain on 1and1 shared hosting and then navigate your browser to the url and leave this open in a tab/write it down)

2. Download Linux (x86) .zip archived ionCube loader files from here (http://www.ioncube.com/loaders.php)

3. Upload ionCube folder to the absolute root of your hosting (this is so you don’t have to maintain a copy per website later if you have multiple sites) – I called the folder ioncube

4. Open up notepad and add a line “zend_extension = /homepages/**/**********/htdocs/ioncube/ioncube_loader_lin_5.2.so” – where the **** will be letters/numbers you will be able to find these out from step 1 – save this as php.ini on your desktop or similar (unless you already have a php.ini for this website/subfolders of this website at which point you will want to make a copy of them and add this line then re-upload)

5. Upload php.ini to the domain’s root folder (where you require ionCube to be loaded)

6. Revisit your original .php file and search the page – you should now find “ionCube” under additional modules

Notes:

• If  you are using something like auction2post you may need to copy this php.ini into any subfolders which have .php files in that may need ionCube, this seems to be a slight bug in the 1and1 php.ini system
• There is a 1and1 guide for doing this, however its not particularly helpful (http://faq.oneandone.com/miscellaneous/24.html)
• You might wan’t to make 1and1 run php5 before you do this, depending on what you are using it for – this will mean adding “AddType x-mapp-php5 .php” to the domains .htaccess file

The post ionCube on 1and1 shared hosting first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

But irrelevant of the selling gumpf I had heard good things. In the uk it worked out as £68 or so with currency conversion to buy Auction 2 Post and a pack of 20 themes and it is, worth it. Worth it that is if you intend to use it to satisfy a need. I wouldn’t buy it if you are just looking for some new “get rich quick scheme” to burn your money into, get it if you know wordpress, get it if you already have some ebay sites (php bay, bans, bespoke – please say you have bespoke!) or a good use within an established site network/blog context.

There are lots of ways  you can use Auction 2 post, essentially it just posts ebay auctions as posts’ and offers you a host of ways of doing that, within templates, automatically etc. and you can stay within the ebay partner network rules as long as you invest a bit of time in reading them (you should do this when you sign up, by the way!) A word of caution at this point though, EbayPartnerNetwork is apparently getting hotter on the unscrupulous affiliate and if you were not careful you could probably tear their Terms of Service to shreds with this plugin, not that I would know about doing that! EPN (Ebay Partner Network) is lucrative and worth investing time if your a natural SEO developer, auction 2 post is a nice implementation of a wordpress plugin that helps you into this – but its all about how you use it!

I won’t go into how I am using this WordPress plugin, or how you should – there are a lot of great ways this can work for you. I have set up several experimental sites and am using it in xx other blogs, I will perhaps release some results, experiences and stats in the near future, although we don’t want A2p to get too big do we The forum’s and support for Auction 2 Post are great, zizby/radio is quick to respond to your questions about the plugin – the member area is simple but I have found a few dead links – nothing important and I am sure they’ll fix this. In essence if you know what your doing with the web and wordpress you need this plugin in your affiliate arsenal!

Get Auction 2 Post
(Just skip through the blurb and click order now)

The post Auction 2 Post first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.