Remove unwanted eBay strings from A2P [Auction2post] posts with Automated Editor

Woody — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 04:58:32 +0000

Free rules file with this post!

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!)

For Example:

My EBAY User ID: yah00002009

welcome to Our ebay Store shop

IF YOU ARE NEW TO EBAY OR DO NOT HAVE A PAY PAL ACCOUNT PLEASE CONTACT ME SO WE CAN HELP MAKE ARRANGEMENTS WITH YOU

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:

Install Automated Editor plugin on the blog in question. (Get it here and install like a normal plugin.)
Go to the plugin (Auto Editor on its plugin menu) and read the disclaimer (big red box) and THEN accept it.
Download the rules file I have created (Get it at the bottom of this post) and unzip it somewhere.
Go to “Import/Export” on the Automated Editor plugin menu.
Choose the aforementioned rules file and hit import.
You should now have 125 or so rules in your rules list
Now go to Schedules on the plugin menu and then click Add New.
Scroll down and hit Select All (under the long list of rule checkboxes ebay1, ebay2 etc.)
Scroll down again and select Most Recent Post from the Target dropdown.
Make sure run option is on “After a post is published”.
Save it.
Turn on schedules.
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.

Automated Editor Released!

Woody — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 12:33:55 +0000

A nice small chunk of a project, Automated Editor is a wordpress plugin which allows you to automate some of the post editing process. Written to be lightweight and flexible it can do a lot with a little input. The plugin replaces a previous script/small app I had previously commissioned to offer automatic string replacement/removal from posts at point of publishing. With this public release version though it has had all the bells and whistles added to it, and will do some other useful tasks such as the following:

Replace one string with another (String replace) e.g. Replace ‘X’ with ‘Y’
Remove instances of a string (String remove) e.g. Remove all instances of ‘X’
Replace strings which match a regex rule with another string (Regex replace) e.g. Replace any numbers (^[0-9]{3}$) with ‘y’
Remove strings which match a regex rule (Regex replace) e.g. Remove any numbers (^[0-9]{3}$)
Prepend a string onto the front of a post (Prepend) e.g. Add ‘X’ to the top of a post
Append a string onto the back of a post (Append) e.g. Add ‘X’ to the bottom of a post
Add a post into a category (Add category) e.g. Add category ‘X’ to the post if its not already added.
Add a tag onto a post (Add tag) e.g. Add tag ‘X’ to the post if its not already added.
Change a posts date
Change a posts status

(Taken from here.)

If you want to read more about the plugin you can check out this post on, What is the point in Automated Editor or go right ahead and get it from wordpress.org or buy the professional version at AutomatedEditor.com.

Watch this space for a few posts on how I use the plugin, (it works fantastically well when rigged up with Auction2Post.)

The post Automated Editor Released! first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.