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WordPress and Joomla Plugins, new features update

Submitted by support on Mon, 2011-06-13 13:04 in

Hi everyone,

Update: WordPress plugin now available at PriceTapestry.org!

I'm pleased to announce that I have worked out a way forward regarding WordPress and Joomla plugins for Price Tapestry that will soon be available through pricetapestry.org. Beta testers are invited to register now, please complete the form at pricetapestry.org to register.

In addition, I shall be working on 2 significant new features. Firstly, now that the majority of hosts are making CURL (a PHP library for retrieving URLs) available on even the most basic hosting accounts I will be developing an integrated "Add Feed by URL" together with CRON scheduled automation of feed updating and importing. This feature will also be able to support gzip and zip compression subject to server capabilities; however even where not an option, as bandwidth is becoming less of a cost centre for all parties these days many affiliate networks are now providing uncompressed URL options for their feeds.

Secondly, I will be making significant improvements to the Product Mapping feature in order to make it much easier to create a valuable price comparison site. Primarily this will involve a more streamlined interface for identifying and grouping identical products between merchants, plus replacing or complimenting merchant provided product descriptions with custom descriptions / images if required.

These will both be 100% /admin/ features and therefore a straightforward upgrade for existing customers which, as always of course, is completely free.

All the best,
David
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PriceTapestry.com

Submitted by Keeop on Tue, 2011-06-14 15:15

Hi David,

I would be interested in looking at the improved product mapping as part of a standard PT application. Is this only tied up in the add-ins or could this be trialled separately?

Cheers.
Keeop

Submitted by support on Tue, 2011-06-14 15:21

Hi Keeop,

That's coming as a standard upgrade. not specifically related to the plugins - watch this space for updates.

Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com

Submitted by cascadeclimbers on Tue, 2011-06-14 22:34

Hi David,

This is really great news! Can't wait to try out the wordpress plugin.

For the product mapping features I do have a few observations now that I have been running PT for a year now with close to 50 different feeds.

- Some feed's descriptions are poor. Others are overused ie 1000 other affiliate sites use them. Having the ability to sort the list of feeds from good to bad, and have that order influence which description is showm for a given product would be great. I believe we have discussed this in private before.

- For a large product catalogue the biggest challenge is mapping all those product, as I'm sure you are aware. I pretty much gave up on it. Here is an example of one product and how many permutations of that product name can be represented.

Marmot Couloir Long Sleeping Bag
Marmot Couloir Regular Sleeping Bag
Marmot Men's Couloir 0 Degree Down Sleeping Bag
Marmot Couloir +0 Sleeping Bag
Marmot Couloir 0 800+ Down Mummy Sleeping Bag Long In Size: Left
Marmot Couloir 0 800+ Down Mummy Sleeping Bag Long In Size: Right
Marmot Couloir 0 Degree Down Sleeping Bag Long
Marmot Couloir 0 Degree Down Sleeping Bag Regular
Marmot Couloir 0 Degree Down Sleeping Bag Regular In Size: Left Zipper
Marmot Couloir 0 Degree Down Sleeping Bag Regular In Size: Right
Marmot Couloir 0 Degree Sleeping Bag
Marmot Couloir 0 Sleeping Bag (800 Down)
Marmot Couloir 0F Sleeping Bag
Marmot Couloir Reg Sleeping Bag
Marmot Couloir Sleeping Bag
Marmot Couloir Sleeping Bag: 0 Degree Down

The question is how do you programmatically solve this problem? One idea I had, similar to above, is to have a master feed, one in which the site owner believes provides the highest quality product names. From there you could use that feed to map products based on presence of all of the words. For instance all of the results have Marmot, Couloir, Sleeping, Bag. Anything with those words would map together based on that master feed. Exceptions might have to be added for Women's and Men's.

Another option which is more of advanced topic would be the use of something like Solr to either return results or map products since it is capable of handling misspellings and punctuation.

Just thinking out loud here; I know this is something we have talked about before. Like I said this is the biggest challenge facing us today.

Cheers, Jon

$> cd /pub
$> more beer

Submitted by gregor on Wed, 2011-06-15 16:13

That's great news. Will the Wordpress plugin merge wordpress and pricetapestry search results into one result? So if the user searches for "blue widget" it will show both pricetapestry products and also any wordpress pages that mention "blue widget"? That would be the answer to several of my problems.

Thanks for making this upgrade.

Gregor

Submitted by Gael on Wed, 2011-06-15 17:41

Hey I approve what cascadeclimbers says, merchants have many different names for the same product and that would be awesome to merge them.
Would that be possible to have a function similar to this thread http://www.pricetapestry.com/node/4007 but when you import the feed?
So let's say The product name is "Price Tapestry v10 with joomla widget", that would import the product as "Price Tapestry v10" keeping the first three words and stoping at the third space?

Cheers, Gael

Submitted by idbrokersnick on Wed, 2011-06-15 18:19

Heya David,

More than happy to work with you on the Joomla side, you have helped me so much on the Joomla stuff so far the least I can do is help in any way I can...

Nick

Submitted by support on Thu, 2011-06-16 08:02

Hi cascadeclimbers / Gael,

Thanks for the comments. Automated product mapping, as I was just discussing with another customer recently, is actually an extremely complex task for as computer, despite being trivially simple for a human! Consider the following product names;

1) Sony Bravia KDL32W4000
2) Sony Bravia KDL32W4000 Stand
3) Sony Bravia KDL32W4000 32" LCD TV

It's reasonably clear to a human that 1 and 3 are the same product, where as 2) is an accessory for the product; which is wherein the problem lies. I have even tried using a price envelope to try and separate accessories from actual items but it gets very complex very quickly!

In the new product mapping tool I'm considering the form of left and right panels, the left panel being products assigned to the mapping, and the right panel being a search / results list, from where you can select / toggle and move from the results into the mapping panel. This would let you quickly pick out the items that aren't applicable etc.

Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com

Submitted by support on Thu, 2011-06-16 08:03

Hi gregor,

That's the sort of thing we'll work out during the beta test - as there will be various ways in which people would want to use the plugin.

Cheers,
David.
--
PriceTapestry.com

Submitted by cascadeclimbers on Fri, 2011-06-17 00:23

Hi David,

I certainly appreciate the complexity of the problem and I have no doubt you have spent countless hours trying to find a solution. It makes me wonder how others affiliate comparison sites do it; I'm sure there is a lot of manual labor involved.

Maybe like you suggested the solution doesn't involve writing a complex algorithm to match product but making it easier to map products. Along those same lines, making it easier to identify products that need help would be useful. For instance in your example, scanning the database for product name Sony Bravia (brand name + 1 word) would present you with a bunch of options, different models and accessories, and then you could map like you suggested. The problem is in a very large catalog you never know if products are mapping correctly unless you go through the whole thing manually. With some sort of automated system that runs after import, it would at least present you a list of products that are not mapping correctly. Or categories that have changed. Is this making sense?

Cheers, Jon
$> cd /pub
$> more beer

Submitted by Gael on Fri, 2011-06-17 05:04

Hi,

That's true, I didn't see it this way. I forgot that english and french are very different when you form product names, when we say "Adaptateur pour Iphone" you say "Apple IPhone Adapter".
(deleted this)

The new feature will be great by the way

Cheers, Gael

Submitted by Keeop on Fri, 2011-06-17 11:37

Hi all,

A few comments....

With regard to a 'master feed', I do this but only for assigning categories and brands from the master feed to the other feeds where the product name already matches - it is useful for that but you're still stuck with the product name issues.

Maybe the 'levenshtein' function in PHP could come in handy here? You could create a function that works out how similar words are and matches them based on a probability score. This could be applied to an array of words and the 'score' value adjusted until the best results are achieved. I guess you could further tweak this by exact and negative matching again whereby certain words must be present or not. I currently use something a bit less challenging when trying to pick out item attributes from description fields to match up to a master set. There are a lot of ready-made functions around which might be worth taking a look at. Think I might have a play with this with those three similar items you listed!

Cheers.
Keeop

Submitted by fstore on Mon, 2011-06-20 05:21

I can do testing on joomla side. I am currently running joomla with pt.

Submitted by fstore on Mon, 2011-06-20 06:56

David
If I understand it right ,

1- with this joomla plug-in successfully working I will no longer need to convert existing HTML design into pt as mentioned in this post http://www.pricetapestry.com/node/3619

2- And I will be able to search products comparison by using joomla search box?

3- will it be able to shorten the URL to just 2 levels.

4- what will be the cost of this plugin?

5- approximately when it's going to be available?

Thanks
Hassan

Submitted by fstore on Mon, 2011-06-20 07:06

I forgot to add one more thing,
Is this plugin different from external.php ? Which is currently being discussed in other post, Are these two different things?

searchExternal.zip
pricesExternal.zip
featuredExternal.zip

Thanks

Submitted by support on Mon, 2011-06-20 07:51

Hello fstore,

Yes - it will be very different from the external scripts and would totally embed the Price Tapestry front-end functionality within your Wordpress or Joomla site, so no need to convert templates etc. However the primary intention of the plugins will be to do exactly what you're trying to do from your Shorten the URL thread, and that is to hook in via their respective plug-in architectures to the Wordpress or Joomla URL structure so that content can truly be embedded within your CMS script with clean URLs, which is not possible with the generic external scripts!

Integrated search should be possible, that's the sort of thing we'll work out during the beta as I expect there will be different ways in which people will want to use the plugins. I'm concentrating on the Wordpress version at the moment to be launched next month and that will help to set the expectations and requirements, and then from a stable version of that we can move on to a Joomla implementation. Just like the external scripts these will be resources freely available to use.

Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com

Submitted by fstore on Mon, 2011-06-20 12:07

Thanks David, I better wait for Joomla plugin.

Submitted by kimarie on Wed, 2011-06-22 23:01

Will it be able to do what I am doing on here {link saved}

How easy is it to transfer everything from that setup to the new plugin set up?

For those doing the beta test will there need to be any more major updating/changing code on my site during the beta or will that all be done on your end? As I am tryign to get PT set up so I can run it and leave it.

What will happen with this type of thing: http://www.pricetapestry.com/node/4057 ?

And finally my hosting doesnt allow shell access(or whatever it is called, cant remember at this time of night lol) that you need to set up the CRONs, is this a problem?

Thanks

Submitted by support on Thu, 2011-06-23 09:26

Hi kimarie,

You'll be able to do exactly what you're doing on the page you linked to. Essentially, as well as supporting a full implementation embedded within your Wordpress site, you will be able to add a shortcode to pull in search results for a fixed query

In other words, everything that you can do now by inserting PHP (the "calling code") you will be able to do with shortcodes, e.g.

[pricetapestry q="widgets"]

Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com

Submitted by kimarie on Thu, 2011-06-23 17:54

What about the cron job things?

Currently I run a php script to download and then upload the feeds but need to import them manually would this solve this?

Submitted by support on Thu, 2011-06-23 17:59

Hi kimarie,

Whilst not directly related to the plugin; part of the enhancement I'm working on is to be able to add feeds by URL, and combine automated fetching and unzipping (server capabilities permitting) with importing that you can then set-up to run via CRON.

Cheers,
David.
--
PriceTapestry.com

Submitted by kimarie on Mon, 2011-06-27 15:57

I just tried to sign up but it is saying invalid registration code? I used the number on this account?

Submitted by support on Mon, 2011-06-27 16:12

Hi kimarie,

I just registered you successfully using your registration code and the email address on your account, so you will receive an email as soon as ready for beta testing...

Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com

Submitted by babrees on Wed, 2011-06-29 06:42

Hi David

I'm currently testing WP 3.2 RC2. I presume this plugin when available will be compatible with 3.2?

---------
Jill

Submitted by support on Wed, 2011-06-29 08:21

Hi Jill,

Sure - currently developing on 3.1.3 but version compatibility will be something I'm considering carefully (both forwards and backwards compatibility) so I will check against the latest RC before releasing the beta.

Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com

Submitted by lab on Fri, 2011-07-08 13:54

Hello David
I would try the plugin for Joomla
Thanks
lab

Submitted by support on Fri, 2011-07-08 15:28

Hello lab,

Sure - if you complete the form at pricetapestry.org and select the Joomla plugin to beta test you'll get an email as soon as it's ready to try.

Just as an update for all, updated distribution to be released next Monday (11th) and I'll then concentrate on the Wordpress plugin in the first instance. Once beta testing has established a baseline functionality I'll then port that across to a Joomla plugin...

Cheers,
David.
--
PriceTapestry.com

Submitted by marco.saiu on Fri, 2011-07-08 15:51

I can help you to test pt with Joomla.

Submitted by tbbd2007 on Sat, 2011-07-09 17:04

David,

I look forward to getting the WP update on Monday then. Once I've got it I'll upload it to the server and add it to my 2 new sites for testing.

Kind regards,

Stephen

Submitted by support on Sat, 2011-07-09 17:13

Hi Stephen,

Just wanted to keep you updated, it's the core Price Tapestry update that I'm aiming to release on Monday, the Wordpress Plugin will follow shortly (the majority of the code is completed), towards the middle of the month; if you have completed the beta registration form you'll receive an email as soon as it is available for download...

Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com

Submitted by tbbd2007 on Sat, 2011-07-09 17:26

David,

Thanks for the clarification. You have my new HM email address instead of the old TBBD one so I'll hold fire 'til the plugin's release and add it then.

Kind regards,

Stephen

Submitted by redmosquito on Sun, 2011-07-24 14:57

Hi David

Any update on the wordpress plugin, can't wait to see it in action.

JD

Submitted by tbbd2007 on Sun, 2011-07-24 20:24

David,

That looks stunningly good! Had a quick play around with it and it all seems to work as expected. Let's hope this all goes well!

Kind regards,

Stephen

Submitted by tbbd2007 on Fri, 2011-08-05 13:30

David,

Looking forward to the iminent plugin beta test, hopefully, starting next week!! :-)

Is there any preparatory work needed to be done? or is the plugin a complete out of the box solution that I only need to have the affilitate URLs to add?

Kind regards,

Stephen

Submitted by support on Fri, 2011-08-05 14:13

Hi Stephen,

The plugin operates against a Price Tapestry managed database installed within the same MySQL database as the WordPress installation that you wish to use. This shouldn't be a problem at all as WordPress uses a default table prefix of wp_ and Price Tapestry uses pt_

Otherwise installation can be totally flexible, if your WordPress site is top level and your visitors will not be seeing the front end part of Price Tapestry at all then you could install Price Tapestry into a sub-directory, say, /pt/, upload your feeds to /pt/feeds/, register and import as normal at /pt/admin/.

Alternatively, if you wanted your main site to be a Price Tapestry installation, and you had WordPress installed in /blog/ that would work equally well, it's totally flexible.

So the main thing just to recap; if you're getting ready in preparation is to make sure that WordPress and Price Tapestry are installed in the same MySQL database. It's easy to move a Price Tapestry installation across - simply use the Database Tool (Admin menu) to backup; re-install into the same database as WordPress; and then use Database Tool again to restore everything.

Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com

Submitted by support on Tue, 2011-08-09 16:42

Hi everyone,

PriceTapestry.org for WordPress will now be available from Monday 15th August 2011.

Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com

Submitted by projectman on Fri, 2011-08-12 20:33

excellent news! I cant wait to try it.

Submitted by support on Mon, 2011-08-15 08:49

Hi Everyone,

PriceTapestry.org for WordPress is now available...

http://www.pricetapestry.org/

Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com

Submitted by huntz on Thu, 2011-09-08 19:35

Hey there,

I'm wondering where to get the wordpress plugin?

Cheers

Submitted by support on Thu, 2011-09-08 19:39

Hi huntz,

The plugin is available over at pricetapestry.org, create an account using your Price Tapestry registration code and email address and head to the download page where you'll be able to get the plugin - full documentation and separate support forum for the plugin is on that site...

Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com

Submitted by smartprice24 on Thu, 2012-06-07 22:49

Hi David, i have problem register account in to pricetapestry.org. Invalid Registration Code! How to download plugin for wordpress

Thanks
Giuseppe P.

Submitted by support on Fri, 2012-06-08 08:33

Hi Giuseppe,

The code is linked to the email address that was used to make the purchase and I notice that was a temporary address. Please send me an email from the email address you would like to use making a note of your current registration code and I will issue a new code for you...

Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com

Submitted by ajmboy on Sat, 2013-05-25 16:53

I sent an email because I'm having difficulty registering at that site to download the plugin.

Submitted by support on Sat, 2013-05-25 17:40

Hi ajmboy ,

It was because you have been a customer for over 5 years, I have replied to your email with an updated registration code - apologies for any inconvenience.

Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com