Right i had the bright idea to start a price comparison website on my chosen subject.
I know nothing of xml or data feeds or pretty much anythin.
Figured id investigate and found this script. :) all's good so far..
Now ive uploaded the script and made my database etc . eveything seems fine. So i go to my first affiliate and ask for an xml data feed. they say they dont use them and only use FTP feeds !
Whats an FTP feed ? and can it be used in conjunction with this script ?
my other affiliate was going to be amazon.. and as ive read on this forum .. this script doesnt support that either..
Where is the User control panel with help hints and all ? Ive looked at the help manual on this site, which seems pretty vague at best. - im just totally totally lost !
I gather im supposed to get some form of feed and upload it into /feeds/ and from there i will be able to see it on the index page - (i think) Not sure because i dont actually see any template... lol..
Man this is all very confusing.
regards
newy
( really wanting to understand how it all works )
got the databse feed, uploaded it into /feed/
Registering it and got this:
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Hi newy,
That looks like the feed is still compressed. It doesn't look like it's zip compression; but it might be gzip.
Did you get this feed from Tradedoubler? I think their feeds are gzipped by default. If you are using Windows, Winzip will decompress a gzip compressed file - and you will then need to upload the uncompressed file to your server.
If you still can't get it to work if you could send me a link to the file on your server, for example:
http://www.yoursite.com/feeds/merchant.xml
(reply to your reg code or forum registration email) and i'll download the file you've got then download it and have a look for you.
Cheers,
David.
Hi david thanks for your help..
Ive emailed you my log in etc and location to the file. Its a .db file
all help very much appreciated
newy
Hi newy,
It is a bit of a confusing industry i'm afraid - not least of which because there is sometimes confusion with regards to terminology from merchants themselves - which is what I think you have come across in this place.
FTP stands for "File Transfer Protocol", so for a merchant to say that they offer an "FTP feed" really means that they offer a product data feed that you can access via FTP - in exactly the same way that you upload files to your website. The feed, once you have obtained it, is most likely compatible with Price Tapestry - as it will probably be either CSV or XML format. From that point, you can then follow the registration instructions by uploading that feed (that you have downloaded via FTP) into the /feeds/ directory of your Price Tapestry site.
Regarding Amazon - it's not so much that Price Tapestry is not compatible with Amazon, it is more that Amazon do not provide a product data feed. They do provide access via their web services - which is a real time query service - but no affiliate has access to their database as a complete feed i'm afraid.
It looks from your account email address that you are based in the UK - so there are certainly plenty of sources of good affiliate data feeds that you can use with Price Tapestry. The main demo site:
http://www.webpricecheck.co.uk/
...is build entirely from product feeds available from Affiliate Window:
http://www.affiliatewindow.com/
As well as the demo site, I also have sites using feeds from Webgains, Affiliate Future and Tradedoubler - please check the following thread for links to their sites:
http://www.pricetapestry.com/node/76
Feel free to get in touch by email or phone (or by the forum) if you want more specific help - there is quite a lot to take in if you are completely new to affiliate marketing - but it's certainly worth it!
Cheers,
David.