I got Pricetapestry today and have been trying to get things setup.
I've been reading about Feeds being required, all I need to do is put them into the "Feeds" directory.
Ok... put what? Is there a sample "feed" file? Do I just need to create a text file and call it "feedfromthisplace.xml" and then put the XML url in it?
Also - I've read that there's "Magic Parser" that can be used. Is this an additional download/cost? How do the two work together?
Sorry if the questions are "newbie" to some of you reading this post, but it seems that the manual takes you only so far and then just stops. If it wasn't for the forums, I wouldn't even know about amazon.php, which I downloaded and edited per the forum post and yet still don't get results from. The amazon.php file is located now in the root directory when I uploaded it (I believe that's what the forum post said to do) but have no idea if I still need to do something with the feeds directory.
Another thing: Why isn't there a search feature for the forums? Would be helpful to search for stuff rather than go thru 120+ pages of posts.
Any help would be appreciated to get me going. I don't need someone to do all of the work, just give me samples or forum posts that explains the process please in creating a feed.
As of now it's like I have different parts of a jigsaw puzzle but no picture on the box of what things are supposed to look like.
Thanks,
Chris
The XML looks interesting. The info needs to be crafted by hand when there's a new price or addition? Or can the XML file be auto-generated and then placed?
The Amazon - I've used the script and can't seem to get talking to their server. I've got the key, secret key and Associate tag entered but still no go. Yes, I changed from .co.uk to .com in the file and did the edits to search.php and product.php. I've been trying to do a search that I know would work - kindle. I'm however not getting any result (at least I'm not getting an error either). In the admin area, I am not seeing the amazon.com listing for feed generation.
Is there something I need to sign-up for at Amazon? I've found something called "Amazon SimpleDB" where there is a charge. I'd like to know if I need to sign up for that or any other paid service before I spend the money and realize after the fact that I am going in the wrong direction.
Hi Chris,
As the Amazon API module is not a feed you won't find any reference to it in the /admin/ area of your Price Tapestry installation. One possibility is that URL Wrappers are not enabled on your PHP installation, which are required for the script to access the Amazon URL remotely. More info here:
http://uk2.php.net/manual/en/ref.filesystem.php#ini.allow-url-fopen
However, there is an alternative way to access remote URLs which is to use CURL, which is often installed on basic hosting accounts even when URL wrappers are disabled. To modify your amazon.php to use CURL instead, look for the following code at line 133:
MagicParser_parse($url,"myAmazonRecordHandler","xml|ITEMSEARCHRESPONSE/ITEMS/ITEM/");...and REPLACE that with:
$ch = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$xml = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
MagicParser_parse("string://".$xml,"myAmazonRecordHandler","xml|ITEMSEARCHRESPONSE/ITEMS/ITEM/");Regarding feeds - no need to craft anything by hand; you should be able to upload them to your installation exactly as you download them from the affiliate networks (although you may need to unzip the feeds first....)
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
Hi Chris,
Many thanks for your comments. I'll take on board how to improve the link between getting started and finding out more - the forum has grown very large in the 5 years that I have been helping people do more with Price Tapestry!
The forum is well indexed by Google, so rather than use the CMS search system there is a site search box on the following page:
http://www.pricetapestry.com/forum/
Regarding feeds, you would normally obtain these from the affiliate networks that you are a member of (e.g. Affiliate Window, TradeDoubler etc. in the UK), and for each merchant that you want to feature on your site you would download the feed from the affiliate network and then upload to your Price Tapestry site (that's where the feeds/ folder comes in). From there, going to your admin/ area will then let you register and import the feed.
I will email you a link to a dummy sample feed that you can use to get started before you have obtained real feeds for your own merchants.
If you would like to incorporate Amazon results, the instructions for adding API results to search results and/or product pages are on the API info page here - if you're not sure of anything of course just let me know..
Hope this helps - I'll send that email now..
Cheers
David.
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PriceTapestry.com