Pro version feature list

Great - What "time" will it be ready ?

LOL

Hi David,

I like the idea of pre-releases. The whole idea is enough to make me buy a Magic Parser license.

However, can you acknowledge that the Pro Version will stay un-encoded PHP? I want to make sure I can add plugins or extensions to the base code.

Also, did you consider developing with the idea of easing plugins and other contributions ?

Thanks again, I.

It will not be encoded. There is currently no convenient mechanism to distribute encoded PHP scripts that does not create massive customer support problems, so i'm steering clear of that.

> Also, did you consider developing with the idea of easing plugins and other contributions ?

Yes. In particular; the product page (price search results) will have a plugin architecture for additional results. This would enable easy integration of results from, say, the Amazon Associate API.

One thing I will stress however; is that technical assitance for the product shall remain community / forum based with no official support commitment. This will of course be reflected in the price; so please bear that in mind if you are deciding between Price Tapestry and a custom developed solution. You will need PHP and web server administration experience.

Can we have an "active" admin panel to switch off merchants if required.

You mean so that you can temporarily turn a merchant off if their site is down or tracking is broken; and then turn it back on without having to re-register and re-import?

That's not actually as straight forward as it sounds because the select query has to study the merchant status of every product record. I'll have a think about options though...

Cool and a a -z like on http://www.electricbox.co.uk/

A-Z is no problem; i'll include a new search query format "bw:[text]" for "Begins with [text]"; and then if you want to create links to an A-Z, you'd simply link to search.php?q=bw:A (for A) etc. etc.

one option might be to create a script that dumps the products from the DB

Create a field in the feeds table that identifies if the feeds is active

Modify Merchants.php to display only live feeds

Modify import.php to only import lives feeds

The feeds could be reactivated by clicking on import in the admin area, where it will change the status in the feeds table, and re-import the feed

Great - Another

A pre-defined "Top 10 best sellers"

Just to chip my oar in...

1. If the price bandings are searchable, then how easy would an "alternative products" listing feature be, whereby three or four products from the same price band and category can be displayed? This could tie-in with the "pre-defined top 10 best sellers", by giving selected records a "weighting" i.e. making then featured??

2. Similar to above, although possibly less search-intensive, as it only includes one variable, would an "other products by [brand]" list be possible? (I'm sure that it is probably already integrated on some sites, and is fairly easy to do, but I know more Afrikaans than PHP)

3. Auto gunzipping of tradedoubler .gz files, as with feedprocessor.com

4. A version of the code with all references to .htaccess stripped out (or a pointer on what exactly I have to remove), as I wish to use an .htaccess files for 404 pages etc, but not for mod rewrite..

5. Inidividual search of brand/merchant (if at all possible?) - along the lines of " search.php?q=plasma&brand=sony " - I don't know if this is within the scope of the project??

6. Multiple database support?? Currently at www.madstock.com I have installed the script a dozen times (one for each subdomain) - this gets around the fact that there would be a massive (and therefore slow) SQL database, but does mean that if a merchant is in more than one category the feeds have to be xferred and imported for each subdomain. - I don't know if it is possible to add a line to the products and search pages that allows for selection of an alternative db??

Anyway, there are my inane ramblings - just a few ideas, I don't know how feasible any of the above is, and as always am very grateful for the support that you have given thusfar.

Thanks again,
Duncan

Hi David,

Can we freeze the feature list to those displayed on the "Pro Version" tab ? Or else we would not get any stable release before summer.

By the way, is there any internalization planned ? maybe by using gettext ? I am not talking about multiple languages, but rather making the translator job easier.

Thanks again, I.

Madstock

Individual search is already supported see:

http://www.shoppingchanneluk.com/search.php?q=brand%3ASony%3Aplasma

or by searching brand:Sony:plasma

Thanks for that - this opens up usability massively.

Thanks for pointing out the alternative search format, Searley.

Duncan;

Thanks for your comments; here's some thoughts on your ideas:

> alternative products / other products by [brand]"

Other products by [brand] is technially straight forward (it's a link to search.php?brand:$product["brand"]); I'll try to consider making it easy to add this sort of link to the product page through the template system.

> Auto gunzipping of tradedoubler .gz files, as with feedprocessor.com

This falls under the universal "web fetching" script that I am planning to develop but i'm not sure I want to include this in the distribution. The reason being it will generate a lot of incremental support overhead - many users will have problems with this feature - unzip / unrar etc. binaries not in the usual places; permissions not enabled; HTML being downloaded instead of a feed...

> A version of the code with all references to .htaccess stripped out

This has been done now - the current distribution uses a configuration variable to enable search engine friendly URLs.

> Multiple database support

I think this is pointing towards a multi-site setup where a single installation supports multiple "virtial installations". Drupal works like that; you install it once, and can gerate multiple instances with separate databases. Again, there's a complexity factor here so i'll think about how best to support this but I wouldn't want to commit to this feature in time for the next release...

I'll continue to keep a watch over this thread and keep the Pro Version page updated with the proposed feature list for the first release of "Pro".

Thanks again;
David.

I have been knocking myself out trying to ad a review and rate script to PT and came over here only to find out you will be including everything I want in the pro version. So my question now is: When? When? When? Like the rest of you I needed this yesterday. Thanks for the good work.

Hi, momotan it was posted in another thread that it could be 4-5 weeks, which i dont think is too bad, considering the changes that will be made, an aditional cost of about £45 was also mentioned for the upgrade to pro..

again i think very reasonable, i used to work in a development team mostly beta testing a project we were working on, and i would say the estimate on timescale is reasonable..

and i think worth waiting to ensure that it right!