Entries by Andrew

Hi all,

I have just created a different Wiki to give source code examples easier for different shopping functionalities.

http://opensource.datafeedfile.com

I have also briefly introduced the new DFFML concept, DFF Framework API (PHP) and DFF Instant website concept. I will be working on documentation on all those three new concepts throughout this week.

Here is an Open Source example I have just created:

http://opensource.datafeedfile.com//...layLatestDeals

Will somebody try this out and try to learn it to see if the format and concept makes sense. If it does I am going to write many more of this kind of small PHP examples.

We will also be releasing Fully Ready Instant Website (we call it DFF Instant Site) as soon as these few concepts are reviewed and critiqued.

So please provide your opinion throughtout the rest of this week.

Thanks

Andrew

NEW FEATURE!

We have created Merchants / Stores List which supports many different search filtering criteria such as merchant name keyword search, category and first letter filtering. Basically this tool is a merchant list search engine.

Documentation using Merlist JSON: http://wiki.datafeedfile.com//wikka....dffMerListJSON
Documentation using Merlist XML: http://wiki.datafeedfile.com//wikka....=dffMerListXML

We now have several ways to retrieve merchant list or information for our growing list of merchants, all of the methods are now summarized in our Wiki Documentation. Please click the link below to learn more:

http://wiki.datafeedfile.com//wikka....kka=dffMerInfo

MLB.com is migrating to LinkShare. The program on CJ will be officially closed on 8/14/08. Once we get the feed from Linkshare, DFF also will switch to LS. We advise you to apply the program at LinkShare if you have not done so.

Thanks

The duplicates merchants list is now done. To see the list and manage the merchant, you have to login to your account and go to the merchant tab. Click on the "list duplicates" link on the left hand side.

http://www.datafeedfile.com/login.php

We recommend for you to only select one unique merchant, because having duplicates may cause our shopping tools to show multiple prices / product listings which may confuse shoppers.

There are several Shared Commission merchants added to DFF.

Maps.com – CJ
Maps.com is a leading provider of mapping products and solutions to business, education and consumer markets. Maps.com carries over 25,000 products to choose from. If you have website that geared to the Travel, Adventure, Education, or Mapping visitor, you certainly want to check Maps’ tools and scripts at DFF

PerfumesWorld.com Inc – SA
The name said it all, with over 2,000 products, you certainly can find any perfume you looking for at PerfumesWorld.com
Check out PerfumesWorld’s tools and scripts at DFF

WorldClassNutrition.com – SA
WorldClassNutrition offers sport nutrition at rock bottom prices. They also take sport nutrition one step further by providing the latest in training and diets.
Check out WordClassNutrition’s tools and scripts at DFF

Juvenesse – SA
Juvenesse is a private label line of skin care and anti-aging products. The brand found an immediate and growing following in major department stores including Marshall Fields, Bloomindales and Carson Pirie Scott.
Check out Juvenesse’s tools and scripts at DFF

Maps.com, PerfumesWorld.com, WorldClassNutrition and Juvenesse are managed by Snow Consulting

Esource nutrition – SA
Esource Nutrition offers nutrition products with best prices online and offers a discount for bulk purchases. Esource also backed all their products with 100% money-back guarantee.
For Esource’s tools and scripts at DFF, check here

Corel - CJ
Corel is a leading developer of graphics, productivity and digital media software with more than 100 million users worldwide. The Company's product portfolio includes some of the world’s most popular and widely recognized software brands, including: CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4, Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 - Photo Editing Software, Painter X and Painter Essentials 4, InterVideo WinDVD 9, WordPerfect Office X4, VideoStudio 11.5 Plus, WinZip 11.2 - File Compression, encryption and data backup Software
Check out Corel’s tools and scripts at DFF

MySupplementStore - SA
MySupplementStore offers a large selection of the hottest selling sports nutrition and vitamin supplements and fitness accessories.
My Supplement Store’s tools and scripts at DFF

Since we added Shopzilla network to DFF, we have duplicate merchants @DFF (one from Affiliate Network, ex. CJ, LS or SAS and the other from Shopzilla). We're working on the list of those duplicate merchants, so affiliates can choose which affiliate program to use with DFF.

DFF recommend you to choose and show 1 merchant only. We will keep you posted when we have the list ready.

Thanks

As mentioned by Andrew on the forum a couple days ago (http://forum.datafeedfile.com/showthread.php?p=5153#post5153), I just want to update on the progress.

It is pretty much ready to use, you can now login to your account and select the Prospect Merchants at DFF and use it with DFF tools. Please tested them and let us know if you find any problem or error.

Thanks.

Hello Everyone:

I would like to release Deal Search Engine (DSE) for testing purpose only to everyone who would like to get an early start of integrating this tool.

Remember this is alpha stage only. Meaning some change may be made and some bugs still exists.
Here are the links for DFF DSE:


Deal Search Engine Example
DSE Wiki Doc
DSE Wiki doc for PHP


List of DSE Parameters or Options
List of DSE CSS Elements (IDs and Classes)


Please give me feedback.

Andrew-@-datafeedfile.com

First we would like to Thank You for 2 great years. DFF have grown and matured in the past two years. Development for bug fixes, stability and new features are now in full swing.

** Shopzilla is now on DFF!**

DFF database now contain Shopzilla Publisher Program data feed.

Shopzilla Publisher / Affiliate program is PPC (pay per click) based, instead of CPA. With Shopzilla integration on DFF, makes DFF the first Hybrid CPA + CPC/PPC data feed content provider in the affiliate industry.

To use Shopzilla data feed on DFF all you have to do is sign-up for your own Shopzilla Publisher Program account

http://publisher.shopzilla.com/partner_id/3941/index.xhtml

Get your Shopzilla Affiliate ID and enter it in the DFF Affiliate
Control Panel > Settings > Affiliate IDs. Shopzilla have hundreds of merchants and you must activate them to be used with DFF in the Merchants Tab.

Shopzilla data feed has been loaded for about 2 weeks and we have just moved the launch status from Alpha to Beta. There are still daily improvements for another couple of weeks.

See all Shopzilla Merchants and Products on DFF

http://www.datafeedfile.com/affiliate_merchants.php?aff_network=SZ&aff_id=0&aff_sort=merchant


** DFF can deliver JSON data feed**

Instead of XML which contains lots of text and overhead, JSON can provide the same purpose faster and easier. JSON was designed to deliver data for AJAX. Basically it is a transport encoding and decoding protocol from array -> code -> array. If you use XML with DFF you may want to look into this new concept.

Learn more about JSON here

http://www.datafeedfile.com/examples/remote_json.php?eid=0_0



**Better Speed and Stability**

For the past 2 months, we have spent countless hours improving our infrastructure, database design and most importantly caching. The result has shown about 30% increase in speed and stability all across our scripts.

**Coming Soon ...**

Here are a few things our developers are working on for the next couple of months:
Bug Fixes
Forum Todo list
Deal price comparison engine (coupon, rebate, freebies) (DSE)
Diamond price comparison engine (DIASE)
Book price comparison engine (BOOKSE)
Travel price comparison engine (TSE)
Supplemental search result using eBay, 7search, Google Ads

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Many Thanks....

DataFeedFile.com Team


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Dear All,

I just want to give you some merchants update.

For some of you who been emailing me about the Motorcycle Superstore, please be patient. We're working on it

Also, there is a new shared commission merchant added today. It's OutInStyle.com. OutInStyle.com offers Outdoor adventure supplies. They have over 5,000 items and can provide just about any item that is outdoor, military, or law enforcement related. They also offer 6% commission on each transaction.

For OutInStyle scripts and tools, click here

Dear Affiliates,

Just want to inform you all that Motorcycle Superstore will discontinue their affiliate program with LinkShare on 6/27/08. Below is the email that I received from the affiliate manager:

" Dear Motorcycle Superstore Affiliate,

Motorcycle Superstore would like to thank you for your participation in our affiliate program. Unfortunately, we have made a business decision to suspend our Affiliate Program with LinkShare.

We will pay for commissions earned on Net Orders received through a affiliate link based on the terms of our Agreement, plus any earned outstanding payments currently owned to affiliates. Affiliates sales commissions will not accrue after June 27, 2008. If you have changed your contact information, please update your profile at LinkShare so you can receive your final commission check in a timely manner.

Pursuant to our Affiliate Agreement between Motorcycle Superstore and you, this shall serve as our formal written notice to terminate our Motorcycle Superstore Affiliate Agreement. Per our Agreement, you are required to remove any and all banners, buttons, text links, product images and store fronts that link to Motorcycle Superstore by End of Business Day June 27, 2008 EST. If you have any questions regarding this manner, please contact: shane.irons@motorcycle-superstore.com.

Once again, we thank you for supporting the Motorcycle Superstore Affiliate Program and appreciate your compliance with these termination provisions. You will be notified once our program will be reactivated. "

I will remove the program from DFF on 6/27/08

Thank you!

We have made available a new data feed / web services delivery method via JSON.

JSON stands for Javascript Object Notation, originally meant to be used for AJAX, but it is becoming more popular as an alternative for XML.

Integrating DFF database via JSON will give you the best combination of flexibility and speed.

JSON is easier to use when the dynamic language such as PHP you use supports JSON decoding.

We will provide you with the data in RAW JSON encoded format (can be compressed with GZIP or not compressed) without any HTML mark-up allowing you to use your own content, design and layout around the returned JSON data.

Once you have received the JSON data, you will not be able to use it right away because it is encoded and may be compressed (if you have choosen to compress the data). Then you have to use whatever your server scripting language support to decode the JSON data into multi-dimensional arrays.

See the JSON Example Page and JSON + PHP integration example for more information.

I am trully disappointed by Performics for not giving us the actual approval or blessing for DataFeedFile.com to be a third party data feed provider for their affiliates. It is now an almost 2 years process of trying to get approval. We have gotten close but nothing ever come up.

If we are asking for payment or compensation from Perfomics, that would be another issue, but we are not asking for anything from them but a sheet of paper stating they recognize DataFeedFile.com and they understand what we do. That is all.

Anyhow, I have already changed the Performics Publisher ID entry to accomodate their new tracking link format. The old Performics Tracking Links only have lid=_____ which does not allow easy replacement of different affiliate IDs, which DFF needs to do. Now the new Performics Tracking Link have &pubid=________ which contain a unique 17-digits Performics Affiliate ID identifier followed by 2100....

Here is instruction directly from their email:

Quote:
Please verify your unique 17-digit Publisher ID 21000000000123456 is correct and check your links before publishing. When you are logged in, your Publisher ID can be found in the bottom right corner of the ConnectCommerce interface.

of course you have to replace the 123456 with your own number.

DFF also have OrangeLinks merchant special and deals implemented which will add to our Deals Database. So if Performics would hurry up and get their legal team to say GO, then we will be able to move forward with Performics Merchants.

New web site design with more fresh content on www.DataFeedFile.com.

The purpose of this redesign is to:

1. Keep up to date with newer Web 2.0 designs. The previous look was getting old.
2. Provide more integrity and branding for DataFeedFile.com.
3. Provide statistics of our community, data feed database and project.
4. Quickly glance at news, changes or updates.
5. Quickly glance at forum posts.
6. Quickly glance at recent wiki changes.
7. Quickly glance at recent knowledge base or support tickets submitted.

I hope you all like the new look.

Andrew

Dear All:

I have improved the PHP page title script.

both the DFFPhp_title_search and DFFPhp_title_search2 now will now show the existing product short description and also we added product manufacturer name + manufacturer model / series + manufacturer part number.

If manufacturer part number and manufacturer name is the same, it will not duplicate it.

Forgot... UPC and/or ISBN has been added also whenever they are available.

Cheers,

Andrew

Hello everyone...

I just want to give some update on the recent improvements at DataFeedFile.com.

1. Speed and Stability... it is better now... speed has been increased about at least 30% for price comparison searching and product searches.

2. Shopzilla Publisher Program using PPC is still in testing status. I believe we are somewhere between alpha and beta stage. Why is it going so slow? Well we have to test with all other merchants product data feed refresh. Meaning everytime we have bugs related to data from Shopzilla Affiliate Program we have to wait until next search server data generation is done to examine the result. It is time consuming but we are almost there. Please test Shopzilla merchants data and let us know how to improve.

3. We have programmers working on many different sections of DFF, first we would like to finish some abruptly interrupted project from about 1.5+ years ago. Those projects were, Book Search and Price Comparison tool (almost done). New and Improved Deal Coupon Rebate Script (almost done), Diamond Price Comparison script (about 2 weeks away). These are the immediate features to be released within 2 - 3 weeks.

4. Afterwards... we are looking into several new shopping niches, such as eBay (the auction) integration to the PSE Price Search Engine and PPC (Product Price Comparison) possibly even with Auction Snipping capability (maybe). Another programmer has started on Ticket Price Comparison (stubhub, ticketmaster, etc...) Another programmer will be starting on Travel (flights, hotel, car rental, etc...).

So exciting and new innovative features are coming to DFF... Keep developing and improving you site.... We will do the same here.

Thank you

Andrew

Dear All,

We are have Firewalls issue. Our HD has died. We are trying to restore it right now. It takes about 30' to fix it.

Please bear with us. Thank you for your understanding and patience.


DFF Staff

We have created a new docuementation wiki for DFF. You can check it out at:

http://wiki.datafeedfile.com

It still needs more info, so I encourage everyone, I really mean it, 'everyone' to fill in and contribute to our wiki.

Thanks in advance.

Dear Affiliates,

As you notice, the Shopzilla affiliate merchants has drop to 629 merchants only at datafeedfile.com. It has something to do with the download, for some reason, the Shopzilla publisher's merchants' feed download only half of the merchants.

We're currently working on it to fix it. Also, please note, that if the download fail next time, we will not update the server.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Another update regarding the click thru report.

We checked our click thru report and it did not show, so we contacted Shopzilla Affiliate regarding the issue and they informed us that the our link and tracking are accurate, the problem is on their side. It seems they currently experiencing issues with their earnings report and are re-running the report.

"Your links look fine and all the tracking params are accurate. We are currently experiencing issues with our earnings report and are re-running the report currently, so your traffic should show up once this happens" (Shopzilla Publisher's response)

Should we have an update, we will report back to you.

Cheers

Hello all,

Just want to update on the Shopzilla program:

The data is up and running now. It's still on alpha testing. Please note that we 're still working on the merchants' logo. Also, would you mind checking on your report click thru? Just want to make sure it's working ok.

Reminder for all affiliates: Please do not abuse the click thru. You might get penalized by Shopzilla. It's beyond DFF control if your account get penalized.
Also the Shopzilla network program works as 4th clicks.

Any problems/errors, please post them @DFF Forum. Thank you for your patience and support.

I am not trying to complain... but I am suprised that even data from Shopzilla is not as good as we previously thought it should have been.

For example we have thousands of invalid UPC, we found thousands of manufacturer part numbers entered as UPC, we found too many data values crossed or just filled-in using other fields.

Basicaly it has been quite a nightmare trying to merge Shopzilla database with DataFeedFile's database so far.

Obviously my target beta date already passed but I just want to let everyone know we are very close of finishing. (should be within a few days only).

Thanks for your patience.

Andrew

Dear All,

We have been making some changes in the last few days which may not be obvious on the front-end. These changes / improvements are:

1. Change web load balancer from Linux LVS to NGINX.
2. Remove PriceComparison.com traffic to separate T1 to free up more bandwidth.
3. Moving static contents (GIF,JPG,JS,CSS, etc) to separate web server.
4. Caching some pages which are constantly static output most of the time.
5. Use DB caching more extensively. We are still having some issue load
balancing SSL / HTTPS. I hope to resolve that today.

Why we are doing these improvements? To increase stability. To have better server response time. To accommodate more users. To prepare for Shopzilla data feed coming in only few days for beta testing on DFF.

Thank you for putting up with some minor glitches as we improve our system. We will always continue to improve and fix issues.

Update: 1:35 pm, The SSL/ HTTPS issue has been fixed. If you have login problem, please notify us. Thank you for your support and understanding.

We are pleased to announced that we have several merchants joined DFF as shared commission merchants today.
They are:

1. CompUSA
Finally, CompUSA is back under LinkShare. It?s new and improved CompUSA ? a division of Systemax, Inc. CompUSA offers extended of merchandise, from computer hardware, gaming, electronics and much more.
Check out CompUSA?s tools and scripts at DFF

2. Designer Linen Outlet
Moved from CJ to LS. Designer Linens Outlet is the #1 source for a great selection of quality bed, bath and home decor products from designers committed to beautifying homes.
Check out Designer Linen Outlet?s tools and scripts at DFF

3. AnyKnockOff.
Fashion trends at affordable prices. Want to looks like a star? AnyKnockOff has the style, from handbag, jewelry, sunglasses and accessories. It has been one of the web?s fashion trend leader over 7 years.
Check out AnyKnockOff?s tools and scripts at DFF

4. Current Catalog
Current Catalog helps you celebrate holidays, special & everyday occasions with value-priced greeting cards, gift wrap and gifts for everyone on your list. Current catalog is your trusted source for personalized checks, address labels and stationery in a wide variety of exclusive designs.
Check out Current Catalog?s tools and scripts at DFF

5. Current Labels
The name says it all. Current Address Labels, a division of Current, offers a variety of custom and personalized label in many different designs.
Check out Current Labels? tools and scripts at DFF

6. Eastern Mountain Sports (EMS)
Are you an outdoor enthusiast? EMS has all your need to enjoy your outdoor activity, from clothing, backpack, accessories and gear. It offers all brand name merchandise in outdoor industry.
Check out EMS? tools and scripts at DFF


More to come. Thank you for your support!

Have a wonderful weekend!

We are pleased to announce that we have added 3 new shared commission merchants today.

They are:

1. Gift Shopping Zone (http://www.giftshoppingzone.com)
The name says it all. Gift Shopping Zone has all gifts to give to your special someone. It has lined up a fine collection of matchless products that suit every occasion, every mood and every personality.
Check out Gift Shopping Zone's tools and scripts


2. Nilima Rugs (http://www.nilimarugs.com)
NIlimaRugs.com is a featured and top ranked web store and the premier online retailer for quality hand made area rugs via the internet. Established in 2006 it become one stop source for area rugs and Cowhide Rugs from a wide range of designer and manufactures. NIlima Rugs offer thousands of area rugs including Persian, contemporary and Cowhide rugs as well as an extensive collection of shag, jute, flokati, bamboo and outdoor carpets.
Check out Nilima Rugs' tools and scripts


3. DRH Fine Gifts (http://www.drhfinegifts.com)
DRH Fine Gifts offer finest selection of discount perfumes and discount colognes at the lowest prices possible. Its fragrance collection consists of over 5,000 name brand women's perfume, men's cologne, perfume gift sets, shower gels, body lotions, mini perfumes, and aftershave including many discontinued and hard to find scents.
Click here to check out DRH Fine Gifts' tools and scripts