eBay Decommissioning Dynamic Feed Generator

I got the same email. How annoying. I use the feed extensively because their alternative (smart placements) doesn’t work well when positioned in a column.

I don’t know anything about APIs, but apparently a feed can be generated that way. Just need someone who knows what they’re doing to write a plugin!

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by austimages.

Hey there,

Forgive the cold opening, this is pretty much written once and copy and pasted!

Overnight (it happened about midnight UK time), I did hear that a crucial part of the plugin (the dynamic feed generator), is being discontinued. Furthermore, there’s less than a month to build a replacement.

The good news is that there is a replacement. It uses an API key to generate a list of listings. To be honest, this could work better – using API’s to manipulate data – means we could probably do more in the plugin than ever before.

The bad news is that API’s are a bit more tricky. This is a side project, a profitable side project that I want to see succeed and is profitable, but a side project nonetheless.

I will be working on it: I’ve booked out two days this month to work on this project, as well as evenings/weekends. In that time I’ve got to do the following (in rough priority order):-

– Build an API that allows us to call the feed, caches results, and serves them.
– Integrate all current options into this data (both from the free/premium).
– Write documentation on how to transfer from the old feed to the new feed.
– Rewrite the documentation on how to install/use the plugin.

As you can see, there’s quite a lot!

I’m confident that by the end of the month I can get much of the above done. Some features may not be present though in the new version on day of launch, for that I’m sorry. Also the documentation may not be perfect. Again, I’m sorry.

There will be a developmental version of the plugin. It’ll be on the Github repository (which I haven’t updated for a while, sorry) https://github.com/rhyswynne/ebay-feeds-for-wordpress – both the free version & the premium version will use the functionality we need to change in the free version. Obviously if I get some help in testing and getting things working (particularly from a transfer).

The hope is that on July 1st I’ll release WP eBay Product Feeds 3.0.

That’s the plan. There could be gotchas on the way, but that’s the plan. If you’ve any questions I’ll do my best to answer them.

Hello I received the same mail here in Germany. I was shocked. I just got everything working perfectly and unfortunately I also have no idea about the eBay API. It’s all very annoying. I hope you can complete your plan in such a short time.

I think I speak for everyone when there is a lack of financial support, should be no problem.

Thanks Rhys, That’s great news

Thank you very much Rhys, it would be nice if you could keep us up to date.

Thanks all,

I’ll keep people updated as much as I can on this. I’m going to prepare a blog post over the weekend to go on my site next week.

Basically, I’ll need testers!

Cheers ??

Thank you Rhys, I have enjoyed this plugin and would be willing to do some testing if necessary.
Jesse

Oh my.. I have a network of websites using this plugin. Is there a way to get some help from the owner of phpbay.com? He stopped developing it due to personal issues, but his plugin was fully working using API with hundreds of features. It’s a shame that it is discontinued, I hope someone can continue the project.

I dunno if I can get help from the owner of that plugin, but I’ve a copy of PHPBay somewhere so can take a look at it.

Auction2Post was also a well received software that seems unavailable now. It would post Large pictures of items and all the details. Its posts were great looking but unfortunately I had already bought phpBay when I discovered A2P and unable to do both. Hopefully you might be familiar and can maybe include some of its features as well as the phpBay functions.
Thank you for rewriting your plugin for API.

Not sure if these can be incorporated but wanted to offer a couple of suggestions for the ebay affiliate plugin:

– Ability to sort auctions by most bids and most watched items.
– Allow larger preview pictures for links and perhaps different templates (grid,
list, etc.)
– Ability to search by ebay category
– Exclude certain words in search

Thanks for listening…would be glad to pay for a premium version of this plugin!
Jesse

Hi everybody,

Jesse – Right now I’m not focused on creating new features, sorry. I’m battling to keep the plugin working after the end of the month.

To try and stem the tide of how things are – I’ve written a blog post detailing what I plan to do on this plugin – https://www.winwar.co.uk/2020/06/feeds-discontinued-and-wp-ebay-feeds-3/ – there’s also a survey for you to fill in.

The tl:dr; is:-

• I’m planning on building along with a colleague a feed generator
• This will have a free & paid tier
• There shouldn’t be too much changed with the plugin before putting it live.
• I ask for patience, it’s quite a lot of work to build in an obscenely short turnaround time.

Hope that clarifies things.

Sounds good! I know you have a large task in front of you so I completely understand. Let me know if I can be of some help as you roll out the new plugin.

this is looking promising if you can build a new feed generator that would be awesome as i used the plugin on WP and the feeds for Facebook pages

Thank you. I just read your blog post. Your paid plan sounds reasonable.