RSS Feeds are an important part of Explorz. In fact, they’re the backbone of our site. However, due to the differences in feeds, and each feed being practically unique. We are constantly having to monitor for changes, and discrepancies in our RSS Feed process and the feeds we process.
These discrepancies can wreak havoc on a site such as ours, causing items to be inserted blank, or causing them to only have half the information that was originally on the RSS Feed. Though, these problems are hopefully resolved (with my current system), blank items should not be inserted, nor should ones containing half the information.
At this time, there is no standard among auction sites when it comes to product feeds. Personally, I feel this should be done for sanity reasons, and to make it easier for multiple feeds to be read without having to have 20 different feed systems in place.
To combat this, we’ve implemented multiple stages in our RSS Feed system to help prevent issues from arising; like blank items, missing information, etc. However, no system can be perfect.
The problems people experienced last week were a result of such discrepancies and differences between each feed. Hopefully issues no longer arise from said system, however the issues people experienced last week were not as severe as they could have been. The system prevented items from being inserted that would have otherwise been inserted either blank, or with half the information.
I will continue to monitor, and improve our RSS Feed system as we move forward.
These issues should be resolved now, I apologize for this inconvenience. If you continue to have issues, please don’t hesitate to contact us personally with your issue(s). If you continue to experience your feeds being turned off by our system, please let us know, and we will look into it. While running some feeds I found a majority of our AmBo Auction feeds no longer exist (which would cause them to be turned off).
A total of 31,617 products were imported, these products will begin to show in their appropriate stores within the next hour or so, and should be completed within 24-48 hours due to our process.
You can continue to check here for updates on future issues, new content, updates, announcements, etc.
Posted Under:
Main
This post was written by Daniel on August 5, 2009
Comments (0)
As of now Explorz has received a face-lift. There have been some changes in the way certain pages are linked to one another. One example of that is the Product Detailed page used to display deal in the address (http://www.explorz.com/deal/product-seo.html), it now displays as product (http://www.explorz.com/product/product-seo.html). Your products being displayed on search engines using the old address will still work!
Home Page – No longer lists Random Stores, only Random Products.
Search – This now uses it’s own independent system (no longer using the index to search), allowing us to add an Advanced Search page in the future if we so wish.
The search has been optimized, along with several other aspects of the site, to ensure smooth operation of the site, along with faster page loading, and better search results.
We’ve added a Search Relevance option to the Search Results page so that you can view either the Most Relevant (default) or Least Relevant. Though, you won’t always have Least Relevant products to display, mainly due to the way our search works.
I hope you enjoy the new look of Explorz, even though it was released a little late (we were aiming for June 15th). If you experience any problems, have suggestions, or would just like to let us know what you think of the new look, be sure to let us know by contacting us.
Updated text is represented below with Bold and underlined.
Sales Alerts have been incorporated into the Product Manager!
To insert, edit, view, and delete Sales Alerts, you must visit the Product Manager Homepage (here) then select the List drop down, and select Sales Alerts (as displayed in the image below).
Once you’ve changed over to the Sales Alert side of the Product Manager, you can then edit, delete, and insert Sales Alerts the same way you would Products.
We’ve now categorized Sales Alerts into 4 different “types”.
- Discount – Discounts are a percentage-only Discount Type. Meaning the Discount Amount you enter will be displayed as a percentage (ie: 40%). If you want to display a Dollar amount for a discount, you must use the markdown Discount Type.
- Sale – If you have a site-wide sale going on and wish to promote it. *Does not require a Discount Amount!*
- Markdown – This is the Dollar-discount, meaning that Sales Alerts that use this Discount Type display their Discount Amount in Dollars, and not a percentage.
- Offer – This is for general offers, such as buy one get one free, free shipping, etc. This is the only Discount Type that does not require a Discount Amount. If you choose to enter a Discount Amount, it will be used as an “offer description”, such that you can explain the offer is for (ie: Free Shipping), which will then be displayed on the Sales Alert.
We’ve also added a Description to Sales Alerts so that you may enter information about your alert.
Don’t forget the TSV/CSV Import Process has been added to the Product Manager so you can now import items via Tab-delimited files. If you wish to know why only tab-delimited, please read the following blog post.
On the release of the latest addition to Explorz (the New Members Panel), the CSV/TSV import process was not finished. As of today, this feature has been finished, and publish for you to use!
To import items with this feature, the TSV/CSV file must have the following required fields (they are typed as they should be in the file):
title – Title of the product.
price – Price of the product.
description or desc – Description of the product.
url or link- URL of the product.
image_url or image_link – URL of the image for the product.
These can be in any order, but the file must be a tab-delimited file! Commas are not supported, as most programs such as Microsoft Excel do not properly export the information, rendering the file useless.
If you have any problems using this feature, be sure to contact us.
Well, after almost 2 weeks, the new Member’s Panel has been released!
You can access it just like the previous one, (while logged in) click on the My Account link, and it will take you straight to it.
Let’s go into detail about the changes made to this Member’s Panel versus the old one:
Product Manager
The Product Manager has received a serious face lift.
- When changing the Sort Order, and Max (max items displayed) options, these are now saved so that they don’t reset every time you revisit the Product Manager.
- Inserting/Editing of Products has also received a major upgrade. Errors now displayed by the forms display on the same page as the form, along with the information entered before receiving an error.
- Not only that, but the field text that you received the error for is red for better recognition of what you missed. Editing your price places the previous price you had into an “Old Price” field (not visible) automatically, so that it can display the mark-down on the Product’s Detailed page, along with anywhere else it’s displayed on the site!
- Store SEO URL’s can no longer be edited, instead it’s created on-the-fly when submitting your store.
- Inserting products, editing products, importing items via CSV, and Sales Alerts (previously known as Coupons) is all handled through the Product Manager.
Error Example
Note: Currently, Importing items via CSV, and the Sales Alert section of the Product Manager are not complete, and will be finished soon.
Stores
Creating a store, editing a store, adding an RSS Feed, and editing an RSS Feed is all handled within this section. You can delete your RSS Feed by visiting Edit an RSS Feed, or delete a store by visting Edit a Store. You can add up to 25 feeds at once.
We’ve gotten rid of the “Panel” system, and just incorporated both into each other. Favorite Stores can now be accessed under the Account column. Editing your Password, and changing/updating your E-Mail is done by clicking Manage Account under the Account column.
If you have any issues using the new Members Panel, please don’t hesitate to ask questions, offer advice, or report problems using our forums.
A new Members Panel is being developed to replace the current one. This new Members Panel should help resolve issues that users have been having with the Members Panel, and make it easier to navigate along with improving current features.
The following changes are being made:
- Importing items via CSV – is being improved so that there should be less problems when trying to import items via CSV format. We’re also moving the CSV Import page from being a stand-alone page, to being a part of the Product Manager (which is also receiving an upgrade!).
- Adding/Editing RSS feeds – will be pretty much be the same.
- Adding/Editing Stores – will receive a revamp, including a different form layout. We still haven’t decided what form this page (or pages) will take on. The revamp will most certainly include errors displaying above the form, instead of on a separate page.
- Adding individual Products – this will now be done through the Product Manager, instead of it being it’s own separate page.
- Product Manager – the updates this section will receive are uncertain as of yet, but the ones already implemented are the Max amount of products, and the order will be saved, so that they don’t reset each time you visit the page. Revamping of the Editing/Insertion of Products may occur, depending on the way we decide to revamp the Stores section.
Along with all the above, the Members Panel will receive somewhat of a facelift, and a handy Menu near the top so that you can return to the Main page, or go to another part of the section you’re currently in. For example, if you’re using the Product Manager, the links in the Menu could be like the following:
Main – Import Products (CSV) | Insert Products
Also, as a side note, we are looking into the Activation e-mail issue users are reporting. Most of the time, you can find the Activation e-mail inside your Junk/Spam folder, however sometimes it doesn’t even get to your Inbox to begin with.
I currently (briefly looked into it at the moment) do not see any reason for the e-mails to not be sent to your e-mail box. I will look into this issue further when I’m not working on the new Members Panel.
