Published September 8th, 2009
in Business Mashup.
If you are a Shopzilla publisher then you probably received at least a dozen of emails by now reminding you about the migration to the new API. From what I see Shopzilla has significantly changed the platform which means you will have to spend a few hours tweaking your code to comply with the new standard.
Not so if you use the Shopzilla Wordpress Plugin that I originally coded and released back in 2008. I am happy to announce that I finally spared a few hours today and are releasing a new version of the plugin which will be compatible with the new API platform.
To upgrade your plugin - download this archive and copy its content on top of your previous installation in the “plugins” folder. Next, go to the plugin configuration screen in the Wordpress Admin panel and update the Shopzilla API Server value to “http://catalog.bizrate.com/” as shown in the screen shot below.
None of your tags need to change. Once you upgrade all existing price comparission tables should update automatically with the products pulled from the new API server. Beware that the old API platform will be retired on September 14, 2009 so make sure you do the update before this deadline.
For new installation please refer to the Readme file that comes with the ZIP file. For more information on how to become a Shopzilla publisher please go to the Shopzilla Publisher Program home page. To find why I wrote this plugin, please read my original blog post about it.
Published June 12th, 2008
in Business Mashup.
This is another update to the Shopzilla WordPress Plugin I released back in February. You can use this plugin to monetize a WordPress blog by featuring embedded product comparison results inside each blog post or on a sidebar.
Before you setup the plugin on your blog, you first need to apply to Shopzilla Publisher Program which is a “pay per click” affiliate program meaning each click on the product results below results in an affiliate commission to the publisher (a blogger in this case). This is very similar to how Google Adsense works except Shopzilla program is designed specifically for shopping oriented websites.
What is included with this update?
This particular plugin update makes it possible for you to configure the maximum number of products for each product comparison results table individually. This can be done with another (third) argument that you supply to the “shopzilla_offers” tag inside your blog post. If you leave the argument at 0 then the global value from the plugin options will be used.
For example the line of code below will product the price comparison table you see at the end of this blog post.
<!—shopzilla_offers=880356122,8,3—>
In addition to this change, I added a configuration parameter for the domain to be used to talk to the API server. Shopzilla has changed this domain in the past and this parameter will allow you to change it on the fly for your blog in case Shopzilla does it again in the future.
How do I get it on my blog?
To upgrade - just download this archive and copy its content on top of your previous installation in the “plugins” folder. For new installations please refer to the Readme file that comes with this plugin.
For more information on how to become a Shopzilla publisher please go to the Shopzilla Publisher Program home page. To find why I wrote this plugin, please read my original blog post about it.
Published April 11th, 2008
in Business Mashup.
This is a minor update to the Shopzilla WordPress Plugin I released back in February. It adds a new column that shows merchant ratings according to BizRate, a Shopzilla company. It also incorporates a change to the domain name Shopzilla introduced with the latest overhaul of their XML feeds.
To upgrade - just download this archive and copy its content of on top of your previous installation in the “plugins” folder. For new installations please refer to the Readme file that comes with this plugin.
Here is how the plugin looks now (below). For more details please read my original blog post.
Published February 26th, 2008
in Business Mashup.
Over the past month I have been playing with Shopzilla API on one of my pet projects and so far the results are impressive. I like the quality and number of product offers I am able to get using the API and also how fast the results are fetched. In fact I have been so happy with it that I decided to extract some of my code and make a WordPress plugin out of it.
Shopzilla is very good at comparing product prices and what this plugin in essence does is it embeds price comparison results for a single product into your blog post (see the sample below).
The merchant logo and the price are links that lead to the product page at the merchant. Shopzilla Publisher Program is a PPC kind and so each time your visitor clicks on these links to check the product you as a publisher earn a small commission form Shopzilla.
Before you can use the plugin on your blog though you will need to apply for a publisher account with Shopzilla. When you are approved you will get assigned a publisher ID and API access key which you need to enter at the plugin configuration screen.
At the same screen you can configure the number of product offers to display and default placement ID (Shopzilla’s alternative to Google’s channels). A README.txt file is included with the package that explains how you can further set up and use the plugin on your blog. To download it click here and save the file at your computer.
If you end up using Shopzilla on your blog, please tell me in your comments what you think about it. I love to hear your feedback!
