Anybody doing dynamic eBay EPN ads within XF?

[Kevin]

Just wondering if I've re-invented the wheel or not. I'm doing a widget to display eBay items with the links built for the EPN tracking codes and the items displayed are retrieved using the eBay finder API. The end result, for example, is that if you're viewing a thread about the movie Phantasm then you'll see eBay listings specifically related to the movie, if you're viewing a thread about the TV show Tales of the Gold Monkey then you'll see eBay listings specifically related to the TV show, and if you're on a generic page like the forum home then you'll see eBay items that were found when searching for a set of specific keywords defined in the ACP.

I haven't come across any other XF dynamic eBay ads and I'm starting to see why. It's not just a matter of having an EPN account, you also need to define an application in the eBay developers program and, based on your number of daily hits, you'll likely run into the API daily query limits which will require to then also apply for an increase for your application.

So now I'm just really curious about whether anybody else has done dynamic eBay ads for their XF installs and, if so, what approach did you take? Or is everybody else just doing static links?

 

[cwe]

I have not heard of this, but would find it of interest if a mod were available to plug (configure) and play an implementation.

Years ago I messed around with an eBay developers thing (not sure if it is the same one you are referring to) to build a widget for my site that was supposed to display listing results for a specific set of keywords. I recall that the search results were inconsistent in quality (relevance, freshness, etc.) before it stopped working and I ended up deleting the widget.

 

[Kevin]

I have not heard of this, but would find it of interest if a mod were available to plug (configure) and play an implementation.

It's doable but I suspect the requirements for getting signed up with both eBay's EPN and eBay's developer program wouldn't be worth the hassle for most folks, plus at some point they'd likely need to apply to get their API limits adjusted in the developer program. It's a bit of a Catch-22, to get any real results you'll need to be running ads on a high traffic site but a high traffic site would quickly hit the daily API limits.

Years ago I messed around with an eBay developers thing (not sure if it is the same one you are referring to) to build a widget for my site that was supposed to display listing results for a specific set of keywords.

Yep, it's a widget I'm doing. If you take a look at some of the example thread links in the first post above and then scroll down near the bottom you'll see it action (the display carousel being shamelessly borrowed from the RM widget for now ) below the last post & above the quick reply box. If you click on the forum home example in the first post you'll see it at the top of the page above the node listing.

I recall that the search results were inconsistent in quality (relevance, freshness, etc.) before it stopped working and I ended up deleting the widget.

I'm still tweaking the logic. I quickly realized the same as what you saw, that the search wasn't always giving good results. To help that when I grab the thread title for the keywords search I'm doing a few quick edits to help with the results. Even with that it works best for thread titles that are specific, like the name of a movie or TV show versus open ended titles (eg: "Tales of the Gold Monkey" TV title works much better giving relevant results versus "What are you doing this weekend?").

For the forum home position I'm setting a default keywords value; on one site the default keywords are "vintage 80s collectibles" while on a different site the default keywords are "tiki collectibles". As I type this I am thinking that it would make sense to be able to specify default keywords also at the node level so that I could use thread titles for nodes that I know will give good results while using node specific keywords for nodes that are more open ended. If nothing else it's been keeping me distracted from the hot weather.