Is Grab&Push Continually Updated With New eBay Listings?

[Teresa B]

Hi,

I created my categories and used "grab/push" to populate the eBay plugin on Monday, April 7. The data displayed current auctions ending soon. I was very happy.

I checked today and the same auctions (now ended) are still being displayed. Is there a cron I need to be running to grab new ebay listings periodically? Or do I have to "run" the rules manually again?  

At the top of the "rules" display, it states: Grab'n'Push rules help you to fill categories with products from merchants in few easy steps. For detailed description of the feature please refer to the manual.

Does anyone know what manual is being referred to?

Thanks in advance for your assistance...I hope there is a simple solution to this!

Teresa

[billy]

Good point, I wondered what happened to the manual.  They're so easy to update and republish.

Ray

[Omar]

It refers actualy to video tutorials.

[Teresa B]

Omar,

I have viewed all the videos and to the best of my knowledge they do not address this issue.

My real question was if the Grab&Push was updated without my intervention and I can only assume the answer is no.

I don't know the answer, but eBay listings that expire and are not refreshed with new listings for my "rules" are a dead end for my sites. I don't have time  to "run the rules" to refresh my sites.

This is a definite problem if we have to continually update the eBay listings manually. I hope you can find a solution to this problem.

Thanks,
Teresa

[Omar]

I already answer this in few other threads. Here it is again.

In SST there are 2 kind of products, permanent (pushed by the rules) and related or contextual (see in preferences: eBay context - eBay context will grab related data for each product to find similar items on sale on eBay). Permanent products are added to your database, and there is a static product page created for them, while contextual ones display real time on all product pages, does not have a page on their own (actually obey the cache settings in preferences, and update when cache expire)

If you create rules for ebay and grab them as permanent products, they will be added permanently to database. To update the products you need to run ebay rules again (we work on a cron system to also allow run rules automatically). If you use the ebay only as contextual products, they will keep them self updated.

As most of people actually used that as permanent products, we are working on a cron system that will allow to refresh ebay listing automaticaly using crom.

[billy]

I would be extremely grateful if someone could explain this answer as I don't understand it.

Are you saying that we can place products on our sites without using Grab&Push?

All I know is my site has products showing that closed last week and I don't know how to get rid of them.  It's not a practical proposition to run Grab&Push every day on all categories, but at the moment the site looks stupid.

Or am I missing something?

Ray

[Crazeet]

Are you saying that we can place products on our sites without using Grab&Push?

The short answer is No except for Ebay context, provided you have set that up in your preferences.

Basically, You set up your Grab&Push rules to populate your products in a category or sub category. Anytime you want to refresh the products you have to run the Grab&Push rule/s.

This also applies to any category or sub category you have set up that you have populated with products from Ebay.

This is not so bad for Amazon as they don't update products like Ebay do.

For Ebay products it's a bit of a pain at the moment as the auctions that are not buy now will close frequently, so you could have someone click on an Ebay product but the auction is closed. Not great but not all bad as you have still placed your cookie in their browser so if they browse and buy something in Ebay after going to Ebay from your store you will still get the commision on that item.

The guys are working out a way to set up a cron job option that will update products, provided you have set up the cron job in your hosting account. When they have this, your products, especially the Ebay products, will be automatically updated at the time intervals you have setup in your cron job. This can be as often as every 5 minutes depending on what you hosting provider allows.

[Teresa B]

The number one reason for me purchasing this product was the ability to display a current affiliate feed for my keywords on eBay.

Since the Grab/Push only displays static eBay listings at the time of the initial grab/push, they are quickly out of date and are useless to my site.

The static (out-of-date) product pages will display related active contextual listings as you described above, but it makes my site look bad displaying a main product that has already ended.  

I hope the cron (or some other solution) is still in the works to keep the eBay listings updated and is available soon.

Without it, the product seems useless to me...

Regards,
Teresa

[pepperkorn]

The guys are working out a way to set up a cron job option that will update products, provided you have set up the cron job in your hosting account.

Why cron? why not just refresh the products on page load the way BANS does it? cron is a PITA to set up if you don't know what you are doing and this was supposed to be an automated solution...

[Omar]

StoreStacker is not BANS. First of all, BANS is solely tied to Ebay, SS has at this moment 3 affiiate programs that work with, and will have more. Second, they do not create a page for each product but just parse on the fly the ebay rss feed. 30 products listed in BANS means 1 page, while same in SS means 31 pages (1 for category plus 1 for each of the 30 products). And i could continue but this is not a BANS / SS comparision.

SS was not meant to be some kind of black hat automatic software to spit out affiliate shops. It supposed to be a complex and flexible solution. That is what we always aimed for, with all our tools, and this is why all our sites say something like this:

To run Halfagain LLC’s suite of tools effectively, you’ll need to know how to:

- set up a domain and hosting
- ftp files
- use cpanel on your server (that include cronjbs too)
- modify html for your templates

[harryp]

Doesn't update products like the phpbay plugin will...and thats simply a plugin...
Can't get the targeted products either...
I'm unable to make any use of this plugin at all until it's been improved in that case.

[Omar]

It looks like i have to say it again. Unlike other scripts, (BANS, phpbay, etc) SS is not solely tied to Ebay, SS has at this moment 3 affiiate programs that work with, and will have more.

Also, those scripts do not create a page for each product, just put a list of links on your page(s). They do not load those products in own database  but just parse on the fly the ebay rss feed. That means you do not get a special "in site" page with details and content that can attract spiders and get indexed. You just get one page with 30 out links. That makes a huge difference in many ways, including techical issues.

That is why the ebay plugin is updating using cron. If you did the upgrade mentioned in a sticky thread here, you will see the command that you need to put to cron in order to run the rules again and update the listings. You can run it as often as you like, but once or twice a day should be enough.

As i said in another thread too, the search should work better after you update plugin. Ebay made more changes to their system last week. Here is a fast test i made for "home busines": http://qibs.com/categories/4/home-business/.

[RayDavies]

Omar,

The last time I looked there was a section here called "anouncements".  Might I suggest you use it so you can avoid these issues.

People are busy and are not going to keep on updating there sites on the off-chance there's been  an improvement.

Ray

[ebiznet]

The eBay cron is working

Thank you for providing it and listening to user feedback. I was, like quite a few users, initially disappointed to discover that this functionality wasn't provided out of the box, but am glad to see that the developers have risen to the task and proven yourselves by coming out with this improvement.

[harryp]

I have the newest plugin, tried home business, make money from home- all sorts of keywords and still got mostly listing anything that had the word home in it, inc. listings for 'Capri pants, comfortale to wear at home'.lol

Have the cron set up etc. I have for now disabled the ebay plugin on may sections- I only forund correct listings were pulled for a very few catogories...

Can you reveal the 'rule' you set to get those targted listings at all?

Thanks