I insisted that I would blog today, or ‘Blog Thursday’ as I now need to remember! It’s been far too long since I last posted!

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Where I work (@WebgainsUK), we often have a lot of affiliates contact us that want help with regard to data feeds. Whilst a lot of these queries tend to be technical questions relating to an issue with the feed, or reporting a problem with a merchant’s feed; some of these requests are as technical as asking how to build a site using the data feeds, how to import feeds into the database, or asking how to build a price comparison site. Sadly, as much as Webgains try to help with these sorts of questions wherever possible, it’s simply not possible to offer the in-depth time-consuming answer required due to the nature of the task in hand.

Thankfully, there are tools out there such as Easy Content Units, which allows affiliates to insert content units into their site without requiring any knowledge of data feeds. A plus point of being a Webgains affiliate is that Webgains is partnered with Easy Content Units and as such get the service for free. However, having 3×3, 4×4 or other size grids of products powered by someone else’s website isn’t always what an affiliate wants – some folks want to do their own thing, and know how it works. Also, having products powered by Easy Content Units doesn’t do much for your SEO; you can’t index each individual product, you can’t have an in-built search, you can’t categorise your products, and you’re also relying on their server be up 100% of the time. Throw in a few other excuses for not wanting to use it, and you have a compelling reason why affiliates are asking how to build their own data driven website.

So with that in mind, I figured I’d have a go at providing a solution in the format of a guide, “Building a Data Feed Driven Website”. This guide will come in several parts, I have no idea how many parts it will be, and I have no idea if I will ever finish it. First things first though, let’s set out the objective.

Objective

To build a website that:
> is able to download data feeds from Webgains on a regular basis, so that the prices are always correct.
> can display 1 product per page for SEO reasons.
> has SEO friendly URLs
> can categorise products.
> has a neat search facility.
> has a voucher facility to accompany the products.
> can list the latest offers and promotions from merchants.

For now, that can be the ’simplistic’ objective – we can always add to it later if we desire. Notice how the requirement mentions ‘data feeds from Webgains’; the reason for this is that as a Webgains employee, I feel I have a duty to not help you promote other networks. If by reading my guide, you feel technically inclined to mash the code to allow you to download feeds from other networks then feel free, but don’t ask me how

Tools/Resources/Knowledge Required

Basic understanding of affiliate marketing is a given; you should know what products you want to promote, you should know what a data feed is, you should know why you are reading this, and you should know what it is you want to achieve. It’s probably worth noting that you won’t get very far without a Webgains affiliate account. Signup to Webgains here.

Ultimately, you are going to need access to a server capable of running PHP5 & MySQL5. In terms of getting a server up and running with PHP5 and MySQL5, I’m afraid it is beyond the realm of this guide. However, if you have a spare computer laying around; may I suggest that you install Ubuntu. If you need help with that, Google this: “ubuntu LAMP server”. Failing that, you could always try a webhost like Fasthosts.

In addtion, you will need a decent text editor (Notepad++, or EditPlus[I use this]) and a willingness to learn. As this guide is meant to be a resource to those who already have a basic understanding of PHP & MySQL, you will have to ‘catch up’ where necessary. If possible, I’ll try to give, ‘beginners guide tips’ – but the ultimate goal is for you to reach the objective, so maybe a twitter account will be required so you can ask me questions: @bobbyjason.

Notes

Due to the nature of complexities of this project (it’s not such a small project after all), I’m going to code the site in sections of how to do each bit. I can’t promise that the final project will involve all the final bits being put together, as each section is meant to be a mini-guide in it’s own right. Again, throw any questions my way: @bobbyjason.

Getting Started

The most obvious place to start, is at the heart of the problem; data feeds. If you knew how to work with data feeds, and you knew how to load them into a database – you probably wouldn’t be reading this guide, so it is for that reason I have decided to start here. For the sake of brevity, I’m not going to explain in detail the difference between downloading a datafeed directly, and downloading a feed via a URL. In short, for our objective we want to download the feed via a URL as this will allow our website to be automated.

So, head over to the “Data feed url generator” and select the “xml” option, rather than “csv”. XML is a much more structured approach, and it makes life much easier where trying to find a problem when things go wrong – plus, I prefer working with XML and its MY guide! Select the “.gz” option – this is the only option that allows you to download a compressed feed immediatly. “.zip”, and “.tar.gz” required you to hang around a little – not so good. Select ONE of the programs, not all – but ONE. You can then select ‘All’ at the categories option, and select the ‘exended’ fields option. Finally, enter your username and password, and grab the URL – you should something that looks similar to this:

http://content.webgains.com/affiliates/datafeed.html?action=download&campaign=12345&username=username@website.com&password=password&format=xml&zipformat=gzip_notar&fields=extended&programs=1234&categories=all

If you have a URL like the one above (with the correct username and password), you should be able paste it into your browser and download a .gz compressed feed of the program you selected. Notice how you can replace the “programs” parameter with any other program ID to download a feed for a different program. Straight away you should be able to see the logic required here; we need to create a PHP script that can loop through each of the programs’ feeds that we wish to download, and enter the correct program ID. In psuedo form, here it is:

foreach program
….download feed for this program
end foreach

Of course, in reality we don’t want to just download the feed, we also want to take the data out of it and populate our database, but I figured baby steps would be best as not every one will understand that just yet. So let’s get sizzling. Glancing at the clock I can see that it is 18/10/2010 22:17 – this means that I am missing the last episode of The Inbetweeners which is rather upsetting. Thankfully we have 4OD in this modern world, so I’ll create this script and then head off to bed!

<?php /* lesson1.php */

error_reporting(E_ALL|E_STRICT);
ini_set('display_errors', true);

// Create an array of the programs that we want to download
$programs = array(4084, 116);

print "Starting...\n";

// PHP foreach loop.
foreach ($programs as $program_id)
{
 // Use the "sprintf" function to pass the correct values to the string.
 // Also, splitting up the string to avoid long lines of code.
 $feed_url = sprintf('http://content.webgains.com/affiliates/datafeed.html?'.
 'action=download&campaign=%s&username=%s&password=%s'.
 '&format=xml&zipformat=gzip_notar&fields=extended'.
 '&programs=%d&categories=all',
12345, 'USERNAME', 'PASSWORD',$program_id);

 // Set the path of where you would like to save the file.
 $file = '/home/chops/xml/guide/feeds/'.$program_id.'.xml';
 $compressed = $file.'.gz';

 // Download the file (requires function, 'curl_get_file_contents'
 $data = curl_get_file_contents($feed_url);

 // Open the file for writing, write, and close the file.
 $fp = fopen($compressed, 'w+');
 fwrite($fp, $data);
 fclose($fp);

 // Call the a UNIX command to unzip the file, and move it to our desired location.
 shell_exec("gunzip -c $compressed > $file");

}

print "Done.\n";

// Function to download a file.
function curl_get_file_contents($url)
{
 // Output something so we know it's working.
 print "Downloading '".$url."'\n";
 flush();

 $c = curl_init();
 curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
 curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
 curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 5000);
 curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 10000);
 $contents = curl_exec($c);
 curl_close($c);

 return $contents;
}
?>

You can copy that code into a text document, save it as ‘lesson1.php’ (be sure to replace username, password and campaignid with your values!). You can call the script directly in a browser if you wish, personally I shall use the terminal. The files will be downloaded to the specified location. Note: If there are any PHP Gurus out there, you will notice that this code may not be the most complex, but I’m trying to keep it simple for those that may not be so familiar with PHP.

All the script does is:
> loop through our selected programs.
> downloads the compressed feed.
> extracts the compressed file with the name of {program_id}.xml

For now that will have to do, because I want to publish this blog post and go to bed. I hope it’s useful to somebody!

Coming up: How to parse the XML files and insert the products into a database.

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My Current Setup (Got a problem with Dell? Well it’s never failed for me!)

Desktop: Dell Dimension 9200 Tower w/19″ Widescreen (Windows 7 Ultimate)
Laptop: Dell Inspiron 1545 w/15.6″ Widescreen (Windows 7 Ultimate)
Phone: Google Nexus One (Froyo AKA Anroid2.2)

I’ll start with my Dekstop: I bought it in June 2007 as I needed a “super-fast” computer for working with .NET and the Silverlight Framework in my new job – as it happens I decided to focus my ‘career’ down the PHP route, so I’ve never really utilsed the power. Naturally though, this meant that it was always meant to be a Windows-based PC, and it came with Vista (which I have since upgraded to Windows 7). I’ve played with Ubuntu before, and I like it – but I have too many applications that I cannot get to work correctly within it (Photoshop, Fireworks, Flash etc). So, I’m using Windows 7 – and it’s great (no, seriously, it is!)

It’s pretty much the same story with my laptop.

Roll forward to April 2009, and I bought my shiny Apple iPhone 3G – I gave my iPod Nano away, and loaded all my music onto the phone. The iPhone was Awesome, but that didn’t stop me buying a Google Nexus One (January 2010). Why? Because I love Google! After using both, I can definately say that the Android device offers much more than the iPhone 3G, and that I know I made the right decision.

I now use Dropbox to syncronise my Desktop with my Laptop, and also have the Dropbox App on my phone. So everything is perfect, it’s all good – but I want something new and shiny to play with, like an iPhone 4, and an MacBook Pro…

Can someone convince me that I’m being stupid, or persuade me enough to go out and buy one…?!

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After selling my iPhone, I still had the box. It seemed silly to bin the box so I used to help make a dock for my Nexus One!

The two boxes

Nexus Fitting

Cut a hole for the power cable

Stick it down!

Cable attached - notice the angle of the nexus box- excellent!

Hack away at the iPhone box...

Stick the nexus card to the inner iPhone sleeve

Shoved it into the outer iPhone sleeve

Pop the Nexus One into the DOCK!

Beautiful, just... beautiful. Sorry for the smudge marks..

I love it..!

So there you have it…

…if you have a spare iPhone case laying around now you know what to do with it.

Hope you love my craft skillz. as you can see; it’s probably better that I stick to my Affiliate Marketing & Programming – but I still refuse to pay shipping TWICE to have TWO Google Nexus Docks shipped to the UK !!

o_O

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I thought I’d get creative – so I had a look how to make play dough:

http://becomingdomestic.co.uk/2006/10/28/how-to-make-playdough-no-cook-recipe/

And then Proceeded:

Ingredients in the bowl...

We NEED green!

Mix it up...

Aaah, lovely loaf...

Into shape...

Right now, the thing is in the oven.

Apparently you are not meant to put play doh in the oven. So it may just be a big PHAT PHAIL!

I’ll update once it’s out the oven!!

UPDATE: ITS OUT THE OVEN

It burnt...

so yeah, damn good reason to stop being a tight ass and pay for the shipping from the US for the Google Nexus One Desktop Dock!!

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However, on 27th January Google Announced the Desktop Dock was now available – this was rather frustrating as I had already placed my order – so if I want one I will have to pay the $29 shipping fee again. However, I want 2! You can’t buy 2 though….If I want to purchase 2 then I have to place 2 seperate orders, meaning I will have to pay shipping to the UK twice, again – I’ve already paid once!

So, I figured I would make my own. This one cost 50 pence – (around 1 dollar to you US folks!)

Toilet Roll

Wow, it looks like a big polo..

USB Cable

Cutting a Gap

Placing the Cable

Flatten the toilet roll

Nexus One in the Bog Roll

Nexus One in the Bog Roll from a different angle

There you have it!

This is perfect; I can create as many as I want. If you wanted to get creative you could colour yours in paint; or maybe cover it with papier mache?

$1 per dock – admitedly it doesn’t have Bluetooth like the Google one; but it’s a lot cheaper!

I almost forgot… A photo with the headphone Jack in:

Sorry about the quality of the photos… my digital camera is rubbish – it’s okay though as I now have a great camera in the Nexus One

Hope you like it.

p.s. Yes, I know it shit; but that’s what do you expect from a bit of shit roll? =))

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last weekend i spent about 2 hours watching the “getting started” videos on how to use the apple iPhone SDK. I proceeded to try to download the iPhone SDK but to my disappointment this is only possible if you have Mac OS X. I currently use a Core 2 DUO with 2 GB RAM running Windows 7; whereas my laptop is a Core2duo with 3GB RAM running Vista. I didn’t fancy dual booting with a dodgy copy and hacked version of Mac OS X

The idea was to create an application for the company I work for; so during the week my boss found me a spare Mac Mini PowerPC G4. It’s been laying around on a desk collecting dust for god knows how long. So last night I fetched it home…(my first mac, EVER!)

After upgrading from Panther to Leopard 10.5; I upgraded to 10.5.8 and downloaded the 2GB iPhone SDK (bundled with the latest verison of xcode) from the Apple site. I proceeded to open the installation only to discover that whilst I can install xcode the iPhone SDK option is only available if you have an Intel-based Mac. This was rather infuriating! Anyway; long story short – I Googled until I was highly delighted with finding the following site:

How to run iPhone SDK on a non intel based Mac (G4, G5 etc)

At the above URL. there are instructions on how to get xcode to let you build an iPhone app on a non-intel based Mac. Just in case the link doesnt work , I have pasted the post here:

Officially the iPhone SDK requires an Intel Mac with OSX 10.5. Since I have a four year old dual G5, which is still running like a young dear, I don’t want to buy a new Mac just for writing iPhone Applications.

After some research, I found out, that it’s possible to make it work on PPC since the iPhone SDK are universal binaries.

To share my knowledge, I write a small tutorial. Note, that I don’t take responsibility, for any defects cause somebody used my code!

How to get the iPhone SDK to work on PPC Macs

Most of the tutorials I found in the Web are not up to date, because there where no “Aspen” packages anymore. With the iPhone SDK for IPhone OS 2.1 (build 9M2517) you can follow these steps:
1. Download the official iPhone SDK here.

2. Mount the .dmg image and install the iPhone SDK (the iPhone SDK will be grayed out!).

3. After rebooting the Mac, mount the image again and go to the folder Package. Install all packages which have iphone in the name (e.g. Simulator, SDK, Documentation).

4. Go to the folder /Platforms on the local HD and copy the iPhone.platform and theiPhoneSimulator.platform folders to /Developer/Platform.
Don’t copy the whole platforms folder, Xcode will not run correctly anymore!

5. Now we come to the interesting part. Xcode has now access to the iPhone SDK, you can already create iPhone projects, but Xcode still wants to compile the sources for the Intel architecture. To change that, open the folder /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/
Library/Xcode/Specifications/ .
In this folder you will find the file iPhone Simulator Architectures.xcspec. Make a backup and open it in any text editor. The content should look something like this:

(
// 32-Bit
{ Type = Architecture;
Identifier = Standard;
Name = "Standard (iPhone Simulator: i386)";
Description = "32-bit iPhone Simulator architectures";
ListInEnum = YES;
SortNumber = 1;
RealArchitectures = ( i386);
ArchitectureSetting = "ARCHS_STANDARD_32_BIT";
},

// Old-style Debug
{ Type = Architecture;
Identifier = Native;
Name = "Native Architecture of Build Machine";
Description = "32-bit for build machine";
ListInEnum = YES;
SortNumber = 101;
ArchitectureSetting = "NATIVE_ARCH";
},

// Intel
{ Type = Architecture;
Identifier = i386;
Name = "Intel";
Description = "32-bit Intel";
PerArchBuildSettingName = "Intel";
ByteOrder = little;
ListInEnum = NO;
SortNumber = 105;
},
)

6. Change the line “RealArchitectures = ( i386);” to “RealArchitectures = ( i386, ppc);“.

7. Add the architecture configuration for G3, G4 an G5, the edited file should now look like this.

(
// 32-Bit
{ Type = Architecture;
Identifier = Standard;
Name = "Standard (iPhone Simulator: i386, ppc)";
Description = "32-bit iPhone Simulator architectures";
ListInEnum = YES;
SortNumber = 1;
RealArchitectures = ( i386, ppc7400 );
ArchitectureSetting = "ARCHS_STANDARD_32_BIT";
},

// Old-style Debug
{ Type = Architecture;
Identifier = Native;
Name = "Native Architecture of Build Machine";
Description = "32-bit for build machine";
ListInEnum = YES;
SortNumber = 101;
ArchitectureSetting = "NATIVE_ARCH";
},

// G3
{ Type = Architecture;
Identifier = ppc;
Name = "Minimal (32-bit PowerPC only)";
Description = "32-bit PowerPC ";
PerArchBuildSettingName = "PowerPC";
ByteOrder = big;
ListInEnum = No;
SortNumber = 201;
},

// G4
{ Type = Architecture;
Identifier = ppc7400;
Name = "PowerPC G4";
Description = "32-bit PowerPC for G4 processor";
ByteOrder = big;
ListInEnum = NO;
SortNumber = 202;
},

// G5 32-bit
{ Type = Architecture;
Identifier = ppc970;
Name = "PowerPC G5 32-bit";
Description = "32-bit PowerPC for G5 processor";
ByteOrder = big;
ListInEnum = NO;
SortNumber = 203;
},

// Intel
{ Type = Architecture;
Identifier = i386;
Name = "Intel";
Description = "32-bit Intel";
PerArchBuildSettingName = "Intel";
ByteOrder = little;
ListInEnum = NO;
SortNumber = 105;
},
)

Now you should be able to compile the iPhone project and run the app in the iPhoneSimulator. I never tried to put an App into the AppStore, but I think it should work.

So – if you follow those instructions (like I did) then you should be able to open xcode and build an iPhone app!

Worked a treat for me!

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He’s won 85% of the Grand Prix so far this season.

With 10 remaining races remaining. If he manages around the same percentage; he will win another 8 grand prix.

This would give him the most wins in a season (14, over MS’s 13 wins in 2004). It would also give him the highest percentage of wins in a season (~82% over Ascari’s 75% in 1952).

He would also have a good stab at beating the consecutive wins record of 7, set by Ascari & MS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Formula_One_driver_records#Most_wins_in_a_season

I’d say it’s early days to tell, but we’re already a good way through the season to know what cars are strong and what cars are not.

Is he going to do it?!

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I FINALLY found a few hours to get some more time in to show you again how quick it is to set up a new domain & shop. @15:17 BST I registered the domain name: The Gadget Directory. This is now a finely tuned wordpress blog, loaded with over 2,400 affiliate products. I shall be posting new gadgets on there every now and again so that you can get a feel for what products are available.

It just goes to show that if you have just 2 hours spare, you can get another site up and running with the potential to pull in a large audience. I don’t expect to see a great deal of traffic immediately but I shall for sure keep you updated. If you want to follow my alter-ego “Gadget Man” on twitter, then feel free.

As always if you want any tips on getting started in the affiliate marketing world, just give me a shout! Easiest way is to follow me on twitter and mention me @bobbyjason and you shall soon get a reply!

Night time folks, see ya!

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