Add-On Releases - Prosperent Product Search and Auto-Linker

Updates:

• November 21, 2012- Re-instantiated the template search bar for those who can't use sidebars in their templates. (v.2.8)
• November 20, 2012- Altered Default Sort Option to make it a drop down. (v.2.7)
• November 20, 2012- Fixed the issue causing users not to be able to view their PMs. (v.2.6)
• November 19, 2012- The search bar is now inside a Forum Block, no longer will you have to alter your template files.
  There is also an additional part to this plugin, the Auto-Linker. More about this will be described below.
  
• November 13, 2012- Resolved an issue with the starting query and when facets were clicked. (V2.4)
• October 24, 2012- Added a starting query and updated the API. Also now works when the query has an apostrophe in it. (V2.3)
• July 17, 2012- Added negative filters for Brands and Merchants. (v. 2.2)
• June 4, 2012- More optimization, fixed a CSS bug. (v. 2.1)
• May 18, 2012- Optimization. Updated API class, better functionality, removed the recent queries table. Added a CSS file that contains most of the CSS for those who want to change any settings. (v. 2.0)
• February 21, 2012- Optimization. I was informed that it was running slow on some peoples forums, so I optimized the table. It should run a lot faster and smoother now. (v. 1.6)
• February 16, 2012- Made some adjustments in how things are run, worked out a few bugs that I found. (v.1.5)
• February 14, 2012- 'Recent Searches' and 'Top Products' Sidebars have been integrated. These will help drive traffic to your forums. More AdminCP Options. (v.1.4)
• February 3, 2012- Facets have been launched, more Admin options, optimized code. (v1.3)
• January 31, 2012- Updated with AdminCP options for the logo, default price sort type, and API key (v1.2)
• January 27, 2012- Updated with Price Sort (v1.1)

Prosperent Product Search

This add-on will help make/increase earnings from your forum. It will add a product search to your forum's sidebar, which users can utilize to search for products. When they click the product through your forum they will be redirected to the Merchant's site. If they make a purchase you will earn a commission from the sale.

Prosperent Auto-Linker
This new portion of the add-on will enable you to designate words that will be linked to the Product Search. You can also use a different query.

For example,

red shoes => red Nike shoes
shoes

If you put the above inside the text area then any time red shoes or just shoes is in a post it will be linked to the Product Search. If you put the additional part after red shoes with any word then when it find 'red shoes' it will actually send the query of 'red Nike shoes' to the Product Search.

As with this example, put the longer part first. That way red shoes will be matched before shoes. Else red shoes would never be found.

Why Prosperent Product Search?

Prosperent Product Search uses Prosperent's API, which is a very advanced API that offers you access to 3000 merchants and 50 million products from all of the top online retailers. Stores like Zappos, 6pm, Best Buy, Overstock, REI, Advance Auto Parts, Kohl's, Gap, Banana Republic, Cabelas, and thousands more. If it is sold online, we probably have it in our system.

We have an ever growing community, which is always willing to answer questions and lend a helping hand, and our team here at Prosperent is also available on the forum.

Installation

First thing, head over to Prosperent and click Join, its Free to do so. Create your account and once you are signed in, click the API tab up top. This page will give you the information you need to know about the API. But all you need to do here at the moment is click API Keys on the submenu and click Add New API Key. This will get you the API key you'll need so commissions can be tracked back to you. Name it whatever you'd like and you'll see that its created a key for you.

Save that key somewhere as you'll be needing it later.

Now, download the .zip file and unzip it. First import the plugin file in the AdminCP. Open the 'Upload' folder and copy the contents into your main or root vbulletin directory.

Okay, with that done. Go into your AdminCP and click Settings -> Options -> Prosperent Settings and add your API Key to the input box labeled Api_Key and save that there.

The new search box is now in a forum block. These can be turned on or off inside the AdminCP options.

You also may have to enable sidebars for your forum if they currently are not active, to do this go to admincp -> options -> Forum Sidebar and Block Options and enable the Forum Sidebar option.

After that is finished, go to Forums & Moderators then go to Forum Blocks Manager. Once there click Add Block.

Block Type: Custom HTML/PHP. Click Continue. You'll be doing this for the two (2) sidebars. Now for the information to enter into each, look at the two images attached. Create a sidebar for Top Products.


If you can't view the images for any reason, for the forum block...

Title: 'Prosperent Top Products' or something similar
Description: Displays the top products.
Cache Time: 300 (or more, your call, this won't be changing as much as recent searches)
Content Type: PHP
Content: return $this;
Template to Use: Block_Prosperent_Tops_Template

Title: 'Prosperent Store' or something similar
Description: Displays the search box.
Cache Time: 1
Content Type: PHP
Content: return $this;
Template to Use: block_prosperent

Change the display order on the 'Forum Blocks Manager' to your liking.

Admin Options:

Giving you more power over this add-on.

• Api_Key- Enter your Api key here so you can earn your commissions
• Phrases and Optional Queries- Insert the words you'd like to be linked to the Product Search and their optional query.
• Case Sensitive Matching
• Open links in new window?- Will either open a link in a new window or the same window.
• Default_Sort- Sets the sort type default. relevance desc = Relevancy, price asc = Low to High, price desc = High to Low
• Starting Query- Adds a starting query, if nothing is set as a query when the user gets to the product search page.
• Enable Facets
• Api Limit- Set the API limit. Default is 10.
• Pagination Limit- Set the amount of results to appear per page. Default is 15.
• Addional Directory- This one is for those who's forums have an additional directory. Now instead of altering code you are able to define the additional directory here, Don't forget the leading slash (/).
• Merchant Facets- Number of merchants to display in primary facet list
• Brand Facets-Number of merchants to display in primary facet list
• Enable Top Products Sidebar-
• Top_Shown- Sets the number of Top Products to be shown in the sidebar.
• Negative Brand Filters- Brands to discard from results. If more than 1, seperate by commas. Enter the Brand name exactly how it appears in the results. (ie. Nike, Reebok, Merrell)
• Negative Merchant Filters- Merchants to discard from results. If more than 1, seperate by commas. Enter the Merchant's name exactly how it appears in the results.(ie. 6pm, Zappos.com, endless)
• Logo_Image-Set to display the Prosperent Logo with the search bar. Size is 167px x 50px.
• Logo_imageSmall- Set to enable the smaller logo. Size is 100px x 30px.
• Template_Placement- Changes the template that {vb: raw includedphp} is placed in. Remember the template name is case sensitive.

Template Installation of Search Bar:
Go to Styles & Templates, click Style Manager and then on your Primary Style, click Edit Templates. Open the header template and insert

PHP Code:

{vb:raw includedphp} 


where you'd like the search bar to show up.

Notes:

You can change which template to put

PHP Code:

[COLOR="RoyalBlue"] {vb:raw includedphp}[/COLOR] 


into but if you do you must change it inside the plug-in. The Plug-in is named Search Form Input Box. The template name is case sensitive.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to ask me here or on the Prosperent Community.

[99SIVTEC]

That's high on our priority list. Right now we are filing the papers to move our corporation to another state. Amazon doesn't support Colorado (our main hq) due to some affiliate nexus laws that were passed in which they would have to collect sales taxes from affiliates. Once that goes through, we will roll amazon into our product catalog and you guys will automatically have access to all of their products on top of the 50 million we already provide.

[scottct1]

Thats the same issue here in Connecticut. I was making good money from Amazon then they pulled all affiliates from CT. (Silly thing was the Tax they were mad at was never approved in the state... yet Amazon never reinstated afilliates for CT. Which means they are saving themselves a ton of money by not paying their affiliates here for proper sales.

I am making up a little of it by having Viglink installed, but nothing like I was getting before.

[Sal Collaziano]

I tried setting this up on my 4.1.x installation and when clicking submit for a product search I was taken to my homepage with /product.php?q=my+search+query

Any idea what could be going wrong?

[99SIVTEC]

Could you give me the url to it, and I'll have a look.

Did you place the other .php files that came with the .zip into your forums root directory?

[iDHKHCM]

Do we still have to open Products.php to enter our api key? since theirs a "enter key" in admincp threw xml? in process of installing now, looks very sweet

[99SIVTEC]

Originally Posted by iDHKHCM

Do we still have to open Products.php to enter our api key? since theirs a "enter key" in admincp threw xml? in process of installing now, looks very sweet

Nope, everything is handled in the AdminCP now, I should probably remove that comment, haha.

[iDHKHCM]

Originally Posted by 99SIVTEC

Nope, everything is handled in the AdminCP now, I should probably remove that comment, haha.

kk sweet thanks for writing back so fast.

how would i go about changing the image? admincp i entered 0 for hidden. that didnt work. i also changed the image in the img folder also didnt work. i want to use this image i made

[iDHKHCM]

thats just a quick change final image will look alot better i just wanted to know how i would change it. whats the initials for your site? P.S. ? i want to keep you guys in the final logo i use for sure. this mod is Awesome!

[99SIVTEC]

Originally Posted by iDHKHCM

thats just a quick change final image will look alot better i just wanted to know how i would change it. whats the initials for your site? P.S. ? i want to keep you guys in the final logo i use for sure. this mod is Awesome!

Hey, actually I just noticed a small error in my part. Anyways to add your own image change the following code in productSearch.php. The original lines are 51-56.

PHP Code:

 if ($vbulletin->options['Prosperent_logoImage'] == TRUE)
            {
                ?>
                <td style="padding-right:5px;"><a href="http://community.prosperent.com" title="Prosperent Search"> <img src="http://community.prosperent.com/img/logo_small.png" /> </a></td>
                <?php
            }

Anyways change that too...

PHP Code:

            if ($vbulletin->options['Prosperent_logoImage'] == TRUE)
            {
                ?>
                <td style="padding-right:5px;"><a href="http://community.prosperent.com" title="Prosperent Search"> <img src="<?php echo 'http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . '/img/YOUR_IMAGE_NAME_HERE'; ?>"/> </a></td>
                <?php
            }
            ?>

Then just put your image into the img folder that came with the add-on and include your image name after the /img/ and make Logo_Image TRUE or 1 in your AdminCP and you should be good.

[iDHKHCM]

Originally Posted by 99SIVTEC

Hey, actually I just noticed a small error in my part. Anyways to add your own image change the following code in productSearch.php. The original lines are 51-56.

PHP Code:

 if ($vbulletin->options['Prosperent_logoImage'] == TRUE)
            {
                ?>
                <td style="padding-right:5px;"><a href="http://community.prosperent.com" title="Prosperent Search"> <img src="http://community.prosperent.com/img/logo_small.png" /> </a></td>
                <?php
            }

Anyways change that too...

PHP Code:

            if ($vbulletin->options['Prosperent_logoImage'] == TRUE)
            {
                ?>
                <td style="padding-right:5px;"><a href="http://community.prosperent.com" title="Prosperent Search"> <img src="<?php echo 'http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . '/img/YOUR_IMAGE_NAME_HERE'; ?>"/> </a></td>
                <?php
            }
            ?>

Then just put your image into the img folder that came with the add-on and include your image name after the /img/ and make Logo_Image TRUE or 1 in your AdminCP and you should be good.

thanks that worked great. Needless to say you are the MAN. Im going to make a thread for my members who own their own sites to read more about this mod on my site n link this url on their so more ppl can use this awesome MOD. any luck with the amazon thing?



if anyone needs help with a image or button Message me, i will help.
dont forget to Nominate this guys MOTM its sick!