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]

Originally Posted by Sal Collaziano

Any possibility of getting this to work on vBulletin 3 forums? If so, I can add it to another 25 sites or so...

Hey Sal, we'll have a test site using vbulletin3 hopefully up by tomorrow, so I will play with that, and get it working on there. I'll keep you updated on that.

[morrow]

I was wondering if you have a vendor list. I'm in a small market and before installing would like to see if relevent products will show up. Thanks.

[99SIVTEC]

Originally Posted by morrow

I was wondering if you have a vendor list. I'm in a small market and before installing would like to see if relevent products will show up. Thanks.

Hey morrow, you can go to either of these sites to lookup vendors that we use

Prosperent Merchant List

http://api.prosperent.com/api/mercha...ppos&dBug=true

The first list will show you all the merchant we use while the second one will show you a specific merchant; just change Zappos to the merchant name.

[morrow]

OK... So I signed up and installed... figured what the hell... So my forum resides in http://www.njflyfishing.com/vBulletin

I placed the code into my Navbar template and made the necessary change. It shows exactly where it's supposed to. Hover my mouse over it and it points to http://www.njflyfishing.com/product.php rather than http://www.njflyfishing.com/vBulletin/product.php.

Attempted to copy the files to the root of my site but that just comes up with another error.

I'll leave it installed for now to see what you guys come up with.

Thanks.

[99SIVTEC]

Originally Posted by morrow

OK... So I signed up and installed... figured what the hell... So my forum resides in http://www.njflyfishing.com/vBulletin

I placed the code into my Navbar template and made the necessary change. It shows exactly where it's supposed to. Hover my mouse over it and it points to http://www.njflyfishing.com/product.php rather than http://www.njflyfishing.com/vBulletin/product.php.

Attempted to copy the files to the root of my site but that just comes up with another error.

I'll leave it installed for now to see what you guys come up with.

Thanks.

No problem, I've got you covered.

open productSearch.php, and on line 44 change

PHP Code:

<form style="position: relative; z-index:1; float: right; margin: 5px 5px 0 0;" id="search" method="GET" action="/product.php"> 


to

PHP Code:

<form style="position: relative; z-index:1; float: right; margin: 5px 5px 0 0;" id="search" method="GET" action="/vBulletin/product.php"> 


Then it will send it to the right page.

[morrow]

Originally Posted by 99SIVTEC

No problem, I've got you covered.

open productSearch.php, and on line 44 change

PHP Code:

<form style="position: relative; z-index:1; float: right; margin: 5px 5px 0 0;" id="search" method="GET" action="/product.php"> 


to

PHP Code:

<form style="position: relative; z-index:1; float: right; margin: 5px 5px 0 0;" id="search" method="GET" action="/vBulletin/product.php"> 


Then it will send it to the right page.

Perfect.. Thanks, I'll give it a shot.

[99SIVTEC]

We have merchants in pretty much every vertical you can think of. For fishing we work with large vendors like Bass Pro Shops, all the way down to the smaller shops.

Remember, we have over 50 million products from more than 3,000 retailers. We work with huge names like Best Buy, Zappos, QVC, REI, Overstock, Auto Anything, Kohl's, Cabelas, Gap, Banana Republic, and on and on and on . If it is sold online, we probably have it in our system.

[c.c.]

Has anyone made any money yet?

[99SIVTEC]

Originally Posted by c.c.

Has anyone made any money yet?

Let me give you (and others a few tips). Most of my sales that were made during testing came from actual organic searches from search engines, not from the members of my own forum. I would start by promoting the feature on your site to your users. Mention that it is a way for them to help support your site since you earn a commission on every purchase. This goes a long way since members are often ready and willing to help support their favorite forum.

Next, get some organic traffic coming into the search pages. For this, you need to get some backlinks to some of the search result pages. This is as simple as displaying a few search url's in your signature on your forum, and encouraging your users to do that same.

We may also be able to create a side block that perhaps stores and shows the most popular searches? Doing this has the benefit of drawing attention to the search, but also gets some links in which helps get pages indexed and ultimately leads to sales.

Last but not least, be patient. It took me several weeks to start getting search traffic to my product search. After that, sales started to roll in slowly, and now I get several per day and have almost 7 million pages indexed. It went from my forum struggling to make money to being quite the money maker for me, but it took time .

[99SIVTEC]

Originally Posted by Sal Collaziano

Any possibility of getting this to work on vBulletin 3 forums? If so, I can add it to another 25 sites or so...

I just finished making this add-on work on vBulletin3. The thread is located at Prosperent Product Search vb3