ldjautobody

@prowebdev, I have already installed it on my forum site and it does help. But, if the users aren’t on a spam list already, they can still log in and create an account.

I basically had to set it up so that everyone that signs up for a “forum” account get reviewed before we start letting them post. It’s a pain, but better than having to remove a bunch of “off content” stuff.

Good luck and I’ll keep watching for an answer here or any suggestions. I’ll be happy to forward any other info I find too! Good luck with your site!

If I find anything else that works better, I’ll forward the info to you also. I’m still searching for one that will take the tedious work out of reviewing each and every forum subscriber…

Denise (@Ldjautobody)

Thanks, both of you for answering my question! Both answers helped and both answers were utilized! ??

I appreciate how quickly you guys always get back to me on questions…so again, thank you. That’s what makes WordPress such a great platform…95% is the people we meet along the way!

Sincerely,

Denise (LDJAutoBody)

Hi DIY! I couldn’t agree more. This is a great plugin but far to exhausting to add each product in individually. I’m hoping we will hear from Brian soon with some good news! I too would gladly act as a test site for any experimentation that might be needed!

The ball’s in your court Brian! You’ve got a couple of guinea pigs here if you need us! ??

Thanks Eric,

That was the problem. As always…you guys rock!

Denise, Ldjautobody

Hi Eric,

The post did not post “twice”…I had re-posted to let you know that I DID notice that when the testimonial is shown “by itself” and NOT IN A LIST, the image shows up in the testimonial.

It is when the testimonial is shown in a “list” that the image does not show up. I just wanted to clarify that. However, we still need to address the issue that the image is not showing in the “list” because that’s where the problem originally started and is STILL not working.

Thanks, Ldjautobody

I was just looking at your documentation and after looking at my “testimonials” in the dashboard, I realized that the image does show up if the testimonial is viewed as a “single testimonial” by itself. However, on my “Testimonials” page, where the testimonials are shown as a list, the image does not show up. It there a way to force the image to show when using the “list” shortcode? Or, perhaps there’s a way to modify the PHP and get it to show up that way?

Thanks for any help. Page is at https://www.ldjautobody.com/testimonials/

Hi umm-layth,

Not sure if this will help you or not, but I just started using this plugin too and I finally got an idea of how the shortcodes work. I too was trying to display a list of “testimonials” on a page where all of the testimonials will show up one after the other. I had exactly the same problem as you where the testimonial was shortened and there was no way to see the entire post.

I modified the list shortcode to the following and it works just fine…so try this shortcode and see if it helps:

[ic_do_testimonials display='list' quantity='-1 num_words='140' more_tag='Read More...'']

Be sure to remove the backticks from the shortcode that is necessary to show code on this forum! This shortcode will allow you to show all testimonials, displays the first 140 words and inserts a “read more” button at the end of the 140 words.

Hope that helps you out!

Ldjautobody

Brian, I also left this replay in the “batch importation?” topic in the forum. I saw that you were discussing the same problem and I replied to it, but I realized that the topic was marked as “resolved”, so most likely, no one saw it. Here’s a copy of the reply I sent to that topic…it covers the file structure that I can “order” from Commission Junction as a service from them for their data feeds for different merchants:

Hi Brian. I noticed that you were discussing the same topic that you and I discussed recently. I just wanted to let you know that I found a very interesting section of Commission Junction’s web services that may be of help with getting some information for products to put into a store using a batch import. Check out this section of the API Developer’s section that I found…I have quoted it here:

After reviewing the associated API documentation, you may implement the desired services to support your business. Each service requires you to provide a number of request parameters in order to receive the desired information (response fields) back from the service. You may develop in any number of programming environments that enable you to make REST requests and provide the required parameters (see Request Parameters section of each individual Web service topic). Your web application or page must be able to process the appropriate response fields indicated for each particular service (see Response Fields section within a service topic).

If I am correct in reading this, we can ask Commission Junction to provide us with a file that would contain the information requested in the order requested. If that is the case, could you use this to help with batch import? I’d be willing to request the required information from them and send it to you so we could move forward with this possibility.

Please let me know if you have the time to take a look at it and let me know exactly what info we need and the order it needs to be in and I’ll send a request as soon as I get the info from you.

Thanks for any input on this. I really need to get this store up and running and I’d like to use your plugin if possible. I really like the way it is set up and I’m sure that I’m not the only one that would be very interested in having this done! Please let me know.

The link to our site is again: https://accessories.ldjautobody.com in case you need to see it.

Thanks in advance for your help,

Denise Blackman LdjAutoBody

Please let me know what you think of this. It may offer some help in resolving the “data feed” issue. Let me know.

Denise Blackman Ldjautobody

Brian, I have added a couple more products to the shop and I’ve found that using the Java script actually works better for getting everything into the right places. But, I am still having problems with the “buy now” button. It ends up with a 404 redirect for “page not found”, so something is not transferring over in that respect with the script.

If you take a look at the site at https://accessories.ldjautobody.com, and click on “auto body kits” you can see that the product image is showing up properly, we DO get a description where it belongs and the price is coming out where it should. I have been adding the Image url and the price as separate line items. When I enter the Java script for the link, (I am using the java script from Commission Junction). One of the biggest problems I will have is that IF you don’t include EVERYTHING in the link, you will not be credited with a sale, so I need to be very sure that the script is not changed when it loads. This is already a problem as the java script is broken as soon as I enter it.

Any ideas as to how we can make this work? I really want to use your plugin, but I just don’t see how we can meet our deadlines if we can’t resolve these issues. Please get back to me and let me know if there’s any chance of working with this a little to see if we can get it working.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Denise Blackman Ldjautobody

Hi Brian. I noticed that you were discussing the same topic that you and I discussed recently. I just wanted to let you know that I found a very interesting section of Commission Junction’s web services that may be of help with getting some information for products to put into a store using a batch import. Check out this section of the API Developer’s section that I found…I have quoted it here:

After reviewing the associated API documentation, you may implement the desired services to support your business. Each service requires you to provide a number of request parameters in order to receive the desired information (response fields) back from the service. You may develop in any number of programming environments that enable you to make REST requests and provide the required parameters (see Request Parameters section of each individual Web service topic). Your web application or page must be able to process the appropriate response fields indicated for each particular service (see Response Fields section within a service topic).

If I am correct in reading this, we can ask Commission Junction to provide us with a file that would contain the information requested in the order requested. If that is the case, could you use this to help with batch import? I’d be willing to request the required information from them and send it to you so we could move forward with this possibility.

Please let me know if you have the time to take a look at it and let me know exactly what info we need and the order it needs to be in and I’ll send a request as soon as I get the info from you.

Thanks for any input on this. I really need to get this store up and running and I’d like to use your plugin if possible. I really like the way it is set up and I’m sure that I’m not the only one that would be very interested in having this done! Please let me know.

The link to our site is again: https://accessories.ldjautobody.com in case you need to see it.

Thanks in advance for your help,

Denise Blackman LdjAutoBody

Thanks for the reply! Glad to hear Motorcycle Superstore is already on the list! That’s a step in the right direction. And, I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote the post, but the other accessory supplier I mentioned should be “Andy’s Auto Sport”…not, Andy’s Auto Body! Sorry about that…I must have already been in “Holiday” mode! LOL

Thanks again for your help and I look forward to hearing that a few more auto and motorcycle suppliers are on board! Then we can really start moving forward.

Denise @ldjautobody

Hi Brian,

Thanks for getting back to me…and, I hope you had a wonderful Father’s Day!

OK…let me see if I can make things a little more clear here. Sorry, but this will probably be a longer email than I want it to be simply for clarification, but here goes…

Commission Junction, who I get most of my links from, offers two options to post links. One is Java Script and the other is HTML. (By the way, I have been using HTML. Do you have any input on which is the better one to use? I would think that the Java Script would take too long to load and cause the site to run more slowly…but, I’m not the expert here!:)) Then, from the list of links, you can choose to show either a “text link”, a “banner”, or a full blown “image, description, and buy button all in the same link”. So, you can see this is where my trouble begins.

I am going to try to show you a couple of the links here:

The following code is for “Porsche Style Body Kits” from Andy’s Auto Sport. Now…this is a link which takes you to a section of Andy’s Auto Sport Catalog that allows you to pick out the individual items you need and also gives you the ability to use their search function for their site.

The first line is what they list as the “image url” and looks like this: https://www.advertiserserver.com/advertiserimage.gif (You will notice that there is NO “affiliate ID” in that URL…so listing the image separately and someone clicking on it will NOT get me a sale or a commission on a sale…not good! ??

This is the full ‘HTML’ link that includes my ID…I am going to change the ID as I’m a little uncomfortable listing it here…so the ID is not correct, but everything else is:

<a href="https://www.tkqlhce.com/click-000000-00000000" target="_blank" onmouseover="window.status='https://www.andysautosport.com';return true;" onmouseout="window.status=' ';return true;">
<img src="https://www.lduhtrp.net/image-0000000-00000000" width="300" height="150" alt="" border="0"/></a>

As you can see, the second option shows an image that DOES contain our ID and therefore would insure our commission IF the image alone was clicked. However, it is also “built in” to the full link and therefore shows differently than using the image and description links separately.

Now that you can see the links, you can see how it would cause a problem to “disturb” the way that the Merchant wants you to show the link vs. adding the information separately into the “info boxes” on your plugin form. Although I can get the images and links to show up properly, I’m not sure if splitting up that full link will interrupt the flow of info or not. Not only that, but there are about 1000 or better “auto body kits” available…and not just from one supplier!

So, therein lies my problem. There is only ONE plugin that I found that allows me to set up everything as a complete “store” and updates itself and I simply can’t afford to pay their subscription prices right now…they are monthly rates and we would need to use their “enterprise” rate…way too expensive for our company! (At least for the time being! :))

In reference to your question regarding what I meant by “links with creatives”, I was simply referring to the above links that included ALL of the info in “one link”. When I referred to “reply boxes”, I was referring to the “info boxes” on your form…sorry, it was late when I wrote the original request. ??

Anyway, any information you could give me regarding this problem would be greatly appreciated. The link I just gave you is for only “one” suppier, but most of them are pretty similar. SOME do offer the image links with our ID already inserted, but almost all of these suppliers offer “one” link with all the information neatly tucked inside. That is how “Commission Junction” supplies their links and banners…so I’m not even sure it is the Merchant’s themselves or CJ that creates the actual link HTML. Because they are so similar, I am thinking that it is CJ that supplies the actual links as they are the ones who must track them…

Now, there IS an option, with some Merchants, that offer a “feed” of their products. That “feed” is updated automatically and includes ALL of the items in a particular category. Honestly, we don’t use ALL of the items that ANY of our Merchants offer (our purpose for advertising these links is to let our customers…at the body shop…buy their own parts and either ship them to us or bring them to the shop to have them installed. It gives them a chance to save some money on us marking up the price and we do offer “labor only” rates on most of our services). That being said, I would prefer to pick out the items that we offer on our site, but if the “feed” option were available, I could probably use it to bring the items into the store and then just delete what we didn’t want there. Either way…I am still looking at some serious work to set everything up. I am not opposed to entering each item as a “one time” thing. It would take some time…but…I’m a pretty “patient gal”! ?? But, when I do that, I’d like to know I’m doing it right…the first time!??

Now, of course, there ARE other items that we sell through our affiliate program that will work very nicely with your plugin, and I don’t feel a need to discuss those. I just didn’t want you to think that we are having a problem with everything! The items in question are “category” items that ARE very important to our business though, and getting them up and into a “store” of some kind is very important. These particular items make up about 50% or better of the items that we sell, so finding a solution to the problem is key to getting our site launched.

In reference to your question regarding an “upload function”, I am thinking that would be great. IF the function is what I am thinking… When you refer to “upload”, are you speaking of simply uploading an image? And then we would fill in a description? I’m not sure what you are talking about “uploading”. So, if that feature was to “upload an image” and we would then insert a description of our own or from the Merchant, it would still work because we could use the image link that includes our Affiliate ID and still get credit for the sale. So, if that’ what you’re referencing…then yes, it would be great.

If you need ANYTHING further…please let me know. I would really like to get this site launched and…right now…the store is a huge part of that. So I will make sure that I look for any and all correspondence from you that will help facilitate this and I promise to get back to you right away. I really appreciate your help and I will make sure that our company gets a donation to your plugin “post haste”! LOL Like I said, the plugin in the best one out there if we can get over this hump…I’m hoping that I’m just confused about how to load these items and that you will tell me I can do it with the plugin as is! That would be wonderful! LOL So…please…feel free to tell me that I was a “little light” on brain function when I tried to upload these links! ??

I look forward to your answers!

Sincerely,

Denise (ldjautobody)

Just in case anyone else was interested. I fixed the problem and it was due to the W3 Total Cache configuration. I had inadvertently configured the cache plug-in improperly and after re-configuring the total cache plug-in…all is good.

Hi Josh…I am very happy to hear that I made you smile!:) You certainly deserve it! And, of course, you have my permission to use the review in any way you see fit. My “shoot from the hip” demeanor does not always have the same effect on everyone that receives a review from me!;) So please, feel free to spread the word! My fellow WordPress users will be glad you did!

Reviews are meant to be helpful and that’s exactly why I took the time to review your plug-in. WordPress users, whether on the professional level or just “bloggers” wishing to get their point across, know that plug-ins are “the” single most important factor in WordPress, second only to the core software itself. Without them, “technologically challenged” writers, like myself, would be lost…(or buried in a pile of books that none of us really wants to understand!);)

Consequently, when I run across a plug-in like “Ultimate TinyMCE”, that is well written, constantly updated, and expertly supported, my fellow WordPress users and writers “need” to know about it.

Thank you for the great plug-in and keep up the great work. I think the “users” option is an awesome idea. (I am one of those writers who uses everything I can get my hands on, however, some of my co-writers…not so much. So, I am sure they will love the fact that their editor does not need to be as “crowded” as mine! LOL) I will be purchasing your “pro” version next month when the budget becomes available and I’m looking forward to it!

Best wishes for success and, if I can be of any help or you need anything further, please feel free to contact me.

Sincerely,

Dee Blackman
LDJ Auto Body & Customs, Owner/Partner
Biker Lifestyle World Magazine, Sr. Editor