Build a Niche Store WordPress Plugin Review – WPBans
A Plugin for BANS and WordPress? Yes, something we have all expressed interest in has finally been completed! On Weds, I got an email from the developer, Casey at WPBans, letting me know that Kelvin had recommended he get in touch to check out the new tool in our arsenal of BANS products!
To say the least, I was excited about finally having a way to seamlessly integrate BANS and WordPress, without the headaches of merging BANS WordPress templates, multiple applications etc. Unfortunately, My excitement was short lived!
I need to preempt this review with a statement that the plugin works exactly as it is designed to work, and if it meets your own needs, it may be worth looking into for you. On the same hand, it fell short of my own expectations, which in this case, may have just been too high! I reviewed this from two perspectives… the affiliate marketer and the developer. I was given a copy of the plugin to test and write this review, and have also seen a few other reviews on the web already. Please keep in mind that this review is my opinion only, and I encourage you to read the others as well, including the post on the BANS forum.
The bottom line is that is a great start to what can truly evolve into a great product! Casey has taken the initiative to invest his own time and money into the development of this, and through some feedback, I hope he continues to build this into a full solution, and has told me that this is version 1 of the plugin, with many future enhancements in the planning stages.
BANS WordPress Plugin Review
Cost: $67 (Not including BANS, $97)
Save $12 through 10/10/08 using Coupon Code: “NICHEMARK” during checkout.
Edit – 09/29/09: 09/29/09: The Coupon Code is no longer active.
Overall Rating: 5/10, Neutral.
The Build a Niche Store WordPress Plugin allows you to include auction listings, from your BANS store, into your WordPress posts. The way it works is actually pretty simple. After you install, activate and configure the plugin, it will show a set number of listings to your excerpt post. (Right after the <more> tag) Then, when a user clicks to read your full content post, the resulting page shows more listings beneath your content. To see it in action, go to http://bansauto.trybans.com/
My Own Expectations
When Casey sent me a copy of the BANS Plugin to review, I downloaded the file with the expectation that I would no longer have to deal with creating matching templates for my WP/BANS sites. In addition, I was also expecting that if I was new user, I would simply be able to install this plugin to WordPress and it would be filled with the same functionality of the BANS software.
Prepare to Install the Plugin
In order for this plugin to work, you MUST have a full copy of BANS installed somewhere on your server already. In addition, you still have to setup and configure your BANS software as if it were a standalone store. I tested this on a site that has WordPress on the root of the domain, with BANS in a separate folder, but I have seen on the BANS forum that Casey said it will work either way. (BANS or Blog on the root)
Installing the Plugin
Installation is very much a breeze for those who understand their hosting environment. I did have a few minor hiccups through my own install and Casey answered all questions immediately and resolved them. The support was excellent!
1 – When you download the archive, the first thing to note is that is compressed using the .rar format versus zip. If your program does not support rar files, you can head over to WinRAR (trial) or ZiPeg (free), and download the version needed to extract the files. After you have the plugin extracted, upload the entire wpbans folder to your WordPress Plugins directory.
2 – The WPBans plugin relies on both WordPress and BANS, so the next step is to login to your cPanel MySQL manager, and give access permissions to your WordPress database User, on your BANS database. This is a quick and easy process, which takes only a couple minutes once you know the usernames and database.
3 – Login to your WP Admin and activate the plugin!
4 – Go to Settings > WPBans > and configure the plugin to work within WordPress. There are several settings on this page, but overall, they are well defined and easy to understand. The most important setting is the location of your BANS store. In the case of my example site, it is located at the “/shop” directory, which is what I entered into the configuration screen.
While you are on the configuration screen, you will notice the very first choice is to decide if you want the plugin to automatically pull listings based on your WordPress post title, the Top category in WordPress, or by using a custom wpbans string in the “Custom Fields” section of your posts. I experimented with all three and found the best results by using the wpbans trigger in a custom field, as explained below. When I chose title or category, the results were very sporadic, and by using the wpbans field, I could narrow the results to exact keyword listings.
Using the WPBans Plugin
After you have completed the configuration of the plugin, you just go about writing your post like you would normally. In the custom field section of your post, you have a couple options.
1 – Enter “wpbans” in the Key field, and then your target keyword in the “Value” field. This will tell the plugin to show the number of listings you specified earlier, into your post, based on the keyword you enter.
As you can see on my example page, it automatically pulls listings from my BANS store that match the keyword “prius” into the post. The listings are pulled directly from the way I have setup BANS and will only pull from available categories, listings etc, as if it were in your store.
The Pro’s of the plugin:
If you want a quick and easy way to show bans store listing in your posts – this will work for you!
I DO think there are going to be some people who benefit using this plugin! It will read and display the listings from your preinstalled BANS store and let you easily show them on your posts. The main benefit will be for those who simply want to display some products and build multiple listings within their post format.
The plugin installs very quickly and easily and immediately starts inserting listings to your posts or pages, as set in the config screen. If you have an existing blog and chose the “Custom Field” method of pulling listings, you will need to go back through your posts and add a key to them for the auctions to display.
If you don’t want any listings on a specific post, just leave the custom field blank and no listings will appear!
The Cons…
If you want a way to seamlessly integrate BANS and WordPress into one single powerful website, this plugin is not for you!
Cost of Ownership: $164 minimum.
The cost of the plugin is $67, but that’s just the beginning. If you don’t already own BANS, add another $97. The main pitfall in this area is that there are free plugins that will let you do the same thing, when considering there is no theme support.
No Common Theme Support
The main downside to this plugin is that you still have to install a WordPress BANS Theme if you want your visitors to actually go to your store pages and browse, or it will still look like a BANS site. This plugin DOES NOT bridge the gap between the template system.
No BANS Store menu in WordPress
In additional to them lack of theme support, your BANS store menu will not show as a widget in your theme and you cannot pull the menu to your WordPress sidebars without some custom coding.
100% Tied to a BANS Backend
We all know I LOVE BANS, it is still the easiest way to create a fully operational eBay affiliate store in the shortest amount of time. The WPBans plugin, while somewhat bridging the gap between WO and BANS, still requires that you fully build your BANS store as if WP did not exist.
One way or another, head over to the BANS WordPress Plugin homepage and read more about what it has to offer! If you feel it may offer what you are looking for, make sure you use the discount code: NICHEMARK during checkout to receive a discount of $12, from now through 10/10/08. Edit – 09/29/09: The Coupon Code is no longer active.
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- Lets Help Build a Niche Store Plugin!
- The Build a Niche Store Template for WordPress
- Build A Niche Store Review – Part 1 – My First Store!
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I have been doing my part to "Build the Internet" since 1994, when I built my first website! Since then, I have built hundreds of niche websites for myself and many others, focused on design, applications, ecommerce, search optimization and internet marketing.
I want a way to seamlessly integrate BANS and WordPress into one single powerful website!! And I want it NOW! ;-)
Geez, I got all excited when I started reading the post because I’m working on putting up a new WP theme that I’m planning to use PopShops on. I thought, how cool if that perfectly integrated WP/BANS tool is finally here, so I can just go out and find a WP theme that I like, put in the plug-in, and concentrate on content and promotion instead of building logos and color schemes for my sites.
Close but not there yet.
Sounds a lot like phpBay, except with phpBay doesn’t rely on BANS and is an established, stable plug-in.
Interesting. I’m with Jon, and have strongly been considering purchashing phpBay to add “store” sections to my site flips to increase the value and add another revenue stream.
I’m sure as WPbans matures, it will prove to be a strong competitor – it looks great so far!
In my humble opinion…..phpBay blows doors over that plugin….it essentially….does nothing.
I must be overlooking something because I really don’t see any value to it at all…..zero.
My 2 cents.
Yes, looks like this is a promising start, but still a ways to go.
Right now either phpBay Pro or BayRSS are better solutions – and cheaper.
Yeah, it strikes me pretty strange to put listings from your BANS site into posts. Why wouldn’t you just pull from eBay? Why go around your back to get to your elbow?
James…do you know anything about folding bikes or is it just a site? I travel for work a lot and have been considering one of these to get some excercise at night. What’s the best brand….Bike Friday?
Hey Mark,
I was also a little underwhelmed at the pluggin. And the cost of $67 dollars really underwhelmed me.
What bothers me the most is that it seams like several developers are trying to reinvent the wheel. phpBay has been on the market almost as long as BANS, and it works very well for it’s purpose. Although it doesn’t have the design features, etc, as BANS, I have found it useful on a couple of my sites.
Put BANS, phpBay, PopShops, GoldenCan, etc, etc, all together and you still come to the same conclusion. Either pay through the nose for paid search listings on Google or Yahoo, or add a tremendous amount of content to make it searchable by those search engines.
This is something that I know you have been putting a lot of effort into as of late. I just wonder why it’s so hard to integrate the BANS program into WP, Joomla or others. Maybe if someone got their act together, they could develop a pluggin or mod to take BANS to a much higher level.
@ All – Please note that the developer has changed the way sales are handled, now through eJunkie, and the Coupon Code is no longer active.
Mark
Personally I don’t see any value in it whatsoever, I have build complete sites using BANS, phpbay or both, you just don’t get that flexibility with the plugin.
I also agree with you Mark about the templating system and it was one of the first things I asked about, it seems totoally pointless to release the plugin if there isn’t even a standard template system, its a little like releasing BANS and saying now go buy your own template to make it work.
I also don’t get the real benefit of it at all, why not just buy phpbay for $50 or so with the epntips coupon code and have the option of displaying it on its own or with BANS.
It certainly has a long way to go.
For this to work, it will need to do the following:
1. List the store categories in the sidebars for you
2. Those category links will then display the pages from your BANS store within your wordpress page.
3. You need to have the custom field option too – which looks perfect already.
As it is, this plugin does nothing that I can’t do in PHP with the wordpress built in RSS feed parser and a bit of CSS – and that includes the custom field stuff too!
A real let down – and the price is atrocious!
Glad you reviewed this plugin Mark. I don’t need to buy into another plugin that doesn’t do what it should.
I don’t mind paying the price if it does what it should so I will just wait until the right one comes out and I know I will read about it here.
I never bothered with BANS. I don’t see the point. You guys had trouble with BANS, and added WordPress. Now you’re looking at a way to tie them together? Sees like a backwards approach to me.
Phpbay is cheaper, and it’s the best way to do it. My first site i build with PHPbay and i get over 200 organic uniques a day.
You don’t even have to mess around with category numbers, as there are plugins that AUTOMATICALLY show auctions from the visitors country. Add to that extended functionality that goes above and beyond BANS, the huge variety of wordpress templates you can get to build your site around, and a great supportive community, and you’ve got a fantastic product.
A.
200 uniques a day? Must be doing something right. I have at least 3 or 4 sites that I just took down last night that I was using phpBay. I was getting about 1 or 2 uniques per site a day and not very much sales.
I’ll agree it’s a good product for show and tell, but I have found that BANS is better for generating deep search results. An average BANS site of mine might be indexed by Google at 150 to 200 pages. I just refreshed my sitemaps and I am getting sites with over 500 pages indexed. Think about a half dozen uniques on 500 pages each. That is where the $$ are.
The key, in my humble opinion, as in my earlier post, seems to be what you do with the site. As long as it is indexable, it probably doesn’t matter what program you use, whether it be BANS, phpBay, PopShops or GoldenCan.
seems the price is only $29 now.
I’d like to try a plugin that doesn’t require installing BANS but I need to be able to choose the category and be able to search keywords in the description as well as the title.
Any suggestions?
@ Christine –
phpbay works for me on that! There are a few links on the sidebar or header. (They are affiliate links, you can also just type it into your browser)
Here is a post I put up on the DIYReviews site, that calls products from 10 different categories, based on keywords and category numbers. It searches both titles and descriptions…
Mark
I think I got some result. Thank you here.
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