Update on all Build a Niche Store Site Updates
Afternoon everyone! I’m sure it will be obvious by my newly found mellow tone, that I have started having a bit more success on updating my Build a Niche Store sites! For those who have not been following on the forum or the various threads in this blog, here is the history and where I am now.
- 04/01 morning – I was SO HAPPY about the changeover early in the day, I had to sit on my hands just to keep from waving at cars going by!
- 04/01 afternoon – Had many issues with BANS updates, found myself flipping off the same people I had waved to earlier!
- 04/01 evening – Updated my first store from BANS 2.0 to the new EPN 3.0. This required two updates actually, first from 2.0 to 3.0, then 3.0 to 3.0 EPN. After 10 minutes of updating my homegrown Mod’s, the site was working perfectly! (At least that’s what what I thought)
- 04/01 late night – Uploaded BANS 3.0 EPN to a brand new store! Found out pretty quickly that the sql was wrong and the eBay campaign ID was not saving. Decided to give up for the night and try to sleep.
- 04/02 morning – First things first, corrected the sql issue with a quick fix of the database.sql file for future stores and an edit of the db for the existing store. Essentially, the database had the campid section (actually the old cj_id) designated as int(11) when it needed to be varchar(15).
- 04/02 late morning – Decided I had so much luck with the first site update, I was going to update a second site, one of my oldest and high performing sites! I should have gotten my hammer and just hit myself in the head at that point… the headache would have been less strenuous that knowing you are losing sales!
- 04/02 afternoon – After installing every single version of BANS to try and reclaim the site… I shut off my PC’s and kicked my feet back. Decided I had enough for one day and walked away from it.
- 04/02 afternoon – 10 minutes later, I knew I couldn’t leave it like that and tried again… for the next 7 hours! I have come to the conclusion that because it was a 1.3 store originally, it will not update to the newer 3.0. Read through some emails and realized Adam and Kelvin said that many weeks ago with the initial release of 3.0, but I didn’t think about it during this latest change.
- 04/03 morning – After much debate with myself (not a pretty site) I decided to scrap the entire site and start over. Spent the next 10 minutes reloading to 3.0 EPN, and the following 3 hours, converting my old database into an sql update file so I didn’t lose any store content, resulting in 404 errors. (This was very time consuming and hard…)
- Some of the original categories no longer pull products
- Search queries tend to be very sporadic, sometimes returning NO RESULTS for items on the page I am searching from! (Doh!)
The second site with all the original problems:
- Lost my template… wahh
- 80% of Categories are working fine, there are still some very popular ones though, that feed nothing! (Clothing and Accessories #11450 at ebay) Adam has said this is an eBay feed issue… but it works on some of my 1.3 and 2.0 sites still.
- Search issue is persistent on this site as well… cannot find items on the same page!
- Installed the Permalink and Search Query Mods with no problems!
The third site – brand new 3.0 EPN site… No issues at all!
My plan going forward is to work on very UN-popular sites until I am sure everything is working right. I still have a VERY useful search Mod for everyone and it is completed and working wonderfully on 2 sites of my own! I don’t however want to release it until all the latest fixes are out for BANS sites. I think there is another one coming still, to deal with the lost catid’s. Rochelle has also written a great post about her First Thoughts on the eBay Partner Network… it is a great read with good instructions as usual!
A few things I am doing to MAKE SURE it is working correctly:
1) Turn OFF Cloaking in your Admin/Setup
2) Make sure your site is passing the correct ID to eBay tracking section. Do this by hovering over a link in your store and looking at your browser status bar. (Very bottom of the screen) You should see a reference to “campID” with your eBay campaign ID listed directly after it. (Red arrow in image below) If your site is showing PID=, or campID=”youroldcjpidnumber”, you need to check into it quick and make sure the correct campID is in your admin/setup screen.
3) Open the site and look at the Google cache image if the website. In here, you can see if your categories have all repopulated correctly or not. To do this, you need to go to Google and search for your site. Once you find the homepage listing in Google, click on the link titled “cache” directly under your serp listing. Alternatively, if you have the Google toolbar, you can just click the black arrow to the right of the PR section and choose “Cached Snapshot” from the drop menu.
How is your Updating going?
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- Update Build a Niche Store 3.0 to 3.0 EPN
- Build a Niche Store EPN Update Released
- Build a Niche Store 3.0 Bug and Update
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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.
My browser status bar is not showing up… weird… it used to… any ideas how to fix?
I went to My Computer and clicked status bar under the view drop down. I’ve made sure my screen was maximized. Not sure what else to do :(
Help? Anyone?
Thanks,
Jamie
Duh, I found it… I right clicked in my ie toolbar and there was the Status Bar button unchecked and naked as a jay-bird… sorry for the question above…
Jamie -
Just click on a link and view the actual address bar in the ebay screen… you should see the same stuff!
Mark
When I turn off the cloaking and go to the website, I receive a warning that this may be a “suspicious website”. This happens with all 3 of my websites. Does this indicate a problem or have I got over sensitive security?
Also, I can see my campid number when I hover over a link, but when I click on the item and go to ebay, the information in the address bar is not the same. It is, however, the same information that appears when the cloaking is activated. No idea what this means?
Finally, I’m sorry I don’t understand what to look for on the “cashed snapshot”. Could you enlighten me?
Thanks for your help.
Denise
Ps. I still have the problem of the boots that are available, failing to show when searched for. I have tried numerous other searches and this is the only product I can find which will not show. Any ideas how to cure this?
@ Denise -
This Link is a cached snapshot of your site.
I am unsure about the security warning, but in al likelyhood, it is caused by the cookie being planted. I would check on a few other niche sites to see if they do the same. (Go into the niche directory above to find other bans sites)
In regard to the shoe issue… I have the same problem on several stores. Some of the category numbers just arent working.
Mark
Mark, thank you for the information, I shall do as you suggest.
With regards to the cached page, what am I looking for? How do I know whether or not all categories have re-populated? The only change I can see is that there are 3 product entries missing?
Sorry, I don’t understand?
Denise
Denise -
The missing pages is EXACTLY what I was talking about… if you look through the site admin, they are likely missing there as well.
The cached page is just a “snapshot” of what the site looked like the last time GBot visited… thus, you can see the pages that did not migrate from one version to the newest.
More or less, it just gives you an idea of the categories that are being interpreted properly.
Mark
Thanks Mark, the penny has dropped!!!
Denise
Mark, you said you installed a brand new 3.0 EPN site with no problems – I guess the cat #s did not disappear like Rochelle’s? Just wanted to confirm before installing a new store and if the problem has to do with a single vs multiple category store?
Rochelle, have you tried to install any more new 3.0 EPN stores?
Anyone know if there will be another fixed EPN update? Don’t know if I should hold off any longer or not? :s
Thanks,
Sonia
@ Sonia -
The new site used only 2 categories, both took just fine in the new 3,0 EPN.
Thats said… I have heard and read of many issues on the category front.
I guess at this point, it is just trial and error, using category 0 as a page level workaround.
Mark
Denise: SAID , When I turn off the cloaking and go to the website, I receive a warning that this may be a “suspicious website”. This happens with all 3 of my websites. Does this indicate a problem or have I got over sensitive security?
If you are using IE you can click on the warning and tell MS you own the site and it is safe by adding a link to contact info and privacy policy.
Hope that help
I don’t know if this is “new bans” related, but in the content area of my home page at the new store i did, when i change the first line of the txt to an H1 tag, IT WILL NOT CENTER! If i use the html editor it shows in the html that it is centered.. choosing h2 or anything else and it will center the txt… I think i ran into this problem with another store but i can’t remember..
any suggestions?
the site is http://www.HelpMeLift.com
thanks!
Thank you Bill. I did start this process but IE wanted more and more info, so I didn’t complete it (other things to do!). However, my concern was whether visitors to the site were seeing the same warnings. If so, it would be very off putting. It only happens when the cloaking is turned off. I do keep the cloaking on, but wondered whether it indicated another problem with the Bans V3 EPN update?
This site has been up for about 3 weeks and, to date, I have had 11 sales and one eBay registration! I am absolutely amazed as I was not expecting anything much to happen for a couple of months. It just shows, follow Marks’ advice and amazing things can happen. So, as I’m sure you will appreciate, I don’t want anything to drive away the visitors!!!
Denise
@ Denise -
I don’t think this has anything to do with your cloaking settings, it is more an issue with IE or FF, watching out for your own security. I work from three different PC’s, 2 at home and one in an office I spend time in… the office PC’s kick back the security warning every time I visit a BANS site and they are caused by the security settings within the cookie management of web browsers.
ALL users who have privacy turned up will always see these warnings, regardless of the site or cloaking.
Glad to see you are earning already also!
Mark
Mark,
With all the problems you and others with a lot of knowledge
are having should those of us that aren’t as knowledgeable just
wait until the dust settles before we make any changes.
We do have a month to change over.
Thanks,
Phil R
@ Phil -
Overall, I have slowly been realizing the reasons for the errors I have encountered. Most have been related to versions of the BANS install, ie: installing 3.0 onto a 2.0 store etc.
At least… thats what I keep telling myself! LOL
On the positive note, I have updated 20 additional stores in just the past couple hours. Aside from the hit or miss category issue, there have been no more database issues.
I intend to record some walkthroughs for all of this over the next couple days, time has not been on my side and I dont think anyone would have liked to hear me talking the past 2 days! :-O
Thanks Mark.
I will wait for your walk thru unless I get really bored and
need something to do.
Phil R
Mark,
I have not updated anything at this point. Well the all be straightened out in a final update?
I am a complete idiot when it comes to the technical stuff so the things you are talking about are way above me. You might as well be talking in some intergalactic language.
It is going to have to be simple for someone like me to make it work.
Hope things straighten out soon.
Jerry
Hey Mark,Russ listen I was going back over your emails and I found this one about looking in the browser status bar and so I went and checked my websites and discovered that none of my sites showed my campid so I read on and then went and turned off my cloaking.Now my campid shows up on all of them.
But when I went to check the Cached Shot of my Sites,I discovered that only maby 4 out of 10 sites show the cached page from google the other sites show a cannot find google page.
So my question is is this a problem and why are those sites not showing the cached page?
Thanks Mark
@ Russ -
I show 9 of 37 pages being indexed in Google… it looks like the site is still semi-new, so that is not abnormal.
I did notice your sitemap page has an = sign in the url… you should change that to a – (hyphen)
Check your email for further info…
Mark
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