BANS RSS Feed Cloaking Broken

Monday, February 22nd, 2010 at 5:09 pm

eBay has changed the way they serve up RSS feeds. They change took place on February 10, 2010 and since then many BANS customers are having problems.

BANS customers are reporting that up to 95% of their links when clicked are going to a “Page Not Responding” error page on eBay.

Here is a quote from eBay on this recent change:

“For the vast majority of publishers, there will be no need to make any changes to the way you promote eBay or to how the RSS feed is configured. However, if you are using software or tools to further manipulate the RSS feed links (e.g. Build A Niche Store or PHPBay), you may need to check that your links still work properly after the change has been implemented. If you experience any issues, please contact your software or tool provider.”

From what I am able to gather, there appears to be a fix.

In index.php, you need to find this block of code:

Code:

if(($siteType == "US") && ($cloak == "1")){
$front->sid = str_replace("%2B", "+", $front->sid);
$link[$counter] = str_replace("http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?", "".URL_PATH."/item/", $link[$counter]);
$link[$counter] = str_replace("&mpre=http%3A%2F%2Fcgi.ebay.com%2F", "", $link[$counter]);
$link[$counter] = str_replace("QQcmdZViewItemQQssPageNameZRSS%3AB%3ASRCH%3AUS%3A101", "", $link[$counter]);
$link[$counter] = str_replace("campid=".CJID."", "", $link[$counter]);
$link[$counter] = str_replace("&customid=".$front->sid."", "", $link[$counter]);
$link[$counter] = str_replace("&toolid=10005", "", $link[$counter]);
}

And you need to replace it with the following:

Code:

if(($siteType == "US") && ($cloak == "1")){
$itempos = strpos($link[$counter],"item=");
$cloakeditem = substr($link[$counter],$itempos+5,12);
$cloakedtitle = preg_replace("/[^a-zA-Z0-9\s]/", "", $title[$counter]);
$link[$counter] = URL_PATH.'/item/'.str_replace(" ","-",$cloakedtitle)."_W0QQitemZ".$cloakeditem;
}

This change also needs to be done in the FrontControl.php file which you will find in the cont folder.

You can follow the thread at http://www.nichesitebuilding.com/forum/showthread.php?t=38250 to see what other BANS customers are finding out about this change.

Tagged with: BANS Cloaking • eBay RSS Feed