phpBay Pro Faq

Following are some fairly common questions and/or scenarios I encounter about phpBay Pro. Up till now, I’ve been retyping or resending them out via email, but thought it was a good time to create a FAQ for the product as it continues to grow in it’s user base.

1. Can I display more than one instance of the [phpbay] tag in a Wordpress post?

Not currently. A page or post can only have one instance of the [phpbay] tag to display results from Ebay.

2. My index page was working fine, until I added another post with the [phpbay] tag in it. Now the index will not display correctly and seems broke. What can I do?

This actually stems from FAQ question number 1. Wordpress automatically displays x number of posts you’ve created on the front page. We’ll use 10 to represent x for now, though it could be more depending on your own settings. So, what happens here, is that Wordpress displays these posts and we end up with multiple instances of the [phpbay] tag on the front page. The plugin can only parse one instance, so things go a bit haywire. There is a solution though. In Wordpress, there is a tag called the “more” tag. In each post, just before the [phpbay] tag, insert the “more” tag < — more — > (without spaces). This will stop the display of the full post on the index page, and only display the part up to the “more” tag for each post, on the index page.

3. I’ve uploaded the /phpbay folder to my /plugins folder. Followed the directions, and I get a message like: “Set the affiliate id variable in ebay.php” What am I doing wrong?

This happens when you have the Wordpress plugin installed correctly, but have also uploaded the API (stand alone) version of phpBay to the root directory. Sometimes people like to test both, or upload the API version to the root folder. What happens is, even though the Wordpress version is installed, the include command to include ebay.php starts it’s search at the root folder first (functionality of php), before in the folder it’s being called from. Since it finds ebay.php at the root folder (the API version), it tries to load it instead. Solution? Remove any instance of ebay.php from the root of your site.

4. Items are displaying in my posts correctly, but when I click the link to go to the Ebay item listing, I get a 404 error.

Solution: Make sure to upload auction.php to your root folder. In Wordpress, this would be where the main index.php file is located. In the API version, this is the url/folder path that you set in ebay.php.

5. I’ve installed the WP Plugin, but the pBP button does not display when I go to write a page or post. How can I fix this?

Solution: There are two possible solutions here. One, in most installations I’ve come across, on the write page/post page, there is a tab for “Visual” or “Code.” The pBP button is displayed on the “Code” tab. If you are missing these tabs, the next way to fix this, is to go to your admin panel, Users -> Your Profile. At the very top of this page, is a check box “Use the visual editor when writing” and deselect this. This will disable the visual editor. One other scenario that may exist is, phpBay uses a file called buttonsnap.php. Many other plugin authors use this class as well and there are older versions out there. It may be, that another plugin is using an older version, which interferes with the version phpBay Pro uses. This will be addressed in the next update. To test for this, disable all plugins, then enable phpBay Pro. If the pBP button now appears, then begin enabling each plugin, one at a time, then go back after each one and see if the button is still there. If you run into this specific problem, please contact me as I can quickly walk you through the solution for this, until the next update is released.

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