ShawnIngram.com

myNicheShop Work Progresses!

Posted by Shawn

I have been working on developing a website program called myNicheShop for several months now. In November I shared my thoughts for a complete affiliate site program with a good friend Jen Goode of Doodlio.com. She had been working on something similiar but only for use with CafePress shops. She shared the code with me and I began working to make the database structural changes and code changes to accomodate other affiliate programs.

In December, (or was it January? *scratches his head*) I launched Pristine Shopping running an early beta release of what I’ve tagged myNicheShop. Using the admin tool, I created merchant records for some of my partners I’m an affiliate for. The records included merchant information, banners which were available on the networks, and if available I also included GoldenCan storefront with a 10 coupon sidebar and a coupon page.

In mid-April, I got sidetracked from the development geared towards the affiliate networks and started working with the CafePress.com XML datafeed. I created the site Scripture-Tees which is oriented towards t-shirts with positive Christian messages.

After successfully launching Scripture-Tees with the tool, I have started migrating my other sites. Currently The Tease-Shirt Company and Geocacher Gear have both been migrated to run off of myNicheShop.

There are still a lot of features which are planned to be added to the CafePress portion of the application. Current features include:

1. Ability to ban shops, designs, products, or product types. Once banned, future imports will autoban based on heirarchy. For example, if a shop is banned if the XML returns results for that shop in the future, they are automatically banned based on the past ban.
2. XML import form supports all four current imports available through the API
3. API key and PID number are part of the network record for CafePress. Both are pulled from the database and used as needed. PID is automatically pulled and passed to the CafePress shopping cart.
4. Import by design routine: Many shopkeepers do not create sections based on design. Anyone running a website where I want it to be design-centric, this was a major problem. I’ve added a routine that grabs the design ID# from the XML and then goes to the design pages in the marketplace and pulls all the products for that design. A future release will have the ability to group designs in a design family so a site admin can group all of the various sized images for a single design into a family which can be imported.
5. View all products shows all available products for the design (note, different images have different design IDs. If the shopkeeper has a different image for cards than the one they use for apparrel, both designs will not show up currently. Product display is currently design-centric).
6. Additional designs by artist. When displaying all products of a design, the right sidebar displays up to 10 other designs by the same artist.

There are tons of things on the drawing board for the application. Some of these include:

1. Modularization: The plan is to eventually create a framework where site authors can plugin the modules they wish to use for the site. Some of the planned modules include CafePress Affiliate, Membership, various menu/sidebar options. Also with the latest news from GoldenCan, we may work on some specific GoldenCan integration options. Too early to tell at this stage.
2. CafePress.com section import. The XML doesn’t currently offer the ability to import sections. Our plan is to code a section import routine which can be used until it can be pulled via the XML. I have to do this prior to migrating our other sites to the tool.
3. Click Tracking/Member Rating/Member Product/Design Feedback: The ability to track product/artist/merchant popularity by how many times shoppers click through links. I’m also considering a rating option where members can rate/recommend to a friend/add comments about particular designs/products.
4. Complete Admin control of menu/content placement via Admin Panel
5. Complete Admin control of CSS via Admin Panel
6. Display style configureable by each category. Several category listing styles will be created. Currently only style is single column. Currently planning multicolumn option and possibly others
7. Artist profile displaying blurb about artist, list of shops, and designs by artist page(s).

These are just a few of the things in the program and slated to be added/researched. It has been so long since I posted in the blog, I just wanted to pop in and let everyone know that I’m still alive and kicking and have been a tad busy on the development side of things.

It is currently a blank page, but I will eventually put information and sites running the application up at myNicheShop.com.