wistop : News

Our all time favourite James Bond villain!

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 11:27:16 +0000

I've been spending much more time on site development than content creation in recent months. Rest assured that there has been plenty going on behind the scenes and I am looking forward to the next release. But what's the point in having a site if there is nothing on it to read?

So to celebrate the release of the new Bond movie "Quantum of Solace" here is a new list to determine our favourite Bond movie villain!

Ultimate Bond Baddie

The Bond series of films based on Ian Flemmings novels have been the most succesful movie series of all time. No other has had so many sequels with each new film as anticipated as the last. I would say that they manage to get better and better. James Bond is not the only star of the show, there are also the fabulous locations, the creative gadgets, the Bond girls (another list for sure!), and of course the bad guys (and girls!).

So now here is your opportunity to pick your favourite Bond villain!

X-Factor

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 14:05:36 +0000

Anyone else been watching the new series of x-factor? I always say I'll never watch these shows ever again, afterall its just an excuse for simon cowell and his friends to make lots of cash. Good luck to them I say! Anyways, this year I've actually thought the standard of contestants has been much higher than past x-factor years. The singing and song selection seems vastly improved. Not all that hard one might argue!

So it seems another great list opportunity is here - who is the all time greatest x-factor singer. Perhaps a cross series vote might be quite interesting? Or even on a series by series basis. I will have a think about entering such a list but in the mean time I think my favourite x-factor contestant is Diana Vickers. Arguably one of the better singers in there and one of the first performers on the show to actually show some individuality. The trouble is, I suspect she may be better than the show itself and this may not be the best platform to get noticed.

Who knows, time will tell!

YouTube shortcode

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 09:19:08 +0000

YouTube feeds and e107

A while ago I posted about working on integrating feeds into e107, beginning with the Amazon API. I have yet to progress my work with Amazon web services, however I have been experimenting with adding new feeds into my e107 affiliate plugin. Youtube has always provided an API to allow development against their content but in the post Google phase this has really taken off.

The ultimate goal will be to add YouTube driven uploads and content directly into wistop.com. But for now I have created a small shortcode to simply display and play the video!

[youtube]Xlh8gSF_hhE[/youtube]

The shortcode accepts a single parameter - the video code that we all know and love. It then passes this code over to the affiliate plugin which goes away, gets the details, and then maps this to the template.

e107 YouTube BBCode:

video clip

Scriptaculous

The other exciting part of this excerise is the opportunity to experiment with scriptaculous. This is a handy set of functions that very very easily enables web developers to add flashy ajax style effects to their website. The chaps over at the e107 free source site have already integrated the scripts into their plugins. Initially with their lightbox plugin and a more robust solution was introduced with their widgets plugin. In due course I will be upgrading this site to make use of this.

Now you see it, now you don't!

Replacing the thumbnail with the full video became very easy thanks to the appear function.

  Click here for a demo!
  Reset

The advantage of this over the e107 expandit() function is that it allows full control over which elements you wish to show and which you wish to hide. So one click hides the thumbnail and shows the video.

Web 2.0 Ajax and e107

Having seen how easy it is to use the functions of scriptaculous I am now starting to think about all the different uses for it around the wistop.com site or e107 plugins. It is also exciting to know that close integration with these scripts is on the e107 roadmap thus ensuring full support in the long awaited e107 0.8 release.

Rest assured, any cool new ideas, hints and tips will be documented in our blog.

Stability Release

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 08:24:11 +0000

A few updates have been pushed out to the live site to improve stability. A couple of layout bugs have been vanquished with some quick CSS hacking, although the blog posts now need a little spacing out! I have also rolled out the new version of e107 tagcloud. The latest batch of improvements mean that I no longer need any custom code to have tags working on this site the way I want them which is good news! I just need to fix my Google Chrome rendering issues and then I can move on to some functional updates and more importantly, some content creation!

The biggest web browser news this year: Chrome!

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 08:20:09 +0000

With some excitement I have had the opportunity to add a new item to the
top browser list! Welcome to Chrome! News of the biggest shake up of the browser wars for some time started mounting over the last couple of days with rumours of Google's activity stirring. Things then moved quickly with an official announcement followed by the Beta release of Chrome yesterday evening here in UK!

I have now installed it and am typing in a Chrome window as we speak! Initial reaction to the look and feel is positive and I'm looking forward to exploring all the new features. The wistop Chrome entry will be updated in due course with the features that might persuade you to switch browser!

Web Affiliate Confesses: How I exploited Amazonian personal services

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:26:05 +0000

Welcome to ProBlogger readers!

This post coincided with a challenge on the problogger.net website. For those that don't know, this is blog dedicated to making the most (ie cold hard cash!) from blogging. ProBlogger has asked readers to participate in the Killer Titles - Group Writing Project which invites us to come up with a title for our posts that are perhaps more engaging than average!

For those of you looking to learn more about Amazon Associate Web Services - enjoy part one of a series on how to make use of this and other APIs from leading merchants.

The rest of you might like to:

If you like what you see, please

I've already enjoyed reading through some of the other entries, and look forward to posting my favourites here once the competition closes!

Amazon Associates

The Amazon Associates scheme is the affiliate program set up by everyone's favourite e-tailer - Amazon.com. The premise is simple. You refer your readers over to Amazon, if they buy the product you link to you get 4% or more of the purchase price. You also get a percentage of everything else they buy with a few reasonable caveats and rules. The purchase can take place within 24hrs of you referring them, it also counts if they save the item for future purchase.

And as any customers of the store (all of us I'm sure!) know, Amazon is great at cross selling. You come in for a CD and leave with a new DVD collection, Christmas presents, and possibly a new kitchen sink. And the affiliate gets a percentage of all of that! Sounds good!

Amazon Associates Web Services

The above product cloud is an example of one of the many widgets (carousels, banners, links, recommendations, etc) that Amazon offer to its associates. And in time I will look closer at these and see how they might fit into your site. But my current topic of interest is the Associate Web Services. This is mature system for querying Amazon's comprehensive database and bringing their data to your site. Almost every aspect of their core product data has been exposed and can be readily queried and utilised in your own projects.

This can include:

Running Product Searches
Navigating the Amazon product tree
Finding Amazon user's lists
Querying user reviews
Detailed product information

It's all there waiting for anyone to exploit and with over 4% in commission waiting it seems like a reasonable proposition to me.

Integrating Web Services and Wistop

As a database professional it was always important for me to come up with a generic way to add and exploit any product feed. I was keen to ensure that I didn't limit my solution to Amazon's services only. This requires controlling all of the feed requests and interpretation of the results through feed meta data in such a way that loading a new feed simply becomes a case of dropping in a new URL.

This actually proved quite straight forward with the e107 CMS thanks to its templating system that allows the inclusion of "shortcodes" or placeholders within text that are replaced with dynamic content. With this concept I was able to create a call to the Amazon API with a placeholder for each of the standard parameters used in requests. At some point I will make this code publicly available for other e107 users. My plugin allows for the creation of feeds, mapping any parameters and mapping the results to output templates all through the admin back-end user interface.

Turning feed output into web pages

The hard part was interpreting the results. Of course no two services provide output in the same way and this is rather tricky to manage! However, after much Googling the answer finally presented itself in the form of a handy little script: Magic Parser! The nightmare of trying to navigate xml affiliate feeds instantly disappeared! Worth every penny in my opinion!

When you call Magic Parser into action it allows you to pass in a format string that helps you pick out exactly the feed information you are looking for. This format string can then be stored as an attribute of your feed object. And there you have it, any feed, any format, into any content in the CMS.

Other projects

To demonstrate the ease in which a well designed CMS and good dynamic code can handle feeds quickly with no fuss I have set up a site that shows how easy it can be. Product feeds are dynamically generated, affiliate links are managed and redirected, no maintenance required at all. All of the data that drives the site is collected via web services.

*Note: My host has failed to set up the DNS settings correctly - so the site is offline. Watch this space*

Whats next in this series?

There is so much to cover in this area and it can become quickly overwhelming. However any interested readers will be keen to learn more detail on the above so stay tuned for more in depth discussions!

Future topics:

Running queries against the Amazon API
Integrating product feeds with e107
Interpreting results
Tips and tricks buried in the technical documentation
much more!

Which is the most popular premiership football team?

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:15:54 +0000

The Premier League

There is no doubt that the Premiership is the richest and most popular football league of all time. The success has enabled the top football teams to attract World Class football stars such as Christiano Ronaldo, Cesc Fabregas and Fernando Torres which in turn have helped build an international following of . Thanks to some insane television deals in the early 90's the UK's top sporting league has really taken off over the last two decades. Recent domination of the Champions League has really put the current crop of English football teams into a class of their own!

Some Google Insight into the most searched football team

My new favourite Internet toy is Google Insight! If you haven't had a play already I suggest pulling it up and entering some search terms. The tool will give you a wide range of analytical data giving you feedback on search volumes, geographical insight and some basic keyword analysis.

Here is the output for the big four premiership teams:

Have a play yourself at the Google Insight page!

I notice that:

Similar search volumes for each team
A wide range of worldwide searching
Liverpool and Chelsea aren't just football clubs, they're places too!

So this data really gives us no conclusive answer as to which premiership football team is top!

You can help answer the question once and for all!

Well it seems there is only one way to determine the people's choice. Why not jump over to the wistop greatest football team list and place your vote now! It's worth noting that the wistop site will shortly be displaying graphical data charting the popularity of everything and anything that is tracked in all the lists on the site.

You will also notice that the list needs a little work. If you are passionate about your team then some help would be appreciated:

Sign up and vote for your favourite footy team!
Help improve the list! If you think you can write a few hundred words explaining why your team should get the wistop readers vote, the please get in touch!
You can include links back to your own relevant football site if that helps motivate you!

Thanks for your support!

Google Insights Keyword Search Term Analysis

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:25:27 +0000

Trend Spotting

Last week Google released another handy tool for those of us interested in spotting web trends. I have therefore added Google Insights to the top SEO tools list. This little toy will no doubt provide hours of fun for anyone interested in web analytics and web traffic trends (surely not just me?!).

Why not have a look at just where the interested in Manchester United comes from!

Or track the highs and lows of Britney Spears!

I think this is my new favourite SEO tool!

Winning traffic through your blog

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 13:40:25 +0000

First Million Visits

I've enjoyed posting updates to the site blog pages and have made the decision to document the highs and lows of building the wistop site. It should be an interesting story - tracking the site from its opening, to its first 10,000 visits, to the first 100,000, and heck, why stop there, the first 1,000,000! We are well on the way to the first 1000!

Content is King

The key to any site is great content and I am slowly working on some that should appear online soon. But the purpose of this site was always for me to enjoy experimenting with new ideas and technologies and to be fair I've perhaps been enjoying that too much with an ever growing backlog of improvements to build the site.

Content, for now, is going to have to wait!

Better Blogging

Getting natural search traffic to your site is one thing, but ideally we want our visitors to stop and have a look round. The key to this is giving them plenty of things to do once they have landed on your blog:

Get them to sign up to your site
Subscribe to your RSS feeds
Interact with you on social media sites
Enjoy some of your top content!

All these things are now possible from the blog landing page!