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Due to the way which CafePost was originally written, we have been experiencing intermittent issues which have caused posts of our beta testers to not be displayed.  With this in mind, I have started rewriting portions of the code which in the older beta versions went directly to the CafePress API to pull the information for display on the WordPress site.  The system is now being written to initially pull the data from the API and store it within custom fields in the WordPress post table of the database.  This process has been developed and is in internal testing at the present time.  I will soon be releasing the new code to beta testers to test on their sites externally.

If all goes well, there are only a couple of areas in the coding that remain to be finished before release.  I had originally planned for a July release, but at this point I’m looking at mid-late September barring any other issues which may be encountered.

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I have made some additions to the CafePost plug-in to do some basic error handling when invalid results are returned from CafePress.com.  I am still waiting for error codes from CafePress so I can streamline the handling further.  Currently when a product post is attempted to be displayed and there is an error, an error message is displayed in the post and an email sent to the WordPress site administrator with a link to the post and the error.  This is the initial system and not necessarily the one that will be in the plug-in at release.  I just wanted to get some kind of error handling built into the system now to eliminate the mass error messages I experienced a couple weeks back when a code push at CafePress had a negative effect on the API my plug-in uses.

In addition, I have the initial cache management system in which will automatically delete previous day’s file caches on a daily basis to keep the cache folder from eating up all the space on the host.  Currently there is a daily scheduled cleanup which deletes files prior to the current date, creates/updates a log file, and sends an email to the site administration.  Also we have created a link within the myNicheShop options framework to purge the cache.  Like the error handling, this also is an initial system that has a lot more work planned.

The last thing I am hoping to finish this weekend is an XID option which will allow affiliates who are also CafePress shopkeepers to enter their CafePress Account Number into the options screen so CafePress may properly track their affiliate links.  This is important because affiliate sales at CafePress do not qualify towards shopkeeper volume bonuses.  With the use of the XID, the sales are counted as shopkeeper sales so volume bonuses are unaffected by your links from your external websites.  I plan on having that finished tonight and plan to release the plug-in to beta testers next week.

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I’ve delayed the beta on CafePost while I recode some of the error processing.  While at CafePress this past week, a code push on their network broke some of the API functionality causing tons of errors to be returned within CafePost.  Instead of releasing the project to beta testers with the prospect of these errors, I want to get the code fixed and streamline cache utilization so that after so many errors are received, the plug-in will revert to the most recent usable cache file.

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Earlier this week I released the CafePost plug-in to a couple of the slated beta testers.  I will distribute the project to the beta testers on my list one-by-one in hopes to better pinpoint issues faced on different hosts.  While there is still much work to be done on the project, I felt it was time to start the beta process so I could hit issues encountered by different administrative preferences and hosting configurations.

Currently I am running the plug-in on 10 sites in addition to those who are already testing.  Additional testers from my list will be added to those sites weekly.

At this point my hopes are for beta testers to have tested the current features as well as those not yet in the plug-in and have the plug-in ready for release in mid-June.  I will post more information as I have it available.  In the meantime, keep an eye on the CafePost project page and changelog available via the Projects link at the top of the page.

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myNicheShop: Cafe-Post will function similarly to the Amazon Post which just entered alpha. Cafe-Post will look for a tag within the post which will include the product number of a CafePress product. Once found, it will query CafePress’ Product Catalog API and create post information including product thumbnail, name, artist’s description, current price, and artist’s store name.

The initial plug-in will require entry of the codes within the post and the manual entry of a post title. Eventually, I plan to have this automated through the plug-in through a search function in which an administrator can execute a search, select which products they would like to add, click a button for ‘write posts’, and have wordpress automagically create a post for each of the selected products containing the Cafe-Post tag as the post and product name as the post title.

Eventually we also plan to have all/most of the planned features of myNicheShop Amazon Post.

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