Testing the Society6 Nifty CPanel Slideshow Widget

Fetching ...won't be a tick!

search (new window)

Search in same store
Search in same department

Fixed a big oopsie with the Society6 nIFTTTy Scheduler

I made a big oopsie a couple of weeks ago when, instead of uploading the final version of the Society6 nIFTTTy scheduler, the one that worked with collections, I uploaded an interim one  that didn't.

It's all sorted now:

That's it (above) pulling from my Tartans Home Decor collection in the scheduler. You can see how I set things up (before choosing the nIFTTTy scheduler option in Step 2 of  the Society6 Nifty CPanel) in the image below.
Click / tap the image to try the CPanel for yourself...

Sorry for any inconvenience and / or confusion caused!

Zazzle Product Performance Bookmarklet

I was checking my stats on my Zazzle products and thought it would be a great idea to see which products had the fewest views per sale.
Doing it by eye and using mental arithmetic was a pain so I was thinking about a better solution.

That's when I remembered about javascript-driven bookmarklets and thought it was a perfect mini-project.

Wait - did I hear you ask what a bookmarklet is? Here's a simple definition:

a small software application stored as a bookmark in a web browser, which typically allows a user to interact with the currently loaded web page in some way

So the idea is:

1. Get to your store's back end
2. Navigate to the category, department and / or do a search to bring up the products you want to see the performance for
3. Set the sort to "Orders (all time)"
4. Choose the number showing on the page (96 is a good choice)
5. Make sure in your stats that you're displaying the "Orders (all time)" and the "Views"
6. Click the bookmarklet to see the performance, best first

The best performing ones (views divided by all-time orders) come first. Only those that have sold at least 1 are included.

If you want this bookmarklet to see your own best performing products, just drag the following link to your Bookmarks Toolbar (Firefox) or Bookmarks Bar (Chrome):
Performance


Want to know a bit more about bookmarklets? Here's what the Wikipedia entry for it says:

A bookmarklet is a bookmark stored in a web browser that contains JavaScript commands that add new features to the browser. Bookmarklets are unobtrusive JavaScripts stored as the URL of a bookmark in a web browser or as a hyperlink on a web page. Bookmarklets are usually JavaScript programs. Regardless of whether bookmarklet utilities are stored as bookmarks or hyperlinks, they add one-click functions to a browser or web page. When clicked, a bookmarklet performs one of a wide variety of operations, such as running a search query or extracting data from a table. For example, clicking on a bookmarklet after selecting text on a webpage could run an Internet search on the selected text and display a search engine results page.

Bug fixed in Society6 nIFTTTy Share Scheduler

Fixed a bug in the Society6 nIFTTTy Share Scheduler where products with an "&" in their title weren't getting through to IFTTT be shared.

Amazon nIFTTTy Share Scheduler released

I'm happy to say that after many sorties into the land of coding confusion (my head hurts!), the new Amazon nIFTTTy share scheduler has been released. You get to it from the Amazon Nifty CPanel as shown here:

It's here: http://www.kdl.to/amazon-nifty-cpanel.html

It's a subscription-only tool because, the way Amazon works, I can't recoup anything in a free version like I can for the other nIFTTTy share schedulers (and the load on our server has to be paid for).

For those of you familiar with the other nIFTTTy schedulers, it works pretty much the same except that the frequent updates to the best seller lists (multiple times daily) makes it easier to work with - the applet never "runs out" of things to share. 

As long as your chosen best-seller list exists, you'll keep getting new things for your applet to pin/share - completely unattended, automated pinning/sharing!
 

As per the other subscriptions this one's $3.50 per month, which you should easily be recouping after a month or two.
The same limit of 10 IFTTT applets switched on at any one time applies.

Find out more about IFTTT

Nifty Bug Squishing on Slideshow Sharer

I found that when a Zazzle product in the Nifty Slideshow Sharer used an asterisk in its title, it was causing an error deep in the sharer's guts when a new search was being done.

Now fixed :)

I've also made sure that a search from a shared slideshow now uses a representative image from the new search and not the original slideshow (as was happening before).  It was ok everywhere else but not Facebook nor Twitter.

Reverted Large Images changes to the Society6 Nifty CPanel's slideshow sharer

Society6's website was a bit slow yesterday and it played havoc with the changes I'd made to get large images. Instead of getting the images, timeouts were happening whenever the slideshow sharer tried to get them.

Unfortunately I'd applied the same changes to the individual product sharers, doing some minor tidy-ups on the way.

Anyway, in reverting the changes - which means you only get 264x264px images again - I found a bug in the slideshow sharer to do with the image used when sharing on Facebook or Twitter.

What was happening was that if you shared from the initial slideshow, all was well - the first image of the slideshow was used in the share / tweet. But if you went on and used the search box to get different product designs, the image used didn't update in line with the new search.

So I fixed it and it works fine now. It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good ;)

Here's what the Facebook share looks like:

A facebook share - when looking at the post, clicking the image takes you to the slideshow

and here's the tweet:

here's what a tweet looks like - if they click the image in the tweet, they see the slideshow

Click the images to see the post / tweet so you can look at the slideshows, if you like.

Make your own here and try for yourself. You don't have to have a Society6 Curator Id but if you've got one - use it! Your shares could earn you 10% 💰

Society6 nIFTTTy Share Scheduler now uses large images

I found a quick way of getting the larger image from Society6 for the nIFTTTy Share Scheduler tool in the CPanel.

Here's a pin on Pinterest created automatically by the scheduler using the larger image. You can see it now fills the area:

You can see the pin for yourself here: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/332562753727812100/

I'm going to update the other promoting tools in the Scoiety6 Nifty CPanel to use the new (and faster) way of getting the larger image.

Released: Cool upgrade to Nifty Slideshows (widgets & sharer page)

I've applied the same styling changes to the Zazzle Nifty slideshows that I made to the Society6 ones.

Those changes apply to the slideshow sharer page (the original, not the elastic bounce) and slideshow widgets.

All exisiting slideshow widgets and sharing pages will automatically use the new styling. Here's what the slideshow widget looks like:

Fetching ...won't be a tick!

search (new window)
Search in same store
Search in same department

When you share a blog post with a widget like this on Facebook, Pinterest and Google Plus, you'll now get the *first image in the slideshow in your share. Cool!

...and click this link to see the new style on the slideshow sharer page

Make your own here: http://www.kdl.to/nifty-slideshows.html

Enjoy :)

*There mustn't be any images in your blog post before the widget for this to work

New slideshow styling for Society6 Nifty CPanel

Thanks to feedback received in the Society6 Promotions Facebook group, I've worked on the presentation aspects of the Nifty's slideshow sharer page and also the slideshow widget.

Here's what the widget looks like now - what do you think?

Fetching ...won't be a tick!

search (new window)
Search in same store
Search in same department

...and see what the slideshow sharer page looks like now

Lookin' good, yes?

If you're a Society6 artist and have joined the curator program you can make your own widgets or slideshow sharer pages here

Now share Collections for free with the Society6 Nifty CPanel

Great news! You can now share from your Society6 collections with the upgraded Society6 Nifty CPanel.

Have a look at the screenshot and you'll see where you put in your collection identifier. You get it directly from your browser's address bar when you're viewing your (or someone else's) collection on Society6.

Here's a screenshot showing it:

A couple of points

• Search doesn't work with collections, so is ignored if you've given a collection id
• Remember,  your curator id is used in all links (except with the free Nifty Scheduler, when yours is used half the time and mine the other)
• Search results pages always have 42 products in them (except the last one, which can contain fewer)
• Collections have all their products on one page. For this reason, page number is ignored for collections
• For collections, Nifty limits the number of returned products to an absolute max of 120
• If you pull fewer than are available on a page, your selection always comes from the first ones on the page

As usual, the buttons with ? give help about the item they're next to, so if ever you forget how to use the option click or tap for a summary.

Here's a link to the above set-up

Enjoy 🙂

Slideshow sharer added to Society6 Nifty CPanel

I've spent the last couple of days with my ongoing DIY  (it never ends!) and at the same time, I've added a really cool slideshow sharer to the Society6 Nifty CPanel.

It works as normal with you giving a search. Once you've got the products showing that you want in your slideshow, you just hit the Open Slideshow Sharer in Step 2:

When the new page opens, the slideshow begins, cycling through the products. Each is clickable and the link includes your Curator id, making sure you get the 10% commission, if any is due. All you have to do is click any of the share buttons to get your slideshow out to your followers.

Here's one I made earlier

Sunflower Field and Early Bloomers Wall Clock

Normal price: $30.99

-- click/tap to see the slideshow from where you can personalize and buy --

posted using Society6 Nifty CPanel

To get it here, I used the email-share button on the slideshow page and then emailed it to my secret auto-post email address for this blog. You won't ever want to do that because there's a better choice for putting slideshows on blogs. I've only done it so you can see an example slideshow sharer page - the destination when you pin, tweet or share on Facebook or Google Plus.

If you want an actual slideshow on your blog, use the widget designed specifically for it (a different option in Step 2). Here's a blog post with one of those slideshow widgets in place - see the difference?

Make your own slideshow here: http://www.kdl.to/society6-rss/society6-nifty-cpanel.html and tell us how it goes in the comments, if you like 😎👍