Hi everyone, I've been experimenting with a new feature for that I think many will find quite handy. I implemented it yesterday on automaticwasher.org and it seems to be well liked. It is a eBay watch box at the top of the Super Market Forum's index page that will list any links to any eBay auctions that have been posted somewhere in the threads here on Vacuumland. Since we usually have so many links to such cool things posted all over the site, I'm trying to figure out a way of summarizing some of it.
The way this thing works is I wrote a special program that at 25 minutes past every hour scans through all of the threads in all of the forums (not just Super Market) looking for eBay auction links. When it find ones it picks that link up, pings eBay to get the title, time left and country then posts it in the eBay watch box at the top of Super Market.
I've separated US/Canada into one view and the UK in another view. I want add other countries such as Australia in time, but to start I want to concentrate on the auctions we see the most of which is US, CA and the UK.
There is also a suggestion box right above the eBay watch box on the right side. If you find an auction that you think might be of particular interest to members here but you don't feel like starting a whole new thread to announce it, you can simply copy the full eBay web address link or just the 12 digit item number and paste it into the suggestion box and hit the send button. This will record it and once I approve the suggestion will be posted in the eBay watch box just like the other items. I'll be approving all "suggested" items at first until I make sure the bugs are out.
eBay has some great tools for us web programmers to be able to take an item number and ping their special information API site and get some limited data about items. I wish Craigslist had something similar because it would be great to do this with Craiglists posts as well, but for now let's start with eBay because eBay has the necessary tools ready to go to make this work.
Please let me know if you see any bugs (I'm sure there will be some) associated with the new change here is this thread. Normally I post things like this in the Household forum, but since this only affects the Super Market forum, I'm posting the bug report here. For now this will only be available on the desktop site, the mobile version wont have the eBay watch box yet, but it will in time.
I've also included completed items at the end of the list, scroll to the right towards the end, any item in a blue box is a completed item. I did this just in case anyone is interested to see if something sold and how much it sold for.
Just to be clear I'm not trying in any way to say you should not post new threads with cool finds, I totally encourage doing that here in Super Market, this is just another way of displaying and summarizing all of them.
Thanks everyone. Please let me know what you think of this new feature or if you find any bugs.
The way this thing works is I wrote a special program that at 25 minutes past every hour scans through all of the threads in all of the forums (not just Super Market) looking for eBay auction links. When it find ones it picks that link up, pings eBay to get the title, time left and country then posts it in the eBay watch box at the top of Super Market.
I've separated US/Canada into one view and the UK in another view. I want add other countries such as Australia in time, but to start I want to concentrate on the auctions we see the most of which is US, CA and the UK.
There is also a suggestion box right above the eBay watch box on the right side. If you find an auction that you think might be of particular interest to members here but you don't feel like starting a whole new thread to announce it, you can simply copy the full eBay web address link or just the 12 digit item number and paste it into the suggestion box and hit the send button. This will record it and once I approve the suggestion will be posted in the eBay watch box just like the other items. I'll be approving all "suggested" items at first until I make sure the bugs are out.
eBay has some great tools for us web programmers to be able to take an item number and ping their special information API site and get some limited data about items. I wish Craigslist had something similar because it would be great to do this with Craiglists posts as well, but for now let's start with eBay because eBay has the necessary tools ready to go to make this work.
Please let me know if you see any bugs (I'm sure there will be some) associated with the new change here is this thread. Normally I post things like this in the Household forum, but since this only affects the Super Market forum, I'm posting the bug report here. For now this will only be available on the desktop site, the mobile version wont have the eBay watch box yet, but it will in time.
I've also included completed items at the end of the list, scroll to the right towards the end, any item in a blue box is a completed item. I did this just in case anyone is interested to see if something sold and how much it sold for.
Just to be clear I'm not trying in any way to say you should not post new threads with cool finds, I totally encourage doing that here in Super Market, this is just another way of displaying and summarizing all of them.
Thanks everyone. Please let me know what you think of this new feature or if you find any bugs.
