| Resource | Info | Go Get It |
| ePN Help/User Manual | The ePN Help Manual is pubicly accessible, and contains a lot of detailed information about managing one's ePN account, technicalities surrounding links and tracking, reporting, and much more. |
| the ePN User/Help Manual | |
| eBay Country-Sites List | A Google spreadsheet listing all eBay country-sites handled by ePN and eBay Developer, with a variety of helpful parameters for eBay Developers and affiliates. |
| the list | more info: eBay Dev Forum thread | |
| ePN Affiliate Link Query String Parameters | ePN released an explanation of the URL query string parameters found in the new (post- May-2009) affiliate link format, such as in links created from Link Generator. |
| at: ePN Forum thread | at: ePN Blog | in the ePN Help Manual | Rotation IDs (per ePN) in the ePN Help Manual | |
| ePN Base URLs | Some base URLs, as provided by ePN, for some of their tools. |
| in the ePN Help Manual | |
| R.O.Eye: ePN Resources | ePN's consultancy R.O.Eye has written and collected a number of whitepapers, PDFs, tools, and other resources about ePN and eBay. (Also be sure to click on "ePN Information Library" there.) |
| at: R.O.Eye | |
| ISO-8601 Time-Duration Parsing | eBay's API returns 'TimeLeft' data in ISO 8601 format that requires parsing by the developer for easy reading by the end-user. Fortunately, eBay Star Developer Award winner ElZorro has done the legwork already on this and offered up a couple of comprehensive regex patterns to parse the data for us in one fell swoop. (Thanks, Joe!) |
| at: eBay Dev Forum thread | |
| HTML Search Form Direct via ePN Rover/Affiliate Links | There may be instances when you want to build a standard/simple HTML search form to do the following: The visitor enters search terms, they click the submit button, then they're relayed directly to eBay to see their search results, and you want that click to eBay to go through your ePN affiliate links. This can be done, is acceptable by ePN if done right, and I've created an example over at the eBay Dev Forum that you can use yourself. (Note: I recommend that you swap in ToolID 10034 instead of 10001 as originally posted. Also, as with any ePN Promotional Content (links, banners, etc.), be sure to make it clear to the visitor that their search/click will take them to eBay.) |
| at: eBay Dev Forum thread | ePN comments at: ePN Forum thread | |
| eBay API Gallery Image Resizing | If the gallery image URLs you receive from the Finding API are too small for your tastes, you might like this clever (but unofficial) hack to retrieve larger gallery images, such as 96x96 and 140x140 px. (Note: Since publishing this tip, eBay has released a formal/supported way to retrieve gallery images of various sizes from the Finding API using a new Output Selector called 'GalleryInfo'.) |
| at: eBay Dev Forum thread | |
| ePN Referring URLs | ePN has made it clear it's important for them to see the referring URLs on almost all the traffic we send through ePN affiliate links. To that end, they published an extensive, technical blog post to help us ensure we're relaying traffic to eBay with unobstructed referrers. |
| at: ePN Blog | |
| ePN Tool IDs |
ToolIDs are components of ePN affiliate links that designate how the link was generated. In addition to ToolIDs noted at the links to the right, below are a few more I've come across: 10039 - RSS Feed v2 (Advanced Search) 10040 - findItemsByCategory 10041 - findItemsByKeywords 10042 - findItemsByProduct 10043 - findItemsIneBayStores 10044 - findItemsAdvanced 10045 - findItemsByImage |
| at: ePN Blog | new Tool ID for APIs, at: ePN Blog | |
| ePN Transaction Download Report | Field definition/mapping for the ePN TDR. |
| in the ePN Help Manual | |
| RSS v1 to RSS v2 Mapping | ePN provided parameter mappings between the old and new RSS feeds. (This info may soon appear in the ePN Help Manual as well.) |
| at: Google Docs | more info: ePN Blog | |
| eBay Mobile Home Page URLs | A compilation of discovered mobile web landing pages for the eBay home page, for many of eBay's country-sites. [possibly outdated] | | the list | thanks to: Al's Software | |
| ePN Reporting API Specs | ePN offers functionality that allows you to login to any ePN page by appending your login credentials to the URL. This is meant for scripting access to ePN so that you can obtain reports/data in an automated manner. |
| in the ePN Help Manual | old version: ePN Help Manual | |
| cURLfriend() | A wrapper function I wrote to make it easier to make eBay Shopping API and Trading API (and possibly some other XML-based web services) calls using the PHP library cURL. |
| the code | more info: eBay Dev Forum thread | |
| eBay Daily Deals URLs | Links for eBay Daily Deals for all 4 supported country-sites: web, RSS, XML. Also included: links for Fashion Vault and Motors Parts Deals. | | the list | |
| eBay Slot Machines | Yup. |
| photos | |
| Geolocation: IP-to-Country | If you're doing any kind of custom geolocation/geotargeting, IPinfoDB.com offers a very solid solution to lookup a user's country based on their IP address. They offer both an API and downloadable DB, free of charge. ... There's a similar kind of feed from ePN's consultancy R.O.Eye that also returns an ePN custom banner ID for ePN-supported countries. |
| at: IPinfoDB.com | thanks to: Al's Software | | at: R.O.Eye | |
| Geotargeting: ePN Post-Click | I've done only limited testing on this, but it looks like ePN offers post-click geotargeting, simply by adding &lgeo=1 to the affiliate/rover link. Experiment with building such links by having the eBay API return them to you, properly formatted, following the call specs. Some general info about ePN's automatic geotargeting capabilities and limitations can be found in the ePN Help Manual. |
| API call specs: eBay Dev docs | |
| eBay Category IDs via Download | ePN's consultancy R.O.Eye created a downloadable Microsoft Excel file containing the multi-level eBay category tree for all ePN programs. |
| download at: R.O.Eye Labs | info at: R.O.Eye Blog | more info at: ePN Blog | |