So I have this perl script we had written probably 7 or 8 years ago that takes a datafeed and builds a site out of it. We sold it for a while but then got tired of supporting it so we stopped. It still works good and I still use it all the time. It can build multi-level sites and can build thousands of pages in just a few seconds.
Anyway, I am thinking of dusting it off and selling it again. We want it to remain a server side script. The biggest reason we wrote this script was I was tired of using another program that built the pages locally and then I had to FTP thousands of pages. I would always see a mistake so I would have to reupload all the pages.
My main questions are:
1. Is there any reason not to leave it in perl? Should I have a programmer convert it to PHP? Any advantages either way? Is it an easy conversion?
2. Do you think there is a market for something like this? There are a few good WP plugins but I haven't really seen a good solution for building a standard HTML site using datafeeds.
3. If you were to have a program like this what features would you want? I want to add in some stuff like downloading the images, automatic affiliate URL redirects, and stuff like that.
Here are a couple different sites I have built with it:
http://www.sports-fan-gifts.com
http://www.collegesportsfangear.com
Just simple datafeed sites. Nothing too complex. I have built 10 page sites with it and a few years back I got ahold of an Ebay datafeed and build over 1,000,000 pages just to see if it could do it.
Quote2. Do you think there is a market for something like this? There are a few good WP plugins but I haven't really seen a good solution for building a standard HTML site using datafeeds.
You are right, there are some decent WP plugins, although none seem to have the flexibility that a proper datafeed site needs to have. I think the taxonomy of WP itself is part of the problem. I know they introduced the ability to create custom types, but it still isn't that intuitive.
A good number of the merchants are now working with the likes of Golden Can to allow you to create a datafeed site site with a few lines of code, that is not really going to float my boat as such as I want to be able to control things a lot tighter, SEO etc.
I guess my question would be, with all that you know about WP and how search engines (google in particular) like them, why create something to knock out html?
Yeah perl is pretty old school in eyes of the masses. Personally I prefer php since I can hack around in it myself. That said, you should probably encode it with ioncube or similar to keep it from getting ripped/resold/given away.
If you could make it into a wp plugin that was dog easy to use, you'd probably print money.
We're hacking away on our own data feed project and so far it's pretty decent. Specially in terms on handling comparison stuff.
I just had our developer add Facebook like buttons and import of local Twitter tweets related to the product.
I have looked at a bunch of stuff out there and really didn't find anything that would fit our needs.
You stopped selling it before because you didn't want to support it. My question is: do you have the resources/ desire to support it now? Remember: customers are a PITA.
Have you considered donating it to Open Source? You might be surprised what improvements come back after it's been "out in the wild" for a bit.
>>with all that you know about WP and how search engines (google in particular) like them, why create something to knock out html?
The main reason is I like the design flexibility in HTML. It is easier for most people to design an HTML site than a WP site. Also I haven't seen a WP plugin that handles subcategories so I am not sure if that is a WP limitation or not and many of the datafeeds have multiple levels.
>>If you could make it into a wp plugin that was dog easy to use, you'd probably print money.
That would be something I would look into also. In a perfect world it would have both components: a HTML option or a WP option.
>>My question is: do you have the resources/ desire to support it now?
The first time we sold it we were targeting people who had no clue what they were doing so there was a ton of basic questions. I plan on pushing this more to people who already have a clue so that would cut down on much of the support. And all in all we didn't do the support right the first time. We just had a help desk but never archieved the questions and made them available for everyone to see. So I think we could cut down on the support stuff this go around.
I would vote for php also. Everything I have is php-based and like Drastic, I might be able to hack around a little better.
>Anyway, would you guys n gals like to help me test it in the wild in about Feb / March time ?
Absolutely!
>Also I haven't seen a WP plugin that handles subcategories
Bingo! That's one of the challenges of working multiple feeds. Normalization and categorization of the data is crucial.
We also plan to be able to feed the stuff into WP as posts and cats for organic. Normal flat html for ppc.
I'm in...what do we do?