I was planning on bringing the discussion back to the community but in a dedicated thread . I had to sort out other things first so didn't get a chance to start the discussion yet. Will do in a bit.
@AnthonySmith said:
Happy to do that however I think it’s only right to launch it when it is available to all hosts.
That's only fair. Let's see if and how we can get others on board and then take it from there.
What do you need to make it possible? Are you grabbing the post here on LES or from where?
I'm not sure yet, I'm open for thoughts. Grabbing posts from LES would be difficult in the sense that it'd require a certain format in order for the bot to be able to scrape it. For Wishosting I'm simply scraping their sales page which seems to be a Blesta category with only one package. I guess the easiest way to start off is by allowing providers to submit a URL to their Blesta / WHCMS setup where they'd have a specific category dedicated to sales just like Wishosting.
But I'm not sure if that is feasible for providers, you guys are the experts so I'm here to listen
This is for WHMCS and Wishosting uses Blesta... and I'm yet to find a solution for Blesta :-( It would be nice if providers enabled WHMCS / Blesta RSS modules to facilitate data capture.
@AnthonySmith said:
Happy to do that however I think it’s only right to launch it when it is available to all hosts.
That's only fair. Let's see if and how we can get others on board and then take it from there.
What do you need to make it possible? Are you grabbing the post here on LES or from where?
I'm not sure yet, I'm open for thoughts. Grabbing posts from LES would be difficult in the sense that it'd require a certain format in order for the bot to be able to scrape it. For Wishosting I'm simply scraping their sales page which seems to be a Blesta category with only one package. I guess the easiest way to start off is by allowing providers to submit a URL to their Blesta / WHCMS setup where they'd have a specific category dedicated to sales just like Wishosting.
But I'm not sure if that is feasible for providers, you guys are the experts so I'm here to listen
Is there a providers only section? If there is, this should be stickied there so that new providers will know what to do if they want their deals featured.
Thanks . Getting the product information from both WHCMS and Blesta is not much of an issue, I was able to write a small piece of software that is able to retrieve products from both WHCMS and Blesta. The discussion that need to be held is more on the level if we're going to post those offers here and if so in what way. I was going to open that discussion yesterday but other things had to be prioritized. For providers the only thing they need to do is create a WHCMS / Blesta category and pass that onto us. Getting all the deals / packages from that category is not much of an issue.
How about we don't have forced participation i.e. scraping up data.
How about we just issue codes or something for hosts that want to be included for example.
I create a dummy and hidden product in WHMCS with the following lines:
LES CODE; oER81CmaW
Host Name; Inception Hosting Ltd.
Order Link; https://clients.inceptionhosting.com/cart.php?a=add&pid=183
Product Name; VZ7 SSD 512
CPU; 1
RAM; 512
RAM Unit; MB
DISK; 5 GB
DISK TYPE; SSD
BW; 500
BW UNIT; GB
PRICE; 5
CURRENCY; EUR
TERM; YEAR
IPv4; 1
IPv6; yes (yes/no)
DDOS; yes (yes/no)
Location City; London
Location Country; UK
Then something can do targeted scarping, maybe a plugin in the back end here can link codes to URL's for efficiency, each host gets 1 or 2 codes and then the data is pulled in to an array and displayed on rotation say the latest 5.
Needs some mechanism to determine if the data has been updated I guess but I imagine that is technically fairly simple, makes participation optional, can be used for LES Exclusives only and reduces effort long term while bringing the best deals to the community.
Comments
I was planning on bringing the discussion back to the community but in a dedicated thread . I had to sort out other things first so didn't get a chance to start the discussion yet. Will do in a bit.
@Solaire Data Feeds works, but we have to get the pid first.
E.g.: https://nexusbytes.com/cart.php?gid=3 (consider EU-Germany-Nano-SSD --> pid = 18)
document.write('EU-Germany-Nano-SSD');
document.write('SPACE: 5GB RAM: 384 MB BANDWIDTH : 200 GB @100 Mbit CPU CORE:1 @3.5GHz+* IPv4 : 1 Free Webuzo Lite Control Panel*');
document.write('$2.00 USD');
This is for WHMCS and Wishosting uses Blesta... and I'm yet to find a solution for Blesta :-( It would be nice if providers enabled WHMCS / Blesta RSS modules to facilitate data capture.
BF/CM - Buyer Beware. Conduct your own due diligence on the sustainability of the deals presented here as well as the provider's track record.
Is there a providers only section? If there is, this should be stickied there so that new providers will know what to do if they want their deals featured.
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Thanks . Getting the product information from both WHCMS and Blesta is not much of an issue, I was able to write a small piece of software that is able to retrieve products from both WHCMS and Blesta. The discussion that need to be held is more on the level if we're going to post those offers here and if so in what way. I was going to open that discussion yesterday but other things had to be prioritized. For providers the only thing they need to do is create a WHCMS / Blesta category and pass that onto us. Getting all the deals / packages from that category is not much of an issue.
How about we don't have forced participation i.e. scraping up data.
How about we just issue codes or something for hosts that want to be included for example.
I create a dummy and hidden product in WHMCS with the following lines:
LES CODE; oER81CmaW
Host Name; Inception Hosting Ltd.
Order Link; https://clients.inceptionhosting.com/cart.php?a=add&pid=183
Product Name; VZ7 SSD 512
CPU; 1
RAM; 512
RAM Unit; MB
DISK; 5 GB
DISK TYPE; SSD
BW; 500
BW UNIT; GB
PRICE; 5
CURRENCY; EUR
TERM; YEAR
IPv4; 1
IPv6; yes (yes/no)
DDOS; yes (yes/no)
Location City; London
Location Country; UK
Then something can do targeted scarping, maybe a plugin in the back end here can link codes to URL's for efficiency, each host gets 1 or 2 codes and then the data is pulled in to an array and displayed on rotation say the latest 5.
Needs some mechanism to determine if the data has been updated I guess but I imagine that is technically fairly simple, makes participation optional, can be used for LES Exclusives only and reduces effort long term while bringing the best deals to the community.
https://inceptionhosting.com
Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
I think a hidden, LES-only WHMCS/Blesta category would make the scraping opt-in for providers. No need to manage codes per provider, then.