Ebay Publisher Network wants only 301s referrers

Benji49

Benji49

New member
Feb 6, 2008
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Great, I'm in a bit of tight spot...

EPN just changed their TOS (again...they like to change every couple of months just to screw things up).

You can't send them 302 url referrals, they gotta be 301.

Needless to both phpbay pro and BANS send 302s.

Now, I was able to fix my wordpress stores with a patch to the auction.php file (thanks Wade) but I'm sorta screwed with BANS.

THERE is a patch for the BANS stores, but the BANS forum is locked away only for registered users and that is where the patch is located.

I bought my license for BANS like many years ago (2007), and I don't think its valid for the nichestore forum. I mean, I haven't touch my BANS stores for a loooooong time.

Anyhow there's a patch, it's called "BANS referer checking"

+rep to anybody who can give me access to the patch.

Afte June 8th, Ebay says they close the accounts of anybody who sends 302 traffic.
 


I'm not using BANS but have a problem with the Short URL plugin for Wordpress. It uses 302 redirects. I've been trying to tweak it but haven't solved it yet. Anybody else use that plugin or have a solution?
 
Figured it out. If you are using the Short URL plugin for Wordpress edit the u.php file and replace this line
header("Location: $site_redirect");

with this
header("Location: $site_redirect",TRUE,301);
 
Boy oh boy, there's a few EPN ballers on this forum and no way everybody here has updated their software so that the 301s are being thrown, no 302s.

If the word is true, and EPN is gonna start kicking off affs over this, then you gonna see some cryin' in June.

Last warning....
 
Last edited:
I still use phpBay Pro API 2.5.1 and fixed it by changing line 60 in auction.php from
Code: 
header("Location: " . $eb);
to
Code: 
header("Location: " . $eb,TRUE,301);


geomark said:
Figured it out. If you are using the Short URL plugin for Wordpress edit the u.php file and replace this line
header("Location: $site_redirect");

with this
header("Location: $site_redirect",TRUE,301);
Click to expand...

Keep in mind that you will lose this modification if you update your plugin. Chances are small, because the Short URL plugin isn't updated much at all.
 
Thanks for posting this. From the looks of things, ePN won't be mailing about this to its partners. I check the ePN forum from time to time, but it's usually a waste of time. I have an unsupported plugin on a few blogs that uses a 302 redirect and I made the change to the header() function call. It's also worth adding referrer checking as well in order to handle the case where the redirect link might have gotten indexed - this is the condition that ePN is stressing about.
 
CygnusX said:
I still use phpBay Pro API 2.5.1 and fixed it by changing line 60 in auction.php from
Code: 
header("Location: " . $eb);
to
Code: 
header("Location: " . $eb,TRUE,301);


Keep in mind that you will lose this modification if you update your plugin. Chances are small, because the Short URL plugin isn't updated much at all.
Click to expand...

So can I do the same thing for phpbay pro non-API version?
 
I posted this on the phpbay forums, but I'd just like to mention that since switching to the new auction.php (to change 302s to 301s) I've seen a drastic decrease in click volume. Like 200%. And it perfectly coincides with when I updated all my sites with the new auction.php. Traffic is still fine, better than ever, in fact.

I have no idea what to make of this other than EPN error. Unless of course it was intentional.
 
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