This list is a bit of a nightmare to find the file you want. It’s not sorted by anything obvious – not name, and not date-modified as far as I can tell. Finding a file is a bit of a scroll-and-hope affair. Much better to have a nice, ordered list like this:

This is an itch I’ve been wanting to scratch for a while now, and it turns out the code is pretty simple. Just drop the following in your theme’s functions.php file and revel in the glory of a nice, ordered file list.

function site_plugin_custom_sort_function ( $a, $b ) {
  return strtolower($a['display_filename']) > strtolower($b['display_filename']);
}

function site_plugin_sort_download_list ( $download_list ) {
  // Sort the multidimensional array
  usort($download_list, "site_plugin_custom_sort_function");
  return $download_list;
}
add_filter ( 'wpsc_downloadable_file_list', 'site_plugin_sort_download_list' );

If you want to do that – check out this new plugin:

WP e-Commerce Show Personalisation

Screenshots below:

Now, Campaign Monitor make it pretty easy to create a sign-up form, but by default the form will take you off your original site, onto a Campaign Monitor “Thank you for subscribing” page. I wanted to see if I could improve on that a little, so, having worked with the Campaign Monitor API before for a Joomla! / Campaign monitor integration I sat down to see what we could do.

The result is the Ajax Campaign Monitor Forms plugin for WordPress.

Adding a form as a Widget

Currently it’ll let you create a widget in any of your sidebars, add in your list ID, and account ID, choose whether to show the “Name” field as well as “Email”:

The result is a mini-form in your sidebar, that submits the request via Ajax without the user leaving your site.

Adding a form inline in a post or page

You can also add a form as a shortcode to your posts and pages. Simply click on the “Campaign Monitor” button that appears above the post editor:

You’ll be asked to insert your API key details:

and a shortcode will be placed into your post to display the form:

A while ago, I added code to the WP e-Commerce project so that it could provide Google Merchant Centre feeds (It’s the thing that powers Google’s “shopping results”). It’s been my experience over the last few years that having an effective feed is a good source of traffic, and an avenue that’s often neglected by other e-Commerce providers – so can be a “quick win” SEO tactic.

The fact that Bing now offer something similar recently came to my attention, and it would make sense to expand WP e-Commerce’s support to include Bing Shopping feeds as well as Google Merchant Centre. So, I skim-read the integration guide to see the size of the task at hand, everything looks good (Apart from their choice of format by the way which is, erm, a bit shocking to say the least – but hey – it does the job I guess).

I signed up for an Microsoft AdCentre account (Which requires you to hand over your credit card details, despite the fact the service is free – erm….). Now, the service currently is for US stores only, and I’m in the UK. But hey, WP e-Commerce is a global product, and I know a large portion of those users are in the US – so no problem there.

So – I followed the instructions in the Integration Guide which told me to click “Bing Shopping Account Management” in my Adcentre account, but I don’t have that link. No worries – I’m sure I saw mention of a Merchant Help Forum in the integration guide – so off I headed.

At this point my suspicion was that the problem was my geography (I did contemplate lying on the registration form and entering “US” – but I played it straight and entered “UK”). So I posted the following enquiry:

Hi,

I’m looking to add support for Bing Shopping feeds to a WordPress ecommerce platform. Unfortunately while many of the users are US-based, I’m not. I’ve signed up for an adcentre account – but I don’t see Bing Shopping under “Tools” – is this because I registered with a UK address? If so – how can I get access so I can test the integration?

Thanks in advance

Short, and to the point. No official reply from Microsoft, but that’s not really surprising, but there was a helpful reply from one of the regulars letting me know that it wasn’t an issue that had cropped up before, and helpfully pointing me at a contact page for “Questions about Bing Shopping” – sounds perfect.

So – I fired off the exact same question, and 22 hours later (I don’t consider that a bad turnaround time for something like this) the following arrived as a reply from the “Bing Shopping” support team:

Hello Lee,

Thank you for contacting Microsoft Customer Service.

Based on your message, you would like to suggest to add support for Bing shopping feeds. Let me see what I can do for you today.

As a Customer Service Representative, I am here to assist you in finding the right place to get help with your questions and provide resources to resolve your concern.

Lee, for this kind of concern what may I suggest is to contact Bing Support Professional for better assistance regarding on your concern. You may contact them through this link: https://support.discoverbing.com/eform.aspx?productKey=bing&ct=eformts&scrx=1&st=1&wfxredirect=1

I hope the above information is helpful, and please contact us if you have any additional customer service questions.

Thank you,

Hm, not great. They clearly don’t understand my question, and I now have to contact a second (More generic) support team with my question.

I’m now being made to chase around different departments because Microsoft (You know, that big multi-billion dollar company) apparently can’t pass a customer support issue between teams themselves.

Also – it’s evident that the support team don’t have the right skills / knowledge / experience to answer the question. If you’re a company offering APIs to developers they need a different level of support than your end-users. You need to make sure that your support staff are sufficiently skilled and experienced for the audience they’re supporting – or that they know that it’s OK to escalate an issue if required, and the right place to send it to – not that it’s more important to close the call than actually answer the question.

The response included an invitation for feedback on how my issue had been handled. Obviously I was disappointed, and so I replied to this request for feedback, hoping that someone would take my issue on and find me the right answer:

I’d just like to register my disappointment with responses I’ve received.

I’m a UK-based WordPress developer, trying to provide an integration between one of WordPress’s leading e-Commerce system WP e-Commerce, and Bing Shopping.

I’ve read the integration guide, and am happy I can modify the software to produce a feed. I’ve signed up for a Microsoft adcentre account, but it appears I’m unable to submit feeds (Even test ones) as I’m not in the US.

I raised this as a question on the forum http://community.microsoftadvertising.com/forums/p/68015/95480.aspx and one of the forum visitors helpfully pointed me to the “Contact Us: Questions about Bing shopping” contact page which seemed to be a sensible place to get in touch (See case number quoted above).

The result was a completely unhelpful response directing me to a generic Bing contact page – to which I’ve forwarded my enquiry – but if the dedicated “Bing Shopping” contact page couldn’t get an answer to my query – I’ll be very surprised if this does.

So:

• I’m disappointed that you seem to have no interest in supporting developers looking to drive customers to your products, based purely on their geography
• even more disappointed in the lack of support received when I raised this with what seems like the appropriate group
• mortified that I have to chase round re-submitting my request to various different groups

I’ll confess it’s a bit grumpy, but I think you’ll find the answer fascinating (Emphasis mine):

Hello Lee,

Thank you for contacting Microsoft North America Customer Service.

From the information you have provided in your message, I understand that you are located in United Kingdom and looking for obtaining the Windows Defender download. The Customer Service team you have reached is for North America.  There are significant differences between North American versions of Microsoft products and those localized for your country.

You will be best assisted by the Microsoft subsidiary that specializes in your version of Windows Defender. You can reach them at (+44) 0844 800 2400 or by visiting: http://www.microsoft.com/worldwide/phone/contact.aspx?country=United%20Kingdom

Wish you a very Happy and Prosperous New Year.

So, this was supposed to be “feedback” about the level of support I received. My disappointment, and areas of complaint weren’t even acknowledged (Never mind actually addressed), and I got pointed to a Windows Defender download (If anyone can explain how that could ever possibly have been the right answer to my question I’ll buy them a beer!)

But what about the request I forwarded to the generic Bing Support team? Maybe they came back with a helpful answer? …

Hello Lee,

My name is XXXXXX. Your e-mail was escalated to me and I would like to assist you with your concern on adding support for Bing Shopping feeds to a WordPress ecommerce platform. I understand the importance of your concern.

For issues and concerns on Bing Shopping UK, please contact Ciao help team at support@ciao.co.uk.

We appreciate your continued support as we strive to provide you with the highest quality service available. Thank you for using Bing.

Sincerely,
XXXX
Bing Technical Support

I’d already explained in my contact that I wanted to post information for US stores, and the forum thread I linked through covered ciao.co.uk and why that wasn’t the right area to look at.

Suffice to say I won’t be integrating with Bing Shopping anytime soon and I pity anyone who has to deal with Bing Support …

On balance, this is a huge improvement, however a coupe of features that were in the previous version, and that I want to use on my current project went AWOL. Fortunately, because the plugin now uses standard WordPress functionality for storing its data – these are pretty easy to knock together. So – my first major need was for a widget to show “recent ads” in a sidebar. Here’s a screenshot of the widget in action:

If you want to give it a try out – you can grab it here – just install it as a standard WordPress plugin, activate it, and the widget will be available under Appearance > Widgets in your WordPress admin area.

I’m pretty happy with the theme in action on Stewart’s site, but I realise that people do strange and interesting things on their WordPress sites, so before I release the theme, I’m looking for people to test and provide feedback.

Interested? Check it out here.

add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails' );

This worked, in that it solved the problem – all of the post-thumbnail function calls worked. However, it left a bug, and one that isn’t a software, or a techie bug – it was the worst kind – a bad user experience. Suddenly “posts” and “pages” would allow you to set featured images when authoring, or editing, but because the theme didn’t really support post thumbnails, those images would never show leaving a confused, bewildered user. So, the solution is to enable the support in general, but disable it for specific post types:

function check_thumbnail_support() {
 if (!current_theme_supports('post-thumbnails')) {
   add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails' );
   add_action('init','remove_posttype_thumbnail_support');
 }
}
add_action('after_setup_theme','check_thumbnail_support',99);

function remove_posttype_thumbnail_support() {
 remove_post_type_support('post','thumbnail');
 remove_post_type_support('page','thumbnail');
}

This does three important things:
1. Check to see if the theme supports thumbnails already – if so, do nothing
2. If not, then turn on post thumbnail support, but also …
3. Remove support from “post” and “page”

The “gotcha” if you’re trying to come up with this yourself is that theme support is for “post-thumbnails”, but post_type_support is for the more generic “thumbnails”. Hope this comes in handy some someone.

What James pointed out was that instead of amending core files, you can create “class overrides” to amend functionality you want to.

You can read James’ original comment, or skip straight to the article that explains everything!

My future Virtuemart customisations will definitely make use of this – thanks James!

Here’s a a quick tip to show how to control the sort order, just add the following snippet to your WordPress theme’s functions.php file:

<?php
    if (!isset($_SESSION['wpsc_product_order'])) {
        $_SESSION['wpsc_product_order'] = "DESC";
 }
 ?>

Just swap DESC for ASC to swap the default order. Happy sorting …

The plugin auto-subscribes new users (Whether they register deliberately, or are created by other plugins – e.g. by purchasing from a Virtuemart store) to your chosen Campaign Monitor list.

To get up and running, follow these 4 simple steps:

• Download the plugin
• Install it
• Set up your Campaign Monitor details in the configuration screen
  
  You can find a great guide for finding these IDs here
• Activate the plugin

Obviously, you’ll want to make sure that you have the user’s permission to contact them as part of the registration policy.

Happy integrating.