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DealDotCom - Wordpress Plugin

The site, DealDotCom was introduced to the world earlier this week and sells information products: one item per day in the tradition of Woot!. It did not take long for a wordpress plugin to be created so that the daily listing from DealDotCom could be listed within a wordpress sidebar. I have installed the plugin here (slightly modified) and you can see it by looking towards the bottom of the sidebar on the left. It is available for download from http://blog.bluefur.com/2007/09/18/dealdotcom/. As with any new plug-in, I have read several comments about it and there seems to be a general consensus about some difficulty getting it installed. There are no instructions provided with the download so I have listed here how to install, and get the dealdotcom wordpress plugin working.

1. First and foremost if you don’t already have one, you need to Get a DealDotCom account.
2. Secondly you need to download the plugin , unzip, and upload the extracted folder and the php file to your wordpress plugins folder.
3. Go to your wordpress administration panel, go to plugins and click on activate for the DealDotCom Widget.
4. Go to options and then dealdotcom. Fill out the form. For the form you will need the following info: Your DealDotCom affiliate id (available after you create a DealDotCom account from the “YOUR ACCOUNT” tab at deal-dot-com), like http://www.dealdotcom.com/invite/9920/,the font color, the border color, and the width of the area you want to use. If you are not sure about the colors or widths you can leave this blank but it will blend into your site if you specify these to match your blog’s theme. Check whether you want graphical or text.
5. Lastly copy the following text

<?php dealdotcom(); ?> into you sidebar where you want the dealdotcom listing to display. (From your wordpress control panel go to presentation then the theme editor tab, scrolll down until you find sidebar and click that. It opens a text editor where you can copy <?php dealdotcom(); ?> whereever you like)

Written by Beezlebubba on September 20th, 2007 with 4 comments.
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4 comments

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Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Tim
#1. September 20th, 2007, at 8:45 PM.

I keep getting an error when I the code to my sidebar… an help would be appreciated.

Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in …/networkmarketingjourney.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/dealdotcom/dealdotcom.php on line 25

Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.dealdotcom.com/wp) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: no suitable wrapper could be found in …/networkmarketingjourney.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/dealdotcom/dealdotcom.php on line 25

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Randell
#2. September 21st, 2007, at 7:29 AM.

I tried this again in a couple different blogs and was able to get it to work every time no matter where I pasted the code within the sidebar.

Just to rule out the obvious, you copied both the dealdotcom folder and the dealdotcom.php file to your plugin directory correct? You activated the plugin, you set your options and then pasted the line exactly as below

< ?php dealdotcom(); ?> into your sidebar code.

As I stated, by doing that, I have not been able to get it to error out, it works everytime, no matter where I paste the line of code. That being said, the only thing I could think of is maybe it has something to do with what version of wordpress or php you are using. I know I am currently using wordpress version 2.1 not the absolute newest but pretty recent and my server says I am using PHP versions 4.4.4 and 5.2.1. ANother thing check permissions on the dealdotcom.php file, mine is set to 6,4,4.

Let me know if you get it figured out and how you resolved it.

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Tim
#3. September 22nd, 2007, at 1:16 PM.

I checked everything to double check and it was uploaded and activated properly. The permissions were right and I am using PHP 4. After discovering this I sent a support ticket to my host and they have deactivated the file_get_contents() function. They said I could use CURL instead, which doesn’t really help since I didn’t code it and don’t know how to program in PHP. So I’m currently still looking for a solution.

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Randell
#4. September 26th, 2007, at 8:05 AM.

Sorry to hear that your host won’t help you out and I know nothing of curl either. I’m not sure who you use but I have never heard of any host deactivating any php function. I use Hostgator and have never had any problems. In fact I switched to them after someone else recommended them over a year ago and have not had one problem. They are pretty cheap too, I go with the ten dollar /month plan. I know there are cheaper but as the saying goes you get what you pay for and I am more than happy with what I get for ten bucks per month. Sorry I couldn’t be more help, let me know how it turns out.

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