PlunderHere and AlsoShop: A Web of Privacy Violations, Backstabbing, and Deceit

[PowerSeller]

[quote author=xwpopper link=topic=9139.msg71533#msg71533 date=1216910843]
PS is making sense about the change, and no one seems to understand what she is saying.[/quote]

LOL, does anyone ever?  (not often)

It seems like any cause she is fighting for, even the good ones like this, she ends up alone.

So true.  However, it's better to go in the right direction alone than to follow the crowd going in the wrong direction.  There are many times when being one of only a few people who know something has it's advantages.

[regic]

have you ever tried to transfer 100K images?

Create a tarball and you only need to transfer 1 file.

The images files themselves won't need to be transferred ---only the link to the images will need to be imported so this part of the script transfer won't be any more difficult than transferring any other field in the database (price, description, etc).  Even if they move the image files  to a different directory on the server it shouldn't present a problem because they can run a command on the images field in the database to change the link on all the entries to the new location at once.

The main image related problem will occur post-move when buyers are greeted with the tiny gallery pictures phpProBid uses and hit their back buttons 

[bargainbloodhound]

Then, there will be those who have thousands of products listed to edit, one by one,

My guess is most of them will give up and find a new site after they discover what a PITA it is to create or edit listings in phpProBid. :blinkie:

The main image related problem will occur post-move when buyers are greeted with the tiny gallery pictures phpProBid uses and hit their back buttons

phpProBid  is one of the reasons sites like YHB ($441 monthly GMV) and Milbid ($249 monthly GMV) have so few sales.  Buyer experience obviously wasn't a consideration when the script was witten.

This script 'Rscript' is very functional but very 'buggy'

..and phpProBid has a history of bugs including ones that cause the database to implode (think HiBidder 2006, McBidz 2008).

[justabella]

Which are the sites that are still on rScript..??   

[bargainbloodhound]

[quote author=justabella link=topic=9139.msg71546#msg71546 date=1216940089]


Which are the sites that are still on rScript..??   




[/quote]

The largest site using it in terms of listings is BidOnUSA.com (107,161 listings).  Wagglepop, BiddersNSellers, UBidRight, PatchAuctions, and about 100 other smaller sites also use it.

[regic]

[quote author=bargainbloodhound link=topic=9139.msg71547#msg71547 date=1216941377]
[quote author=justabella link=topic=9139.msg71546#msg71546 date=1216940089]


Which are the sites that are still on rScript..??   




[/quote]

The largest site using it in terms of listings is BidOnUSA.com (107,161 listings).  Wagglepop, BiddersNSellers, UBidRight, PatchAuctions, and about 100 other smaller sites also use it.
[/quote]

AtOncer, 15,000 listings, is an RScript site

[mandy]

If any PH members want to know what will happen when the script changes over, it looks like Ray may have been chartered to handle the switch since he and Mo's resident "moron" can't handle the site.
http://probid.alsoshop.com/index.php?

AlsoShop is also dumping RScript and moving to phpProBid

Important Alsoshop News
As has been discussed in other threads ... we have issues with images and some other upload problems. Even tho I had that marvelous techy guy write a ticket with the Big Gun techs... there are problems with rscript that makes it non compliant with new programs needed to run todays internet. Its like trying to run Win 3.x on an XP machine... or IE 4 when 6 is needed.

The author of rscript hasn't been forthcoming with updates for the script either. AlsoShop is running the latest version of rscript.

Over the past few days, I have been in discussions with Ray (our local tech guy) about the best course of action. Since we can't update the script, the Big Guns haven't reported a permenent fix to our issues, and other then that, there is no real support for the script... We will be changing to the newest version of PHPPROBID as soon as its released.

All the tests have been made, everything is ready. We're just waiting on the release.

In the tests that were ran, everything but one area ran smoothly, That one area is the categories. Because of the category mismatches, all items will be dumped into 1 main category. then this will have to be edited to your specific categories.

Areas being imported are: Users, Feedback, Auctions, Auction Images, Store Names, Store Descriptions, Bids, Bid Histories, Winner/Seller contacts, EVERYTHING BUT THE CATEGORIES!

I'm not worried too much with the cosmetics of the site right now, thats minor. A working site is much more important. We can beautify it Later.

Some of you already have experience with Phpprobid. I really liked it at Bid-alot, Webidz, and Auctionquests. And ... I really thought hard about it when I started AlsoShop. But if rscript isn't going to update and get with today's internet and supply the support needed, then it needs to go by the way of the dinosaurs, and perl is an archaic programming language.

Now what does this mean for sales? We will be able to add mods for googleplex and aggregator submissions, the spiders are already haunting us.

When we are ready for the transfer, the auctions will go down for maintence when the transfer takes place so there won't be loss of data (or limited loss). But the boards will stay up. We just don't want new items added after the data is collected. 

http://www.alsoshop.com/community/showthread.php?t=400

[xwpopper]

A few points of interest here:
Both PH and AsS changing at the same time, announcing within a couple days on each site, and both announcements are very similar in nature. Mo and Ray with AsS may know these bugs with Rscript, but there's no way that Mark is smart enough to figure it out, or change the script.
Ray owns both sites, or at least owns the plunderserve.com domain while PH's server is plunderserve.com.
Mo decided to make the announcement a day after I post the link to their Probid test script.

Who's the biggest liar here?

[PowerSeller]

[quote author=xwpopper link=topic=9139.msg71563#msg71563 date=1217008798]
Who's the biggest liar here?
[/quote]

That would be whoever 'sold' them on the idea that changing to phpProBid is a good option.  Am I wrong?

[xwpopper]

Actually, I can't argue that as far as seller features that Rscript users have complained about since the start of PH, WP, et al, such as instant checkout and site feeds, it is better. But the total package is awful in comparison. People like Ray from WP at least had the forsight to redesign the Rscript completely, and host it on a server that could handle it. Mo/Ray/Mark did not, so it has problems. WP at least looks like it's own site, but PH is a "pleasingly colored" boxed Rscript site. (Was I actually defending Wagglepop?  ) What difference will there be when all the Probid sites upgrade? The same identical script site to site once again. I don't care how much it is rebuilt from the ground up, because the current version was rebuilt from the ground up. Each 1-2-3-4-5-6 release was rebuilt from the ground up. It is slow, has serious database issues, timeouts, category errors (categories showing zero or negative when hundreds of items are listed) small images, small fonts, horrible layout editing, auction/listing template problems, WYSIWYG descriptions not allowing images, security bugs, and did I mention slow???

Seriously, Webidz, Auctionquests, Yourhighbid, Hibidder, Milbid, etc. are the slowest sites I have ever looked at next to Plunderhere. I tried buying on many of these sites, it was awful and I knew what I was doing! I can't imagine being a new member trying to figure out how to shop on any of those sites with just the basic boxed instructions to buy. Now, he's going to take 50,000 listings and move them to an already easily overloaded PHPProBid. Remember how slow Plunderhere.eu was at it's first launch? Multiply that times 50,000 listings.

But, looking at this it may actually be better for the site speed, save 1/2 second load time from PH's already turtle race times:
1 plunderhere.com 3.75 seconds
2 milbid.com 1.86 seconds
3 yourhighbid.com 3.16 seconds
4 webidz.com 2.23 seconds
5 auctionquests.com 2.08 seconds
6 hibidder.com 6.05 seconds

Either way, I'll never worry about being there. I just hate seeing so many sellers who could have done something great with their business waste so much time promoting someone else's business on any of the above sites.