Hostgator & Ebay RSS Feed (Bans or PHPbay) Check Your Sites - They're Probably Down

[ExRat]

Hi,

80% of my ebay RSS feed-powered affiliate sites are not loading (hosted on hostgator - usually the best for this type of site.)

According to other forums this is universal. If you've been through this before, you will know that it doesn't take more than a day or two for your SERPs to suffer, regardless of how much unique content you've painstakingly put on there.

I don't know of a good solution - the responses from either side have not been helpful (from what I have seen) so the only temporary solution I know of is if it's possible, de-activate the ebay RSS feed powered parts of your site until it is fixed and that way your site will load properly and won't get punished as badly.

For some (me included) all of the EPN sites are also down, so I can't view their board.

Bearing in mind recent EPN events, and considering that hostgator are usually the safest bet and also considering that hostgator's responses on this are that it is out of their hands, ebay is blocking certain IP's of theirs - well, don't leave any tin foil lying around because I am inclined to start wearing it on my head.

[JayXtreme]

Thanks for this Roger..

I have to be honest that I have neglected the BANS side of my business because it now seems so laborious for things to run smoothly...

If you don't mind me asking.. do you run BANS?... and if so have you found the last 8 months a bit of a pain in the arse?..feel free to reply via PM if ya like dude..

Peace

Jay

[ExRat]

Hi Jay,

Sending PM mate.

Edit - sent!

[BIG Mike]

@Roger - Seeing as I'm way out of the loop, why are they banning certain IP Addresses?

[ExRat]

Hi Mike,

All that I can get hold of is that there are 'too many requests coming to the RSS feed from certain IPs' - this is second-hand info, originally from ebay (allegedly).

It's always been recommended to use hostgator with the script I favour (bans) and in the past, it has been better. I think it was hostmonster that had a similar problem not so long back. Many others switched from godaddy and hostmonster to HG not so long ago because of similar issues.

There have been many times where the RSS feed has gone a bit 'clunky' but it's completely munted currently - the site gets stuck with half a blue bar.

I don't really want to say too much here, but if you know what happened on 20th August at EPN and the consequent events, it does seem that this is a very good way of achieving the same goal, without having to take the same type of flak for it. But of course, that leaves me open to tin-foil-hat slurs.

Whatever

[BIG Mike]

Just a quick thought - if you can find out if Ebay is blocking individual IP's or blocks of them you might be able to buy a dedicated IP at HG to work around the problem.

I'm kinda wondering though why'd they block IP's like that - seems a little weird to do when it's part of their sales mechanism.

I must have slept through the August 20th thing at EPN as I don't know about it. LOL.

[nikolaaa]

hostgator - usually the best for this type of site

Why do you think that hostgator is best for any type of web site?
I prefer to use small hosting companies like hostforweb and hostnine.

I have many ebay sites on these two hostings and never have problems with it.

[Jean Morgan]

Good innit?

I only make about $60 a day from eBAy but that is $60 I won't be making today from the look of things!

Hopefully it will get resolved soon or else I face moving my websites again.

Jean

[KimW]

I'm not using BANS but I do have a hostgator account with a couple of sites getting the feed and they are up and running at this moment

[ExRat]

Hi Mike,

As mentioned, I don't want to say too much but do they really need well paid affiliates anymore? Search google for 'expirations' re 20/8.

if you can find out if Ebay is blocking individual IP's or blocks of them you might be able to buy a dedicated IP at HG to work around the problem

They are blocking certain IPs and not others - I have one block that is fine. But I'm not prepared to play 'chase' with them. They win - I'm out.

I'm afraid I'm at the point where I'm not willing to apply any more time or expense to the project as it is terminally munted. There are too many issues that are out of my hands - November sees the start of 'smart-pricing' on ACRUs for the (previously) lucrative US program. As mentioned in another thread (or five) - big, costly lessons have been learnt here about relinquishing control over any aspect of my business.

Hi Nikolaaa,

Why do you think that hostgator is best for any type of web site?

Because the people who make the bans script said so, as did many of the users along with the reports of others using other similar hosts who have had all sorts of issues along the way - along with my own findings.

I used to run some of mine on another host and had to abandon them when a PHP upgrade at the host (and across all similar hosts) caused insurmountable htaccess problems.

Hi Kimw,

One of my hostgator reseller accounts is running fine too. But 80% of them aren't.

[nikolaaa]

Ops....I didn't know that you are talking here about some specific product..
I use my custom script for ebay sites.
It's easy to implement ebay rss with any system.

[ExRat]

Hi,

Apparently it's affecting the API too -

From ebay forum (the one that is working) hostgator said -

This is happening because Ebay has temporarily blocked our server from connecting to their api:

and

Please contact Ebay and use your Ebay Partnership Network account to ask Ebay to clear the block so your sites can connect again. We are contacting them as well, however we have found in the past they respond fastest to Partner tickets.

Also, a reply to a user who followed this advice and contacted EPN -

"Thank you for submitting your question. An eBay Partner Network representative will respond to you in 2 business days."

[Iain Ainsworth]

Hi Roger,

All my ebay sites are down (hosted by hostgator) - I use PHPEbay mostly.

Is this something that will resolve itself in due course?

Thanks,

Iin

[ExRat]

Hi Iain,

Well there aint much we can do!

Yes, in the past it was resolved after a period of days. I imagine they're working on it (at ebay) but how hard they are trying, who knows? It depends what their actual goal is.

[Iain Ainsworth]

B*******s

Thanks for the heads-up mate. I thought I had a WP problem and have now deleted all my ebay feeds for now.

[Frank Donovan]

Don't quite know if this relates to the rss problems, but I've been getting "connection interrupted" messages all day on various eBay member areas.

Needless to say, nothing back from eBay helpdesk yet....


Frank

[Dennis Becker]

I have sites on HostGator servers and a non-HostGator server. I use the RSS feeds, I use the eBay editor kit, and I use the API.

The only place I'm seeing a problem currently is accessing the API. I have one site on a HostGator server that uses the RSS feed and mirror pages that use the API, and the pages using the API aren't bringing anything back, nor is there an error message when I do a view source, or when I look at my cPanel error log.

It doesn't seem to be a HostGator problem, at least not for me.

[cashcow]

I have sites with eBay feeds on hosting other than hostgator and they are broken too. Plus when I try to login to my EPN admin panel the server times out. Seems like it's a problem on their end to me.

I hope it gets fixed soon though as it kind of puts a damper on the websites I am trying to sell...

Lee

[GuruGazette]

Just out of curiosity since I don't use any ebay stuff: Do these scripts play nice?

One of the biggest problems with RSS scrapers and tools like them is when they don't cache results, and/or they constantly hit the feeds for updates every couple of minutes. Hundreds (or thousands) of sites doing this can bring any service down really fast.

[ExRat]

Hi Kathy,

Do these scripts play nice?

The scripts do, but the paymasters don't.

On average, you get about an hour or two a week where they are overloaded and a little slow. But this is ebay we're talking about and they are fully aware of how many different scripts are pulling the feed, so in normal circumstances I guess they allow for it.

Hi Dennis,

It doesn't seem to be a HostGator problem, at least not for me.

As you'll see above, I have some HG accounts working and some not. Hostgator customer support are adamant that ebay have basically blocked certain of their IPs.

There is a problem with the EPN website too but whether this is related who knows?

This won't be the last debacle, because many others will ride it out and stick in there because they don't have the skills or inclination to move on.

November 1st is when ACRUs go from $12 to a sliding scale of $1 to $50 depending on the 'engagement' level of overall traffic sent (for any longer standing members of EPN's USA program - currently new members are in this new system already) and ummm...well make sure your dogs are alright because you can be sure that at the end of November there will be more fireworks....

[primuskannan]

Originally Posted by BIG Mike

I must have slept through the August 20th thing at EPN as I don't know about it. LOL.

Here you go eBay Forums: August 20 Expirations ... where ebay really played hell.

[Iain Ainsworth]

Is this just an EPN problem or are those on Pepperjam also getting messed about I wonder?

[melanied]

Man, ever since August 20 I had been toying with the idea of scaling back my ebay efforts, anyway. Why put effort into an affiliate program that openly admits that they ban hard-working, white hat affiliates who they *know* have done nothing to violate the TOS? Yeah, that's a death wish. But this is the final nail. Time is being penciled into my schedule next week as we speak to go through and prune ebay out of my sites. Too bad, too. It's easy to implement and converts great. But apparently, they don't seem to want me.

PS - Also, I miss the CJ days. Somehow, with the exact same traffic I was earning about 3 times as much.

[josher]

I think this might be an honest error. Here's what an ebay employee is saying over at there board.

"Hi all,

I would like to relay more information in response to several questions above.

1. This issue is definitely not related to specific affiliates or specific software being used on affected affiliate web sites.

2. This issue appears to be a routing (networking) issue that is being aggressively worked by our operations team.

3. The traceroute request that I previously made was to look at the route being taken from affected web servers to the eBay network. As dvd2sl said, we were looking for the route on the servers, rather than the route between your personal machine and hostgator. Sorry my previous request was not more clear. I have received enough traceroutes, so there is not a need to send more.

Thanks for everyone's help on this.

Joe"

[Jeannie Crabtree]

"I used to run some of mine on another host and had to abandon them when a PHP upgrade at the host (and across all similar hosts) caused insurmountable htaccess problems."

Hate to tell you this, I have this problem a few times a year at hostgator. After going back and forth, it is straightened out. But it costs me money because of the downtime.

Jeannie

[SimonHarrison]

Have a few sites on Hostgator I was unable to access them directly , although if I used a proxy I could see them fine.