Important news regarding the iCodes webservices

[Leeky]

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Over the next few days we will be upgrading the iCodes webservices to include categories and to also include special offers (currently around 1500 offers) and include new requests to enable easy use of the new additions.

This will open up the webservices to far more website owners who are not interested in voucher codes.

Merchants can already add / edit and delete special offers, so this will open up more interest to a wider range of merchants as the offers will be distributed over a much wider area.

To view the special offers and categories simply take a look at an icodes site which has had them activated with categories and offers.. ie. Discount Codes | Voucher Codes

Ill update this post when this has been complete.

Lee

[Leeky]

The first of the two major upgrades to the webservice is now complete, you can see the extra CategoryList Request and the &category= Parameter here... (with examples)

iCodes Webservices - Merchant and Voucher Code API

Cheers

Lee

[John Jupp]

What are you doing to get the information from networks and adding the data yourselves as not many merchants have the time to visit you and others to input codes which should be your responsibility anyhow.

Checked 2 merchants...1 no code listed (code available) 2nd 3 codes listed with one of those withdrawn.

[Leeky]

What are you doing to get the information from networks and adding the data yourselves as not many merchants have the time to visit you and others to input codes which should be your responsibility anyhow.

Checked 2 merchants...1 no code listed (code available) 2nd 3 codes listed with one of those withdrawn.

The data is inputted manually by icodes users which is taken from the networks.
Agencies and merchants DO also add codes themselves.... networks also add them, but rarely. (webgains added one the other day)

You may have found codes not listed, but its impossible to have 100% of codes listed 100% of the time, but I can bet our percentage of valid codes listed is far higher than any other website, and so would the accuracy, as its policed constantly by everyone involved.

If you can point out the incorrect / missing codes then say so, and they will be removed /included or whatever, but just saying I "I checked 2 merchants... bla bla you're trying to make out that the first two you checked were incorrect and so giving the impression 50% of the feed is incorrect).. when infact the feed is 99.9% correct, but if it were automated from the networks then it would be less than 99.9%, as some codes have to be corrected before going in our system, and if I myself had to input them "on my own" then im sure the accuracy and codes listed would be as bad as what your trying to make out it is.

Don't forget our database is also checked by such as you constantly trying to jump and report anything incorrect, when do you ever check the database of any other voucher codes sites?

Our database is used by over 200 affiliates (most of them are members of this forum), so if there was a problem with our database it would be pointed out by the users, and not by some 'non user' who doesn't even know how it operates.

Lee

[John Jupp]

Lee calm down. You are more touchy than a porcupine.

I will check with all our merchants over the next few weeks (our managers are on 3 continents right now so contacting all difficult) but I was referring to Caraselle on Paid on Results (available from network) which says no code available (there is one) and Isango on AF, WG and CJ which has 3 codes (different for each network) and which has 1 out of date code listed as this was retired early and an email sent to all affiliates.

[Leeky]

Lee calm down. You are more touchy than a porcupine.

I will check with all our merchants over the next few weeks (our managers are on 3 continents right now so contacting all difficult) but I was referring to Caraselle on Paid on Results (available from network) which says no code available (there is one) and Isango on AF, WG and CJ which has 3 codes (different for each network) and which has 1 out of date code listed as this was retired early and an email sent to all affiliates.

lol, I actually thought I was calmer than usual

If you were to simply post the incorrect / missing codes you found in the first place then I would have welcomed the post.. i want posts like that, Its just annoying when you say 'x' number of codes are invalid out of 'x' number i tried, this gives a false impression and does not help anyone with correcting the problem.

As our database is used by so many affiliates it is essential any incorrect codes are spotted and reported asap (which they are in most cases), and this is also why we give merchants, agencies and networks the ability to login and delete / edit them.

Lee

[Leeky]

Caraselle was entered months ago and is in the feed.

£10 Discount

Ill go check the Isango codes now.

Lee

[John Jupp]

Lee the point I was putting across is that most merchants and agencies have enough on their hands without updating affiliates sites for them. Content at the end of the day has to be down to you mate. Otherwise you'd end up paying us all a data entry fee.

[John Jupp]

Caraselle was entered months ago and is in the feed.

£10 Discount

Ill go check the Isango codes now.

Lee

It weren't the other day. No worries.

[Barry]

Great to see the offers being offered in a feed - will be great to get those on-site.


In terms of the quality of the voucher feed - it could not be any better, had a few rouge ones but they are all sorted within the hour when I have notified icodes.

Ta

Baz

[srubin]

Just to clarify the Isango situation: we update our codes on a weekly basis. Since the code was released on 16.03.2009 we had not published it on iCodes as yet. The code is active, and is available on iCodes, although not through Webgains.

Please let me know if you need any further information. :tup

[Leeky]

Lee the point I was putting across is that most merchants and agencies have enough on their hands without updating affiliates sites for them. Content at the end of the day has to be down to you mate. Otherwise you'd end up paying us all a data entry fee.

Who is saying merchants and agencies have to input any data?, we give that option if they wish to do so, and give them the option to delete anything if they wish to do so, but they certainly do not have to do anything at all.

Isn't an Agencies job to promote merchants who pay them, and make sure they are promoted as much as possible?, one input on our site goes on hundreds of sites, if you think this is not worthwhile then don't do it. They will probably be inputted anyway by someone so I can't see you're getting at???

If you think we rely on, or need agencies to input codes then your completely mistaken, we merely give the agencies the option if they wish to do so... we are doing them a favour, not the other way round lol.

Its more like agencies should be paying us to allow data entry, not us paying them, I think you seriously under estimate how many, and how large some sites are which use our database.

Lee

[Leeky]

The second part of the major webservices upgrade is now live.

The webservices now contain our offers which are all categorized.

Due to the amount of offers (which is increasing daily) we do not allow a single request to call up All Offers in one go (unlike voucher codes)

The AllOffers request has to be used with a 'category' parameter as shown on iCodes Webservices - Voucher Code and Offers API

The categories can be found in the request 'CategoryList' which also shows the <url> for further voucher code requests and the <offer_url> for further offer requests.

<offer_url> is only used within the 'CategoryList' , further offer requests within the offer feeds are shown within <url> (like the voucher codes)

Hope the above made sense :-)

Lee

[dougs]

Well done Lee a good addition

Doug