Whilst building my latest affiliate store for console bundles using Datafeed Studio I decided to add some new features to the application.

The main new feature is cache support across all the affiliate sites and pages created by Datafeed Studio. By setting the $CACHE_TIME_IN_SECONDS value in the main configuration file you can specify how long a page should be cached for. Personally for my sites I have set it to the number of seconds in a day.

Once a page is cached, any subsequent visit to the page will require no database calls whatsoever until the cache time has expired.

That’s not all in the performance stakes though. From v2.1 the SQL used when displaying categories and products has been optimised. Previously when displaying a page with say ten products, this would have required 21 (yes, twenty-one!) database calls. One for the initial product selection, and then two more for each product to gather additional meta information about the product.

From v2.1 a similar page will require just one database call. This, coupled with the new caching feature, should result in much faster response times for your customers.

Apart from that, there are a few presentation changes with themes. First, store themes have a new ‘Buy Now’ button which should increase conversions, secondly themes now include both the main stye.css file and the local CSS file.

Previously the local style.css was a complete copy of the main style.css file and this was the only CSS file included in a page view.

From this version pages load both the main style.css and the local style.css, with the local style.css being empty by default, but loaded after the main style.css so you can override or apply any new customisations you want to the presentation.

This is handy if you have several affiliate sites all using the same Datafeed Studio database and theme type as you can make a “global” change by changing the main style.css file, without having to update each of your sites individually.

For full details of all the changes in v2.1, see the ChangeLog within the Datafeed Studio distribution.

You can download v2.1 here.

Upgrade Notes : If you are upgrading an existing installation note that for this release you must run the patch.php command-line tool located in admin/bin to upgrade your database (alternatively you can import the patch.sql file manually into your MySQL version or using a tool such as phpMyAdmin).

Datafeed Studio now supports SEO friendly URLs for your product categories and products.

Previously, Datafeed Studio URLs were pretty ugly :

http://example.com/display_product.php?mykey=123_123456789


Now, if you enable the SEO_FRIENDLY_URLS option in the configuration (enabled by default) you will get product URLs in the form :

http://example.com/123_123456789.html


Hmm…I suppose that is a slight improvement I hear you say, but wouldn’t it be great if I could choose the value of the URL myself.

Well, now you can!

The latest Datafeed Studio release has “slug” support. Every product in your database can now have an unique slug (or path or permalink, call it what you will), so you can finally have URLs of your choosing, e.g.

http://example.com/my-cool-product.html

What’s more, slug support has been added to categories, so instead of :

http://example.com/show_category.php?catid=24

You now get :

http://example.com/category-bouncy-castles

To demonstrate the new URL structure I’ve created a new baby car seat site, check it out to see the new SEO friendly URLs in action.

If you still prefer the non-SEO friendly URLs just set the SEO_FRIENDLY_URLS option to zero (this option can also be set in the site specific configuration files so you can enable/disable it on a per site basis).

Previously a site would get all of its look and feel based on the theme it was associated with, e.g. Indiana Jones Toys is associated with the store theme known as “modern”.



However, if you then wanted to make a new store site with a different look you would have to make a complete copy of the theme, e.g. “modern2″ and use that for the new site. This method still works, but is a bit tedious if all you want to do is change the font colour and a few other minor presentation changes on your new site.

So the latest release of Datafeed Studio supports local styles. When you register a new site a copy of the main CSS file (style.css) of the theme you have chosen for the new site is automatically created and placed in the site_configs folder. Now instead of using the style.css file in the theme, your site will use the new copy in the site_configs folder, this allows you to do local customisations without changing the main theme.



As an example I have created a new Baby Pushchair site, like the Indiana Jones site mentioned above, this uses the “modern” theme and I didn’t have to create a “modern2″ theme to accommodate the presentation changes I wanted to make, they are all controlled by the local CSS file, which can be edited via the new Style link which is now present for store and price compare sites on the admin home screen.

So in summary, if you want to make a new affiliate site with a radically different look, then by all means create a new theme as usual, but if your new site is just a few cosmetic changes to an existing theme, simply make your changes via the Style link.

I hope you all like this new feature – I’m sure it will help you create affiliate sites quicker and easier than the previous solution.