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New “Slot Message” feature for next release of NiftyGridZPro

Another great new feature is added in the next release of NiftyGridZPro (no release date set yet).

Slot Message feature

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Benefits:

  • Get your special offer or other message out quickly and easily
  • Your image can be anywhere online as long as it’s publicly accessible
  • Random grid position chosen for your slot message
  • Image in your slot message can be linked to anywhere you like
  • Caters for image alt text – great for screen readers for the visually impaired and great for SEO as a result!

Switching it on

Switch on this new feature with the shortcode option use_message_slot=1 (default is not to use it)

It has some partner shortcode options (examples given):

  • message_slot_destination_url="https://www.zazzle.com/coupons?rf=238582202591969585&tc=my_tc"
  • message_slot_image_url="https://niftytoolz.com/law-office-collection-message-slot.png"
  • message_slot_image_alt_text="how much can you save with these coupons?"

For best results, the image used needs to be 500px wide by 650px tall or thereabouts. You can use square images to make it really stand out.

Enjoy 🙂

Here’s the shortcode used:

[niftygridzpro title_font_size="12px" title_alignment="center" cell_max_width="180px" cell_border_color="#aaaaaa" cell_background_color="#ffffff" cell_font_color="#333333" description_font_size="12px" description_alignment="center" description_length="0" include_product_names_in_titles=1 include_by_line=0 include_tags_line=0 store_or_collection="hightonridley" search_term="barbican" sort_type="popularity" sort_direction="desc" page_size="15" page_number="1" product_background_color="#ffffff" allow_interaction=1 show_visitor_search_form=0 tracking_code="ngrdz_blg_ungp_slotmssg" use_message_slot=1 message_slot_image_url="https://niftytoolz.com/law-office-collection-message-slot.png" message_slot_destination_url="https://www.zazzle.com/coupons?rf=238582202591969585&tc=ngrdz_blg_ungp_slotmssg" message_slot_image_alt_text="how much can you save with these coupons?"]

NiftyGridZPro – new feature in next version

No release date yet planned

In the next version there’s a new option for controlling the titling of products displayed in your grid. This one lets you include only product names in titles, like shown here.

It makes for a much cleaner design – useful only when your grid is showing a mix of products.

The default is that this option is switched off. To switch it on use use_only_product_names_in_titles=1

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Here’s the shortcode used for it:

[niftygridzpro title_font_size="14px" title_alignment="center" cell_max_width="140px" description_font_size="13px" description_alignment="center" description_length="0" include_price_line=1 search_term="legal" page_size="12" allow_interaction=1 show_visitor_search_form=0 tracking_code="ngrdz_blg_usng_ngp" use_only_product_names_in_titles=1]

Note that presently, it only works 100% for Zazzle-added product type names. Where a designer has added a product name, the plugin uses the last two words of the designer’s title. That seems to work 99.99% of the time.

It won’t work when a designer uses a product name in the middle of their title AND Zazzle’s system spotted that and so didn’t add a product type name. In this rare-ish case, the last two words are still used – so it’s a bit pot luck.

How to: Halloween Party Invitations for Kids

So, Halloween is almost upon us! Now is the time to think about all those kids’ parties being organized right now!

So the question answered for this post is “how do I make a product grid containing just invitations for kids’ halloween parties?”

It’s so easy to do with NiftyGridZPro just use the shortcode builder over on our sister site.

Here’s the grid I created with it and you’ll see that they’re all invitations for halloween parties for kids. Perfect, just what we want. Keep reading to see how I set it up.

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Search for:
How many to get (max 120):


…and here’s the shortcode for the grid

[niftygridzpro title_font_size="14px" title_alignment="center" cell_max_width="260px" cell_border_color="#aaaaaa" cell_background_color="#ffffff" cell_font_color="#333333" cell_vlink_color="#666666" description_font_size="12px" description_alignment="center" description_length="0" include_product_names_in_titles=1 include_by_line=1 include_tags_line=0 include_price_line=0 allow_interaction=1 product_grid_nav_font_size="20px" show_visitor_search_form=1 show_grid_navigation=1 fallback_filename="default-fallback-grid.html" grid_sort_method="pulledorder" grid_sort_direction="highlow" associate_id="238582202591969585" search_term="halloween kids" sort_type="popularity" sort_direction="desc" page_size="4" page_number="1" department_id="252145500430512226" product_background_color="ffffff" tracking_code="ngrdzwp_hlwn"]

I had to use the Zazzle Department finder, linked to under the More options->Advanced options in Step 1

screenshot showing the shortcode builder being used
Giving a search term and getting the department number for invites

I chose the display options I wanted and set a few other bits and bobs, copied the code it gave me and pasted it into my post. Done deal! 🙂

That was easy, wasn’t it? See the exact setup I used for it by following this link to the shortcode builder

Removed dependency on YQL – Yahoo Query Language

On Thursday July 24th the YQL facility for pulling from RSS feeds went down. NiftyGridZPro was using it to get the data from Zazzle to build its grids and it started to work only intermittently as a result.

Many of you noticed right away, as did we. We were working on an enhancement at the time and testing suddenly started returning no results. Once we identified it was YQL at fault, we immediately got to work writing our own feed-pulling and manipulation code.

New plugin zip files for NiftyGridZPro were sent out to everyone as we progressed, so making sure your sites were partially fixed as soon as possible.

We finished everything by the 30th with a final, fully functional and tested replacement sent out to everyone.

Enhancements were also included:

  • Default grid fallback file is now called default-fallback-grid.html and is included in the fallback folder
  • There’s been some slight changes to testing fallback grids. All you need do now is use mimic_zazzle_down=1 without using a search_term and that’ll force your specified fallback_filename to be displayed. Remember to remove mimic_zazzle_down after you’re done testing.
  • We’ve fixed the product_background_color so you can now use a # in front, making it consistent with all other color settings. It’ll work both with and without, so there’s no need to change anything in previous posts / pages

Enjoy 🙂