Core Changelog for Price Comparison Pro

Showing core changelog - click here to view beta changelog instead

Changelog

4.09 (18th January 2024)

Updated plugin update checker to include version 4 update checker

4.08 (20th October 2023)

Added 2 hour transient cache for reading changelog files from our server
- this will speed up wp-admin slightly and prevent the 403 forbidden error messages some have been getting when trying to run plugin updates

4.07 (10th August 2023)

Hotfix for new updates system - if your server was configured to disable remote URL requests, a critical error was happening upon upgrade. This has been fixed with a warning message that you cannot check for updates.

4.06 (4th August 2023)

Upgraded main settings page to show changes since last update
- added update count to menu to help users notice
Added links to all plugin docs and support areas in the settings page

4.05 Beta (26th July 2023)

Upgraded updates sytem so it uses JSON and gets zip file from license-key-checked URL

4.04 (23rd June 2023)

Cleaned up front-end JavaScript + some other stuff added for Marin customer

4.03 (8th June 2023)

Added new option to combine store locator with store column

4.02 (8th June 2023)

Added new translation entries for Locate Store, Store Locator and Store strings

4.01 (7th June 2023)

Added new display options for price comparison table - you can have between 2 and 5 columns now
Added new option for a custom URL, e.g. for a store locator link, but can be used for any other site-wide per-merchant link

4.00 (3rd February 2023)

Updated .pot language translation files

3.99 (1st February 2023)

Added grey buy button to panel

3.98 (24th January 2023)

Altered CSS to fix hover effect with slightly updated grid styling effect
Fix JS to grab merchant logo if no product logo found

3.97 (12th January 2023)

Fixed code to pull images from which should mean ALL images always work now (previously about 95% were working)
Fixed Update Woo Prices so it works properly with new table structure and sets the Affiliate URL for External Products properly to match the cheapest price
Performance boost for update woo prices

3.96 (7th December 2022)

Upgraded HTML, CSS and JS for price comparison table to use divs and flex grid rather than archaic HTML table - this allows control clicking or right-clicking products now to open in new window
Speed boost for front-end - you'll need to visit wp-admin > Price Comparison Pro > Price Comparison Pro and then hit save. This will update the options with far less data which reduces how much info gets sent to front end and processed by JS.

3.95 (24th November 2022)

Improved cache retrieval so broken scrapes do not break earlier successful scrapes
Improved cache retrieval speed so initial page loads faster and uses far less CPU
Added website config import/export option

3.94 (12th November 2022)

Changed Scraper API premium flag from premium to ultra_premium

3.93 (12th November 2022)

Improved scraping so that if a selector matches two prices, it will split the data on the currency symbol and use the first price. This makes it far easier and more resilient to create CSS selectors.
Fixed currency symbol config so that correct currency displays.

3.92 (1st November 2022)

Added Rocket Scrape techniques to debug & logging page

3.91 (1st November 2022)

Fixed bug that Ricards found in the new code to pass to Scraper API with new wait_for_selector parameter

3.90 (26th October 2022)

Updated datafeedr hook to use dfrpswc_post_save_product instead of the old dfrpswc_do_product hook

3.89 (26th October 2022)

Added &wait_for_selector option to scraper API - new option provided with scraper API to have JS wait long enough for the price block to appear
Fixed table sorting based on price
Fixed Update Woo Prices - it now will update the price, providing it exists and has been scraped

3.88 (20th September 2022)

Added Scraper API Premium option for tricky to scrape websites which should use premium proxies and bypass the bot blockers

3.87 BETA (11th August 2022)

Fixed JS issue which was causing an infinite loop if the product image could not be found AND there was no logo configured
Fixed some warnings that appeared if you had not yet entered config for the website you are scraping
Updated config fetch so that https://barbora.lv will match to config for https://www.barbora.lv and vice versa if no config found

3.86 BETA (9th August 2022)

Added rule to remove /cache/xyz/ from image URL if the image is failing to load
Updated display style to put merchant logo in right hand side column above the price - makes more sense here
Added conditional code for search comparison widget so it doesn't break the page if the settings have not yet been configured

3.85 BETA (21st March 2022)

Added auto image selectors to scrape images and put them in comparison table
Added image fallback to logo if image cannot be scraped
Added h1, title scraper to display in comparison table
Still in Beta because the table no longer sorts and prices do not update

3.84 BETA (21st March 2022)

Changed to use a single display type - panel upgraded
Changed display to include scraped images (needs basic selector created) and scraped h1 or title tag (no selector required)
Made display panel look a lot nicer
Fixed the Rimi bug - if ^{is found in the elements matched by the CSS selector, the price inside sup will be added following a decimal price to the previous found price e.g. 25 ⁹⁹ other stuff becomes 25.99}
Fixed the regex scrapers so you can now scrape prices from anywhere on the page, including inside JSON objects

3.83 (17th March 2022)

Added translation files

3.82 (17th March 2022)

Fixed regex scrapers so that they do not escape characters
Added localisation for front-end table display
Changed default display type to panel

3.81 (25th February 2022)

Added ^{support - many websites now use ^{html tags to contain pennies. This means the decimal place is missing. Price Comparison Pro now correctly converts this to pennies.}}

3.80 (23rd February 2022)

Added Rocket Scrape third party scraper option as per user request from @Marius
Added backtick CSS price concatenation operator - e.g. if a price you are scraping does not include any kind of decimal places, then you technically need two selectors. These are implemented with a backtick `. e.g. https://foundthru.com/scraping-prices-where-no-decimal-place-exists-in-the-html/

3.79 BETA (12th July 2021)

Updated HTML output to include pchiddenprice and pcprice - sorts by pchiddenprice (numeric, no currency symbols, holds cheapest of retail & sale price), displays pcprice
Fixed panel and div sorting to use pchiddenprice - fixes sorting broken in last beta
Added hidden sale price too - for when woo gets updated, it needs the retail and sale price in order to update woo

3.78 BETA (1st July 2021)

Refactored database price cache to include storage of retailprice and sale price in addition to price
Refactored front-end display to always use Javascript to produce the data in the panel (so there's a single codepath for bugfixes and improvements)
Added saleprice to price output if it's different to retail price and non-zero - retail price inside ~~and sale price inside~~

ins> * Added some basic CSS for strikethrough of ~~price and grey colour~~

3.77 BETA (1st July 2021)

Added detection for 50p, 50c etc to be identified as 0.50 rather than £50
Added prelimenary work for showing both SALE and REGULAR price with regular price inside ~~with strikethrough applied~~

3.76 (April 2021)

Minor CSS styling improvements

3.75 (21st April 2020)

Fixed bug with missing configs for scraped domains - now it will correctly revert back to the default config if you have not specified a config
Improved debug for product detail page in javascript console - https://www.wpintense.com/knowledgebase/how-to-debug-price-comparison-pro-scraper-issues-from-your-price-comparison-table/
Added some checks against the domain in settings page since this is a common source of support questions - basically prevent people inserting https:// when they shouldn't
Made a minor modification to the code that saves sale prices - had a report (https://www.wpintense.com/question/sale-price-and-regular-price-conflict/) that sale prices are not saving to the database

3.74 (30th September 2020)

Added new WPI Settings page where users can enter their license key to enable plugin updates

3.73 (30th June 2020)

Added new decimal separator config to websites so you can specify , or . as separators
Specifically fixed bol.com who use a with an image as a decimal separator. This should work for other websites that do this too.

3.72 (20th August 2019)

Fixed DB update bug causing errors on activation

3.71 (27th July 2019)

Fixed warning message that was appearing since last update due to new displaystyle added to autowoo

3.70 (25th July 2019)

Added 'displaystyle' option to shortcode pricecomparisonpro_woocommerce so now you can have whatever style in your WooCommerce automatic price comparison (floatleft, floatright, panel, fullwidth)
Removed warning message from initial empty setups if currency was not configured

3.69 (19th July 2019)

Changed default display to panel, except for automatic woocommerce summary which is defaulting to 'floatright'

3.68 (18th July 2019)

Fixed another bug related to , as thousands vs . as thousands separator
Removed broken code to set 'out of stock' - will replace it with text search for relevant text to confirm out of stock OR 404 from URL

3.67 (30th May 2019)

Fixed bug causing £3,000 to be treated as £30.00
Fixed Panel display not updating prices
Fixed price ordering so it automatically orders on page load and so that panel ordering works again now
Changed Last checked: text to use a span with class .lastchecked so you can override the text displayed using CSS

3.66 (6th May 2019)

Fixed admin debug and logging css when long URLs were present
Added 'latest price' table for internal use
Fixed outofstock bug where items were being incorrectly being marked out of stock even when prices from other in-stock merchants existed
Fixed bug for some themes causing javascript to not correctly update price and affiliate link directly on the page
Fixed bug with sorting results - out of stock items now correctly are placed at the bottom
Fixed bug where price was not being updated on the page through JavaScript. It now correctly updates prices and affiliate links directly through JavaScript rather than requiring a page-refresh

3.65 (23rd March 2019)

Changed price check to > 0 instead of != 0 to avoid broken or out of stock items being marked as price 0

3.64 (21st March 2019)

Hardened the admin page so that you do not need to enter a price selector if you're only scraping images

3.62 (22nd February 2019)

Fixed bug with search comparison form required productname (now you don't)

3.61 (7th February 2019)

Fixed spinner on dynamic search widget so that if no items found it gets correctly set to 0 instead of remaining as a spinner
Fixed price caching so on new page loads, it will avoid refetching prices from server (even if those were actually cached) according to cache age in settings - this speeds things up quite a bit
Fixed Out of stock messages so out of stock correctly displayed.
Added last-scraped-time - we have pricetime and scrapetime - this helps with times when a scrape occurs but a price is not actually found so pricetime could not be set properly
Moved caching from transients into custom database table - paving the way for price history to come
Fixed woocommerce update so it will mark items as out of stock - EVEN IF EXTERNAL/AFFILIATE IMAGE - this is now using a postmeta field
To support new out of stock feature, price html is filtered - if a product becomes out of stock, the price gets a strike-through and then out of stock gets added
Hardended code to prevent setting woocommerce prices to 0 when product is out of stock, correctly now sets parameter for out of stock (woocommerce doesn't allow stock control of affiliate products)
Fixed manual refresh so it also updates woocommerce if configured and if needed
DB structure for URLs altered slightly to support last price caching
URLs properly decoded now so cache hits happen in all cases where prices are cached

3.60 (4th January 2019)

Added brand new 'dynamic search form widget'. Now it's possible to add a search form to your pages and allow your users to search through your affiliates
Added scraperapi functionality to search widgets
Improved localisation options for search widgets
Improved price finder technology
Added some other new options to search comparison settings page to configure websites
Other additions related to 'search comparison widget' and 'dynamic search form'

3.53 (20th December 2018)

Fixed upgrade compatibility from really old version of Price Comparison Pro

3.52 (20th December 2018)

Fixed the 'search comparison' shortcode so it now correctly scrapes search results and displays them

3.50 (28th November 2018)

Major upgrade
New background scraper capabilities added
New debug and scraper fixing screens added
New logging screen added to make it easy to see what's working and what's not
New ability to bulk import product URLS from Datafeedr
Added gallery scraping compatibility with External Images plugin
Bulk website configuration capability added to help you get started
ScraperAPI capability added - you can now scrape using your own server, with a proxy, through WPI scraping service (with or without proxy), or with Scraper API

3.14 (23rd May 2018)

Added new 'panel' layout

3.13 (17th May 2018)

Fixed currency issue involving , and . and > 10000

3.12 (12th March 2018)

Further fix for 'header' warning

3.11 (11th March 2018)

Fixed 'header' warning (being output too early) when using shortcode
Fixed broken 'sale price' retrieval
Fixed duplicate URL problem where prices would sometimes appear twice in price panel
Improved performance of saving prices, only ever saves now when it really needs to

3.10 (10th February 2018)

Fixed broken skimlinksid

3.09 (18th December 2017)

Fixed bug related to empty prices setting WooCommerce price to zero

3.08 (30th November 2017)

Fixed bug that caused woocommerce price update to happen multiple times
Fixed bug that caused 'related products' to adopt price of updated WooCommerce price

3.07

Fixed bug that caused widget to multiply when the woocommerce shortcode was added multiple times
Fixed bug that caused a 'manual price refresh' to update all prices for that domain when there were multiple widgets on the page
Fixed shortcode to return HTML rather than echo it - this should improve display in many themes significantly
Added 3 styles to shortcode to allow user to display floatright, floatleft or fullwidth

3.06

Fixed bug for updating woocommerce prices that occurred on initial page load
Improved detection of currency locale to fix prices with commas and decimals

3.05

Prevent Price Comparison Pro widget showing when only the 1 URL to compare
Fix 'scrape type' saving bug per-website for price comparison pro widget
Allow attempts at scraping even if no domain set up for the website
Fixed cookies config
Fixed 3 decimal places bug

3.04

Added currency per website for search comparison
Added currency per website for price comparison
Fixed price search for search comparison to use pattern matching rather than CSS
Made admin screens fit inside 1280 screen width
Added help instructions to admin screen for search comparison
Removed debug from search comparison admin screen
Added scrape type to price comparison (was previously only on search comparison)
Removed generic currency symbol, position and scrape type (now per website)

3.03

Fixed occasional ajax error caused by large HTML pages that caused 502 gateway (headers too large) error
Fixed error caused by XMLPath returning elements in Document order rather than 'selector' precedence order