This creates a very powerful backend for adding unique content to the site while maintaining a consistent look and feel throughout. I will be creating a post in the near future on how to integrate price tapesty with the wordpress blogging cms.

I have one site that I have recently launched that runs a tricked out version of price tapestry and wanted to compile a list of some of my favorite modifications. I also wanted to get some feedback on these modifications from other users and see what they think.

The list of price tapestry modifications I’ve used:

• Filter by Brand Name - I’ve used this modification on the category pages to filter the search results by brand name. An example can be seen at WhichisCheaper.com. Here is an example of the orignial category page for the MP3 Player category and here is the same category page with the brand name filter applied for MP3 Players by Creative Labs.
• Tagging System - This was an actual request by me and Dave generated the code and worked with me to make it happen exactly as I required. This thread provides the code and is a perfect example of the type of support you get with this excellent script.
• Comparison based on sku - I’m sure that there is some reason that, out of the box, the script compares by name. However, based on the experiences I’ve had, every merchant uses a different product name or at least a very similar variation. I have seen a couple of example where the fuzzy logic worked and it matched the products accordingly but changing the comparison to match by UPC or SKU or Model # seems to work much better.
• Product Feed Download Guide - This proved invaluable to me. I’ve used every piece of this guide to create the 3 tapestry sites that I run as of July 2007. The only change I made to fetch.sh was to split up the code into two seperate files. One that downloaded the files from the various merchants and the other that imported them into the site. I found this easier to deal with because each of my sites run multiple subdomains. I then set up a cron job that would run each script individually.

As for templating, I would start with a template from OSWD.ORG and then customize it myself or hire a graphic designer to do a header / logo. Of course, for SEO purposes and to avoid any possible price tapestry “footprints” I remove or recode certain elements of the original script design. For example, the products page is generated with <table> markup and I usually change this to css.

I am interested to hear any other modifications that people may have used, so if you have a price tapestry site, I’d like to hear your comments.