This plugin enables you to put Amazon product links, images and bespoke templates into your site’s Pages, Posts, Widgets and Templates.
Description
This plugin is used to quickly add Amazon products links to your WordPress posts and pages. The product links can be simple text links, thumbnail images, full-size images, complex templates or full-blown Amazon flash widgets.
The product links that can be for any of the Amazon domains (UK, US, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, India, Mexico, Australia and Japan).
The content of the product links can be statically entered by the Author (when the link is created), or dynamically refreshed when displayed using data from the Amazon site that is most appropriate for the nationality of the reader.
The product links to be displayed can be specified when the link is created, using the built in Amazon search widget, or dynamically generated by searching the content of the site.
All product links will contain the Amazon affiliate ID of the site author and will be the relevant one for that locale. This allows you to collect commission on any products purchased through the links.
Key features
- Search Tool to assist authors to create links in posts and pages
- Simple
[amazon]shortcode used to generate product links - Localisation of all links based on the nationality of the reader
- Amazon Product Details Cache to ensure pages load quickly
- Optional multinational popup to allow the reader to choose which Amazon site to visit
- Global options to update the behaviour of all the links on your site
- Ability to locally override the global options using the shortcode content
- Affiliate Tracking IDs for each WordPress user or by user specified ‘Channels’.
- Flexible template facility to enable the author to quickly create complex content quickly and consistently
- Includes built in templates for the major Amazon widgets (Carousel, My Favourites, etc.).
- Facility to extend and modify the functionality of the plugin using WordPress filters
Quick Start
To quickly add a simple text link add the following lines into an entry (page, post or text widget): [amazon asin=<ASIN Number>&text=<link text>]
Where ASIN Number is the unique amazon number used to identify products e.g. “1405235675”. The Link Text is simply what you want to be shown for the link, e.g. “Mr. Good”.
To utilise one of the templates simply specify the template option with the name of the template to use. For example: [amazon asin=<ASIN Number>&title=<link text>&thumb=<image url>&template=thumbnail].
To take full advantage of the plugin features it is recommended that you have an Amazon Web Services account, and enter the Access Key ID and Secret Access Key in the Amazon Link Settings page. Once your AWS account settings are entered the plugin can be configured to dynamically fill in the templates with live information from the appropriate Amazon site. Alternatively you can use the Amazon Search tool on the Page/Post edit screen to find Amazon products and let the plugin pre-fill the Amazon Link shortcode with all the details needed to create the appropriate template.
To generate a list of products relevant to the content of your site use the ‘cat’ option, to specify where the plugin should search for Amazon product links. This option can be either ‘local’ to search the current page content or a list of category ids to search specific sections of your site. For example I use this feature to provide friends and family some ideas for presents. This feature also needs access to the Amazon Web Service API and uses the ‘CartSimilarities’ feature to generate the list of items.
This is created by either putting the line amazon_recommends(<Category>,<Number of Posts>) in your template. Or putting the line [amazon cat=<Category>&last=<Number of Posts>] within a post or page. Where ‘Category’ is a list of category ids to search within (e.g. as expected by the ‘cat’ argument of query_posts function. The ‘last’ parameter is the number of posts to search through.
Development Version
- Bug Fix – The default ‘no image’ URL use https if site is using https
- Bug Fix – Remove any hard coded ‘http’ URLs (inc Templates)
- Bug Fix – Make links use ‘AWS’ parameters
Latest Version – 3.2.9
- Feature – Add support for Australia.
- Bug Fix – Fix localisation & localisation spoofing on Cloudflare.
- Bug Fix – Fix changing associate tags on Setup screen.
- Bug Fix – Fix Media Upload of Images
- Bug Fix – Fix ‘Images’ extra plugin failing to resize images
Installation
New Install
- Install either via WordPress Plugin Installer (Go to:
'Plugins' > 'Add New'admin page and Search Plugins using the term'amazon link'). Or by uploading the files to your server (in'/wp-content/plugins/') after downloading the amazon-link plugin from the Plugin Directory - Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
- Update the settings (at the very least enter the default Affiliate Tags)
- If you wish to use the advanced functionality: Wishlists, Search, Media Upload facilities or the live data option you must also set up an Amazon Web Services account. So that you can update the AWS Public and Private key settings.
- If you wish to use link localisation then you need to install the ip2nation database using the option in the Amazon Link Settings page.
- If you would like to take advantage of the Amazon Link Product caching then you will need to enable this on the Amazon Link Settings page.
- Insert links and wishlists into your content using the [amazon] tag as described above, or using the Amazon Link box on the Page/Post edit pages.
Upgrading
Generally upgrading should happen smoothly, however for major releases (e.g. 3.0 to 3.1) please read the Upgrade Guide.
To upgrade use the built in WordPress update option on the Plugins Admin page.
More Info
If you have any questions about the plugin, please check the Frequently Asked Questions section then either post a comment to this post or check the WordPress Forums.
Further information on the Plugin can be found on these pages:
Donate
Grateful for any contributions towards the development of the plugin.