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Amazon Showcase Wordpress Plugin
Amazon Showcase is a Wordpress Plugin for showcasing items from Amazon. Simply enter the ASIN/ISBN numbers of any products and optionally enter an Associate ID for earning commissions. The product image will be displayed with a link to the product detail page on Amazon.com.
Download Latest Version
Amazon Showcase Wordpress Widget 2.0
Installation
- Unzip and place the ‘amazonshowcase’ directory in the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory on your webserver
- Activate the ‘Amazon Showcase’ plugin from within the ‘Plugins’ section of your Wordpress administration area
- You should now have access to the settings from ‘Settings > Amazon Showcase’
Upgrading
- Unzip and place the ‘amazonshowcase’ directory in the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory
- You should now have access to the settings from ‘Settings > Amazon Showcase’
Configuration
There are several attributes available in this plugin: Showcase Name, Associate ID, Locale and Item ASIN/ISBNs & Image Sizes.
- Showcase Name
Use this attribute for naming each showcase. - Associate ID
This is is an optional field that allows Amazon Associates to enter their Associate ID. When you supply an Associate ID, it is automatically inserted appropriately into the item’s link. This allows you to earn commissions when people click on the item and purchase it through Amazon. - Locale
The locale field allows you to select which of the international Amazon websites from which to pull items.
You have 6 options:- United States (amazon.com)
- United Kingdom (amazon.co.uk)
- Germany (amazon.de)
- Japan (amazon.co.jp)
- France (amazon.fr)
- Canada (amazon.ca)
- ASIN/ISBN
Use this attribute to define the Amazon product you would like to display in the showcase. This can be any item from the Amazon.com catalog. Simply locate the item’s ASIN or ISBN and enter it in one of these fields.
Examples:
ASIN: B000I1ZWRC
ISBN: 1582345236 - Image Size
Amazon usually provides five different product image sizes: swatch, small, tiny, medium and large. Select the image size that you would like to use within your showcase. - Template
Use the template field to define the HTML that is generated for each product. There are several pre-defined ‘tags’ that you can used as placeholders for product information. For example, any instance of the tag ‘[author]‘ in the template will be replaced by the product’s author name when outputted.
Available tags:- [title] - The title of the product
- [author] - The author(s) or creators of the product, if available
- [url] - The URL for the product’s detail page on Amazon.com
- [image] - The HTML for the product image (fully formed
tag)
- [image_url] - The URL of the specific image size you selected
- [image_width] - The width (in pixels) of the specific image size you selected
- [image_height] - The height (in pixels) of the specific image size you selected
Customization
I’ve tried to make the output of the Amazon Showcase plugin as clean and customizable as possible. Using CSS, you should be able to customize the look and feel of the item display.
This is the structure of the HTML that is produced:
<div class=”amzshcs” id=”amzshcs-[showcaseIdentifier]“>
<div class=”amzshcs-item” id=”amzshcs-item-[itemIdentifier]“><a><img /></a></div>
<div class=”amzshcs-item” id=”amzshcs-item-[itemIdentifier]“><a><img /></a></div>
<div class=”amzshcs-item” id=”amzshcs-item-[itemIdentifier]“><a><img /></a></div>
</div>
Comments
211 Responses to “Amazon Showcase Wordpress Plugin”
Leave a Reply
hi, thanks so much for this wonderful widget. finally something that is easier to figure out than the amazon media manager plug-in!
i have installed this widget to my wordpress blog. it works fine but i have a couple of customization questions.
- currently the icons are stacked on top of one another without any space in between to breathe. how can i add a bit of blank space in between?
- also there is a border around the icons. how can i get rid of it?
sorry, these might be really simple issues but i’m really unfamiliar with css so i apologize for asking them. please reply if you can…thanks!
katie
Katie,
To accomplish what you mentioned, you will need to add some CSS rules to your stylesheet. I think this should do the trick:
.amzshcs-item { margin-bottom: 5px; }
.amzshcs-item a img { border: 0px; }
(You may want to fiddle with the margin numbers a bit)
Dear Aaron.
I also love your plugin. Thanks for putting the time and effort into developing it.
Two things.
I would like to display two images per line. Can you help me figure it out? I don’t know anything about CSS, so I need to ask!
You should probably consider adding something to your plugin that will allow people to share their gains from Amazon with you. I am sure a lot of people would be willing to - especially if you have accounts with Amazon in other countries, then you could get the income from people who live in those countries.
Thanks again.
Andre,
You should be able to arrange the images side-by-side using this bit of CSS:
.amzshcs-item { float: left; width: 100px; }
You will need to tinker with the value of ‘width’ and also the width of your sidebar to get this to work, but other wise this should do the trick.
Thanks!
Hi!
This plug-in is great. I was wondering if there is a way to have it located on a wordpress page, not a sidebar. I would like to create sort of a “library” page/effect.
Thanks!!
Hello - First of, good job and thanks!
Is there a way to show the Amazon title under the picture?
Hi, I just installed this plugin today. Unfortunately, I am getting an intermittent error with it. Sometimes it loads and works fine, but sometimes it removes all of my other widgets and lists only an error message saying that it’s invalid.
At the moment it’s working so I am leaving it intact, but I thought I should let you know about this.
Thanks for sharing this, it’s very handy
Hi Aaron,
Is there a way to add Amazon Showcase to the sidebar without using the widget?
I have finally got all the sidebar CSS working & I don’t want to use the AS widget, as it removes all the existing sidebar content.
I am guessing that I could use ‘php if(function exists’ as it is used for ‘get_flickrrss’ ?? but I cannot find a code example.
What do you suggest?
Thanks,
Michael
The error kept recurring, so I had to uninstall it. It’s a good widget, though.
Thank you!
I’m running into a problem where the text of the box shows up but not the Amazon listing…any thoughts?
Michael,
As of right now there is not a way to use it outside of the widgets. However, you should be able to move all of your static content outside of the widget condition statement and have both show up. Contact me if you need some help doing this.
Priscilla,
I’m sorry you were unable to make the widget work. It sounds like it may have been a problem with the data being returned by Amazon. Was there a specific error message?
Jim,
What is the URL of the website where you have the widget installed? Is there a specific error message?
No specific error. I just don’t see what I’ve posted.
Thanks for your reply.
Jim, send me a message using my contact form and I will work with you via email to get things working correctly.
Aaron,
I’m having the same problem as Jim, the title shows up, but not the Amazon list. Also, I am having a problem with the config button. It will only pop up the book entry some of the time. It just does not respond. Any ideas? Thanks!
John,
Make sure there are no spaces in the ISBNs that you have inputted.
Aaron,
Very nice widget. Installed easily, configured easily, well written documentation. Very well done.
Phil,
Thanks for the kind words. Glad you like it!
I have the Amazon Showcase widget installed and placed on the sidebar. I do not see any way to bring up the configuration page for it. It is not listed under the Options tab. Where do I find the configuration page?
thanks
Craig
Excellent widget!!
Just a couple of customisation questions:
Like the users above, I would like to try and have a gallery affect in my side bar, so I’ve made all the images the same size and done rules you have suggested above. The only thing is, now my other widgets keep over lapping into where I have the images!
I know this is a css issue, but I’m a bit of a novice at this and was wondering how I could “prioritise” what order my widgets were seen in.
Craig,
You can configure this along with your other widgets under ‘Presentation > Widgets’
Aaron
Cat,
Try adding this rule to your stylesheet:
#amzshcs { clear: both; }
This should prevent your other widgets from floating next to the Amazon Showcase widget.
Would be nice to have the widget show the name of the book next to it, similar to what amazon has(except theirs only shows 3 at a time)
Hooman,
I will be releasing a new version of the widget in the next week or two that will allow you to do this. Stay tuned!
I dont know if this is a feature but it would be good to allow maybe 50 items to be inserted into the db and then have them rotated with only one displayed at a time per page… so they do not stay the same as you read different pages.
I want to add more books than ten. How do I do this?
Kelly,
Right now the widget is limited to 10 books. This was a result of having to make 10 separate requests to the Amazon AWS api. Any more calls would make the page load much more slowly.
I will try to think of some ways to allow more than 10 items.
Is there a way to use it NOT as a widget and just paste the code into my sidebar???
Thanks a lot.
Some Widgets allow you to have multiple copies of the widget (such as Category Posts, RSS, Text, etc). It would be great if Amazon Showcase would also do this. Then we could have multiple lists, such as “Currently Reading”, “All Time Favorites”, “Recommended DVDs”, etc.
Is there currently any way to have multiple instances of Amazon Showcase in the sidebar?
Carl et al.,
I’ve just released version 1.3 which adds the ability to create up to 10 instances of the Amazon Showcase widget.
Enjoy!
Have you been able to figure out if I would be able to add more than 10 books?
kelly
Hi Aaron. Thanks for you great contribution. I’m eager to integrate your great widget, but no configuration option appears under ‘Presentation/Widgets’. All I see on this admin page is the option to drop your widget into my sidebar, and then specify how many Amazon widgets I’d like to include. I’m using the Mimbo theme. Might that be causing an issue? Any thoughts on where I should start digging to solve this? Thanks so much.
For you folks not finding the configuration button, I wasnt seeing it either, its not that intuitive. Its actually a wordpress thing, when you drag the widget to your sidebar you will see a little icon on it at the drag page. Most of your widgets will have it, just mouse over the right side of it after you drop it and youll realize what the deal is.
Hi! Thanks for the wonderful widget.
I have some questions though -
Is there any way I can customize the size of the images? The “small” is too small for me and the “large” is too big. I’d like something in between. Is there a code I can put in for that?
Also, I’d like to center my title under each image. Is there a way for me to do that in my css.
Thanks so much!
Thank you so much for this wonderful widget! It’s so much better and more customizable than the ones amazon provides you with. Thank you again!
Thanks so much. This is a great widget, my favorite of all the Amazon related plugins/widgets I have tried; it is so easy to customize and integrate into my existing site.
The only thing that would make it more ideal for my situation would be the option to limit how many of the items are shown at a time and the option to shuffle/randomize the order items are shown. For example, 10 items listed in the options, but only three items randomly displayed in sidebar, so each visit to the page shows a slightly different list/order. Any chance a feature like this might be implemented in the future?
Melanie… noted!
Hey Aaron,
thanks for the great widget. I was able to add one instance of some CD’s I’m listening to. However, when I went to add another instance, I changed the settings to show some books I’m reading. Programmed the isbn numbers for them and it just shows the same instance for the CD’s. Any idea what the issue is? Thanks
Alan
Has this been tested in Wordpress 2.5 yet?
Michael,
No, not yet. Though you are welcome to test it and let me know the results!
Thanks,
Aaron
I’ve got this installed at cornucopiapress.com, and I’m getting this error:
WARNING IsterXmlExpatNonValid->parse(): expat: Invalid document end [0/1/1]
Any ideas? It’s a brand new site, and I’m running Drikatruu Jelly template. Any help you can offer would be most appreciated.
Interesting new info. It fixed itself automagically, for a minute. There were still formatting problems, but I definitely saw a book cover. Then, next time I checked, it was gone, and the error was back.
Ok, I don’t mean to be a pest… But this is a beautiful widget, so I’d really like to make it work. I just want to add that I switched to your theme, PressRow, and widgetized it, and it is giving the same error, intermittently.
Angela,
It sounds like it may either be a problem with your hosting provider (and its support for certain PHP features), or a problem with one of the products you are trying to display. What product numbers are you using (ASIN, ISBN, etc)?
Aaron,
Very cool widget - thx!
I would like to see an option instead of listing them all vertically to rotate between the ones in the list - based on either page refresh or time limit.
Hi AARON:
Love the widget. But it looks like my associates ID is not transferring to the link. Normally it inserts my actual ID, and with the widget it has no ID bit a subscription number. Ideas?
Hi, Aaron. It doesn’t look to me like it would be the particular ASIN. What php features do you think could be causing the problem?
I’ve got this installed on my wife’s blog and I intermittently get the following error:
Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /home/content/w/a/t/watson349/html/cookie/wp-content/plugins/AmazonShowcase.php on line 40
I am on GoDaddy hosting, using WordPress 2.3.
Could you please email me and let me know what you think is going on?
Just further clarification - it is no particular ASIN, I’ve tried plenty and it seems to happen no matter what product I choose.
Trying out the 1.3 version of the widget on wordpress 2.5. It’s hosted on awardspace (php 4.4.1 and mysql 4.0.24) thus meeting the requirements of wordpress but I’m not sure it’s meeting your requirements Aaron.
I’m getting errors when activating it and then switching to the view panel. Only remedy is to deactivate it. Haven’t found any error log so far so can’t help you out there.
I’d like to add that WP2.5 doesn’t seem to have a plugins/widgets/ folder, so I place your widget in plugins/
Any further input on this would be welcomed. Will reply if I find anything interesting myself.
Me again. When installing the 1.2 version I get the same kind of problems.
As a sidenote: 1.2 gets listed as 1.3 in the plugins panel ..
Next test: running WP2.3 on a local XAMPP (PHP5.2+mysql5.0.27).
No more problems as with the previous setup (on awardspace). In the administration panels I can activate the plugin and set it up in the sidebar. I can also add multiple AS widgets if so desired.
Thing I noticed though: I can’t launch the setup of the widget (where you add the ISBN numbers etc) when I’m in IE6. Switching to Firefox2 this problem disappears.
Next in the testsuite: upgrading to WP2.5 on this xampp. If the widget still works then I’ll blame awardspace (or the php version they’re using ..)
I hope this helps you a bit
My mistake .. I was running 2.3 (dutch version) on awardspace too. So it’s already clear it has to do with the host. Will try 2.5 on both awardspace and local now ..
WP2.5 running on xampp now. Everything seems to work fine. Only the IE6 browser keeps refusing to open the setup window for the widget.
The problem persists on awardspace though. When I activate the plugin (no problem there) and then go to the widget panel, I end up at http://www.awardspace.com/some_random_advertising_page.htm
So far so not so good :-/ Not a huge problem though. It’s only a free hosting package so I’ll start looking for a replacement. Would be welcomed if you had some feedback as to what the cause might be (php incompatible version or whatever).
Hi. You don’t need me to tell you this is a swell widget. But I do have one issue that perhaps some others are having as well. I host my blog through Dreamhost, and am using the new WordPress 2.5. When you go to the Design/Widgets sections to add the new version of Amazon Showcase, when I click on the “edit” button, it brings up the interface, but only the right hand side of the box, and you cannot scroll to the left. This probably has something to do with the colum on the Wordpress sheet for looking at your widgets. If I click on this box, it will open up to it’s fill size, but as soon as you try to write anything on it, it changes back to the smaller size. I would be happy to send you a screen print–I have tried this in both the IE6 and Maxthon web browsers. Thanks for all yoiur hard work, and if you have any tips, I woudl appreciate it, becase everyone loves this widget. BP
I’d REALLY love to use this widget, but i’m having some problems too. Sometimes the image is there and sometimes I get this error:
WARNING isterxmlexpatnonvalid->parse(): expat: no element found [-1/0/1]
i tried changing messing around a little with php settings (enabled cURL, etc) but nothing changed. It doesn’t seem to matter which products I install either. They always work at first…then the error inevitable comes. I need to this to be reliable, so hopefully there’s a fix. Thanks!
Hey folks, it seems like a lot of people are having similar issues with the plugin with WP 2.5. I don’t have a lot of spare time this week to work on it, but I will try to have a look at it this weekend. Hang tight and I will get everything sorted out!
For the author and anyone else here who uses Dreamhost–instead of using the Wordpress 2.5 to update the widget, I manually FTP-ed it to my blog and now everything is hunky dory. Thanks for the awesoem widget.
Hey man. Cool widget. I have it on my blog now.
Well, I just ran the 2.5 upgrade. Appears to me that the Amazon widget works, but not on the index page. Bombs out there. But if I go to archives it works fine. Very strange, but unfortunate for me. I loved this plugin…
Michael,
Do you receive any errors?
Just saw your post on 08.04.02 about looking in to 2.5 issues. If you need a hand, feel free to email me, and I’ll spare you some time to help on the development if needed.
Negative on errors. Page just loads everything up until that point, then stops.
Wild, I just deactivated the plugin and reactivated it, and now it seems to be working. Might just be a little wonky ghost in the machine with 2.5.
Looks spotty. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. Had someone try it on their machine, didn’t come up. I tried it on another, worked in FF, didn’t in IE. Appears to be no pattern besides sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
Great plugin! I had trouble at first since I entered the ISBN directly from the bar code on the book. I found out that this was an ISBN-13 number and the widget requires the ISBN-10 number. So, I navigated to my book on amazon and looked up the ISBN-10 there. Worked like a charm!
FYI I had trouble finding the configuration too. After much gnashing of teeth and slappings of foreheads, I realized that the ‘edit’ link scrolled off the right because my font was too big (and the widget name is too long). I had to reduce my font size to find it.
Thanks for the great widget!
Hi!
I really like this plugin!
My blog has two sidebars. When I go to Design–>Widgets to add it, it will only show in Sidebar 1, and naturally, I need it to go in Sidebar 2. I’m not sure what code to change/add to accomplish this. I looked above, but I didn’t notice a solution. Is there a way I can do this?
Thanks a bunch!
[...] if you are looking for a ‘widget’ to add to your blog, go HERE! If you are still wondering what a widget is…visit [...]
I would like to have the text (title and author) left aligned along the picture. Any suggestions?
I’ve been using this plugin off and on for several months. Most of the time it’s great. I’d like to make a request, though:
It would be better to retrieve the data from Amazon only when settings are changed, and store the results locally.
I noticed my blog was performing very slowly today (as in it would sometimes take 4-7 seconds just to generate the HTML), and thought at first that it was a side effect of upgrading to PHP 5.2.6. Once I installed XDebug and took a look at the profiling results, I found that Amazon Showcase was taking up at least half of the execution time, and most of that was in curl.
Since disabling Amazon Showcase, page generation times have returned to the normal .5s to 1.5s range. I can only assume something is bogging down our route to Amazon at the moment.
It seems wasteful to contact Amazon on every page load to retrieve data that only changes occasionally. And if the connection to Amazon is slow for any reason, that causes delays in the page even appearing — far worse than placeholder images taking a while to load.
@Kelson: You may want to look into using the WP Super Cache plugin. It might help with that issue.
[...] Amazon Showcase Wordpress Widget (version 1.3) WordPress Extend [...]
Hi Aaron… I love this widget. I can’t seem to get my other sidebar items to stop overlapping it. I tried using:
#amzshcs { clear: both; }
But, it doesn’t seem to work. Is there any other advice you have? It works fine when I have one book cover per line, the issue arises when I put two per line using:
.amzshcs-item { float: left; width: 100px; }
Thanks for any help you can provide.
Great widget! But I just noticed today that FireFox 2 and Netscape 9 are not showing working links. Safari 3 on Windows and IE 7 *are* showing links. At first I thought it might be a FF plugin conflict, as I have a few, but I have no browser plugins in Netscape.
Here’s a link from the source code on the generated page:
Chester E. Finn Jr.
The link is identical in IE and FF.
The link works when I simply create it in a blank HTML page, so it must be a conflict within the blog itself. I have 15 WP plugins, but it’s not obvious to me why any of these would have an impact on the Amazon Showcase hyperlinks. All other page links work.
Ideas?
oh, never mind, it was an odd effect of my CSS. Some browsers interpreted the markup in an unexpected way; all resolved, thanks!
It’d be nice if there was a way to change the ASIN or ISBN-10 outside the widgets page. So that users with fewer privileges… editors in particular could change them.
Aaron, after seemingly endless Amazon plugins it’s great to find one that actually works, has some flexibility in terms of layout, and a creator who responds. Thank you - very nice work.
A suggestion for the next version - the Goldilocks option - i.e. the middle sized image. You know the story - three choices so we could find the one that was ‘just right’.
Keep up the good work Aaron.
Thanks for the great plugin!
Is there a way to center the pictures in the sidebar? I can’t seem to get them to move away from the left side of sidebar. It seems as if they should float: center float: right?
Hi
It started to work bit the hstop with the following error:
%BEG_OF_TITLE%Currently Reading%END_OF_TITLE%
WARNING IsterXmlExpatNonValid->parse(): expat: no element found [-1/0/1]
Fatal error: Call to a member function children() on a non-object in /home/rogertat/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/AmazonShowcase.php on line 40
This is just the kind of thing I am looking for!
Except . . .
Is it possible to use it without using widgets?
I see a few other comments here about a fatal error issue. The plugin worked fine for a while but I now get a fatal error as well. I am using Wordpress 2.5 and being hosted by godaddy.
I have deactivated Amazon Showcase for now but I hope you come up with a fix because I really like the plugin.
Thanks for your great work.
Andrew
I’d really like to use this plugin, however it won’t work on my site.
I’ve uploaded it and the AmazonShowcase_Assets folder to the plugins folder on the server, and I’ve activated the plugin. However, when I go to Manage -> Widgets the page is broken, the WP header loads, but no content. As soon as I deactivate the plugin all is well.
I’m running WP 2.5.1, any ideas?
Following on from my last post, I’ve got an error:
%BEG_OF_TITLE%%END_OF_TITLE%
[begin]
Warning: implode(): Bad arguments. in /www/hosts/purestblue.com/www/wp-content/plugins/AmazonShowcase.php on line 36
WARNING isterxmlexpatnonvalid->parse(): expat: no element found [-1/0/1]
Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /www/hosts/purestblue.com/www/wp-content/plugins/AmazonShowcase.php on line 40
[end]
Does this lead to any clues?
Great Plugin!
It appears the default when clicking a link to Amazon, is to open Amazon in the current browser window. Is it possible to change the link to open Amazon in a new window or tab?
Thanks,
Got the same error but aaron may be on a holiday…
Maybe he is. I’ll stick a note in my diary to check back in a week!
Does anyone have any idea how make the author/title info appear along side the image? I have been messing with the style sheet and the widget code for days now and am getting nowhere.
I’m trying to get the author/title info to appear to the right of the image and wrap to the bottom of the image.
Thanks
Hi great plugin, works with my blog in WP2.5.1 . Just wondering how I can display a bit more about each book than just the thumbnail. Can you tell me the order of the code please, if I want to show title and author. I just don’t follow how to use the available tags correctly.
Aaron, fantastic widget. Thank you so much for it!
I wanted to also echo Melanie’s suggest from back in March about randomizing the items. In my book, that would make this widget by far the best one out there.
Thanks again though, even without the randomizing, I love this widget.
[...] also have added a Amazon Showcase plugin by Aaron Forgue. I like the fact that you can choose the books you want on your blog. [...]
So great. Thank you so much for making this widget available. So clean and manageable. I am not a code guy, and am always looking for the easy aesthetic app. You have done a great thing here. Thanks.
st. xris
With 2.6 I was able to get the widgets working in a theme with two sidebars.
Now I need the same kind of help as adam posted above. I just want the title and author to display beside the image. I just don’t have the html or css skills to do it.
How do I access the setting form?
This is a great plug in
Same issue. I just upgraded to 2.6 and now cannot find the control for using Amazon showcase. I had previously used it and it was there until the upgrade. Now nada.
Duh, never mind. Found it under Widgets, sidebar 2. I’ll try to pay more attention next time.
Good job. Worthy of a donation. Where is your PayPal donate button?
I like this plugin also - have used it in my 2.5.1 blog for a while now.
However, today I’m seeing occasional failures at line 46; it looks like sometimes Amazon isn’t responding fast enough, and in those cases its failing to get an object back but trying to reference the info as an object.
Thought you’d want to know.
Thanks and have fun! - Bob
Has this plugin been upgraded to WP 2.6?
It looks really good!
cheer
Mary
Great plug-in but I had to disable it because it seriously dragged down my page load times. My main page which normally takes less than 10 seconds to load, took 30-40 seconds with this active. I suspect it’s not an issue with the actual plug-in itself but with very slow response times from Amazon like Bob Hays observed above. It’s too bad because I really liked this plug-in.
Great plug-in but Amazon seems to be a problem.
hi, love your plugin. thought i would made a couple of suggestions for the next versions.
1. all the amazon graphic to be left, centered, or right justified.
2. allow for a selection of rotation of the ads.
a. fixed order
b. random rotation
c. sequential rotation
thanks again for doing a great job.
Ray
[...] Bonus: Amazon Showcase [...]
[...] I’m going to try to get the Amazon Showcase Widget figured out. It looks like it would be an asset to any blog but there is still a lot of error [...]
I found out that some of the reported Bugs are the result of failing DNS queries. It woult be nice to add an Error-Message in such a case.
Make shure that your wordpress server can resolve dns queries!!!
greetings
Sebastian Kollmann
Hi it sounds like you are working out a few bugs and I was wondering if these bugs are fixed will it work on WP newest version 2.6.3 - please say yes.
Hi,
image is not loading on my site anymore.
Best rgards, Thilo
Hi,
Thanks for the widget, I would like the picture of the item to center align in the widget itself
Thanks
To center the images, you can use text-align. Here’s what I am using on my site, this puts some space between the items and centers them:
.amzshcs-item {
margin-top: 20px;
text-align: center;
}
Hi, lovely and practical widget. Why do I get a purple frame around the picture. Is there an option to eliminate it? Thanks, Uwe.
How would i display the items side by side instead of under each other?
I achieved what i was looking to do by removing the div tags for the products i wanted on the first row. I want 2 rows of 3 images, is there a better way of doing this? Also i have one ASIN that has a extra character, its not a mistake either as it works on amazon, its B001AWBYNE, is there anything i can do about this?
Good plugin, but why limit the number of items for each instance to 10?
[...] Amazon Showcase: 1.3 - Appears to experience random, intermittent failure. [...]
Has anyone encountered any problems after upgrading to WordPress 2.7?
I am looking at upgrading from 2.6.5 but wanted to see if anyone has already done this and run into any problems.
The blog owner I am helping would be really upset if this upgrade broke the widget as they really like it.
Thanks
[...] there are the widgets. I added the Amazon Showcase widget a couple of days ago. I like being able to show things I like without having to create a new [...]
I added this plugin to my blog and ran into a problem. It looks like a bug when you add more than one widget into the sidebar. When I activate the Subscribe to Comment plugin, it breaks the dashboard.
With just one Amazon widget, it works fine. With 2 or more, his is what is supposed to be there:
http://www.brincefield.net/blog/widgeterror2.jpg
But this is what I get:
http://www.brincefield.net/blog/widgeterror1.jpg
The rest of the sidebar and the footer area disappears. The source ends in the middle of a list.
Thanks for the widget. I’ve been playing around with it and I love what you’ve created. Thanks!
[...] Amazon Showcase Wordpress Widget [...]
[...] Amazon Showcase Wordpress Widget [...]
Great plugin. Thanks! I’ve upgraded to WP2.7 and installed this plugin. I can’t locate how to set the number of instances. Please advise.
I am afraid I found another problem. If you have more than one instance of the Showcase widget enabled, even if only one is in use, it can mess up your admin page. If I try to show just the unused widgets, the page is blank right after the dropdown. If there is only one widget enabled at the bottom, the widget page loads okay.
I have the same problem other users have noted where display of the Amazon issues ceases and the blog fails to display properly. In the case of the 2.7 theme I am using the entire Sidebar 2 display is affected. This is intermittent. What I do is simply deactivate the plug in and activate it later making me believe the problem is related to Amazon sending or not send data in response to a query from the plugin that the plug in recognizes.
Both of my blogs are currently showing the problem as I write this. This has happened across multiple themes and versions of WordPress. Here is the error message I see on the blog:
WARNING IsterXmlExpatNonValid->parse(): expat: Invalid document end [0/1/1]
Fatal error: Call to a member function children() on a non-object in /data/5/0/138/118/301933/user/306961/htdocs/dougweb/doug/wp-content/plugins/amazon-showcase-wordpress-widget/AmazonShowcase.php on line 46
Terrific plug in. Hope this error message helps.
[...] Amazon Showcase [...]
Ok folks, here is the deal. I am not going to support the 1.3 version of Showcase anymore. It is out-dated and doesn’t work well at all with the new versions of WP.
HOWEVER, I am deep in development of a brand-new, completely rewritten version that will incorporate almost every feature that has been suggested thus far. I hope to have it finished within the next 2 months, so if you can hang tight, I promise I will provide you with a kick-ass plugin.
If you have feature requests, make them now!
[...] Amazon Showcase [...]
Thanks for this plugin!
Seems to be working fine for me with WP 2.7 but I’m not asking the plugin to do much, just display one book.
Sounds great. Any estimate on completion time?
[...] the Amazon Showcase widget, there was a bug if more than one widget was placed in a sidebar. The author has stopped supporting it, but he is working on a re-written version that will have new features. I am keeping an eye there [...]
1. Unzip and place ‘AmazonShowcase.php’ and the ‘AmazonShowcase_Assets’ directory in the ‘/wp-content/plugins/widgets/’ directory on your web server
I’m not aware of a “/widgets” subdirectory in the standard WordPress install. Should I create one?
Great widget!
I have a quick question i got this
.amzshcs-item { float: left; width: 100px; }
css code to place the books beside each other but where in the stylesheet do i place the code?
I’m probably just an idiot, but since the latest WP update (and its completely-revamped interface), I can’t find where I actually add items to the Amazon Showcase. I can find where to activate/deactivate/edit the plugin, but I can’t find where to add new books.
Can anyone help a dimwitted comrade out?
Thanks!
Hello.. question.. is it possible to get the amazon showcase not as a widget, but in page?? I mean, in the post,not oly in the sidebar???
@Fabian The current version does not allow for this. The next version (2.0) that I am working on now will allow you to place a showcase anywhere in your site. Hang tight!
[...] Einfach ASIN/ISBN und die IP eingeben und schon wird das Buch/wasauchimmer von Amazon gezeigt. Wer sich ein wenig besser auskennt in den bites&bytes eines Codes hat mehr Möglichkeiten der Gestaltung mit dem Plugin. » Support. [...]
I’d also love the ability to rate each book with 1-5 stars.
And, while I am at it, the ability to sort the entries by author, title, or date entered.
I was wondering if there might be a way to have the entries in the item list of the Showcase widget randomize, one at a time, rather than display in a long stacked list?
A lot of our pages are fairly short, and so the stacked list of books in the sidebar gives the page an unbalanced look.
Looking forward to the new version!
I’d love to see the option to display items randomly, as well as managing items through an options page (i.e. Top Level Menu > Amazon Showcase > Manage Items) instead of through the Widgets interface (Appearance > Widgets… choose Sidebar, edit Widget…)
Thank you!
I really like this plug in and am looking forward to 2.0. Are you by any chance also thinking about an option to link to DVDs using the ASIN or something?
[...] Amazon Showcase Wordpress Widget von Aaron Forgue zeigt in der Sidebar Produk-Abbildungen von Amazon Artikeln an. Die Abbildungen [...]
[...] Amazon Geld verdienen. Das Amazon Showcase Wordpress Widget von Aaron Forgue zeigt in der Sidebar Produkt-Bilder von Amazon Produkten an. Die Abbildungen [...]
I can’t wait for the next version… it’ll be so much better when I can make a grid or multiple rows, and ESPECIALLY on a single page instead of a widget. Keep it up!
Hi Aaron. I have the Amazon Showcase widget in my WP plugin list, and in my sidebar. However, I can’t find where I can enter the product number, my aff. id, etc. Where is this?! Thanks!
Does anyone know how to get the text wrapped next to the images? I’m not sure how to do it in the CSS file!
[...] Amazon Showcase Wordpress Widget von Aaron Forgue erleichtert es, Amazon Anzeigen in ein WordPress Blog einzubinden. Das Plugin [...]
I’m testing out v. 2.0 on my blog & have noticed odd display issues. The plugin will display every CD on my list, but of the 10 books I’m trying to display it will only display images for three items.
I wonder if there’s any way to add the image URL into the template code in order to try to override the default which can’t find the items image file.
These books displayed the images fine when I used them via the WP Links feature.
Or is there some glitch in the beta version as far as displaying book images?
Fantastic Plugin: Looking forward to the next version..
yes .. my vote for randomizing as well …
That way viewer won’t get bored looking at the same products all the time …
Thanks in advance ..
[...] added Amazon Showcase to share info on the books that I am currently reading and have recently [...]
Hi,
I just downloaded your plugin and activated it on my plugins page, but how do I configure it and get it to display? Do I have to type everything into the HTML code? After that, how do I get it to display?
Thanks,
James
Sorry, don’t like the new version…can’t configure on the widget page.
@ James: Go to optionssidebar and look waaaaay down ;-), in my blog it is the last Item.
@Aaron: I cant find this beautiful plugin on the pluginpage.
Hi,
great Plugin but there’s a problem with the displayed images. When I chosse a audio cd always the second image is shown in the widget.
An example:
I choose this item:
http://www.amazon.de/Good-News-Bad-Day-Sasha/dp/B001Q2RXFG/
It should be displayed this image:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51moTwGXaDL._SL160_.jpg
But it is shown this one:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41EOntgm6JL._SL160_.jpg
It seems there’s a problem by parsing the XML-file?! That’s a bug, isn’t it?!
Having the same issues as Micha — plugin is displaying the last image for the item, not the first. This is a serious bug.
Joe,
I’m not sure how long ago you downloaded the new version of the plugin, but you might try downloading again. After Micha found the bug, I pushed up some changes to fix it. You might just have the out of date codebase.
Greetings, fantastic plugin! Thank you for your time and effort on a great addition to Word Press.
Although I’m following it pretty well, I’m pretty new at this and have 2 questions I hope you can help me with.
1. I noticed that you have inserted the capability of putting in your own output html so that there is a bit more flexibility in the layout. Can you post an example of how you make the products display side by side or in a two column layout?
2. Is there any way to make display a showcase in a text widget? This would be very handy so that you can easily drag and drop the order you want your showcases in rather than having to plug in the php code in the side bar or template.
Thank you for any assistance you can offer.
Hi,
I’ve been using your plugin for since I started my blog over six months ago. I love it! I’m an author and it’s the best way I’ve found to display my book with a link to Amazon in the sidebar of the blog. The only problem is that today it disappeared and even deleting it and reloading it doesn’t seem to work. I miss it terribly. Is there something I’m doing wrong?
Hi
New to WP. This plugin looks fantastic but after installing manually OR via WP I cannot even see the plugin when I load dashboard. I have uninstalled, installed and done everything I can think of to no avail.
I am obviously doing something dumb but would love to know how to make it show up!
Thanks
Drew
Drew… have you tried looking under “Settings > Amazon Showcase”? Are you at all able to activate the plugin?
Hi Aaron
Sorry, missed that. Didn’t think of looking in the settings menu but found it and placed the widget and “New Showcase” now appears in the sidebar. I have added a couple of ISBNs but there’s still nothing below “New Showcase”. Should the books just show up or do I have to paste the code (one of the two you provide) somewhere? I was hoping to avoid doing that!
Thanks
Drew
My only complaint is that if I name the showcase anything but “New Showcase” it doesn’t show up. Completely disappears from widgets list.
Hi,
Thanks for sharing this plugin.
Will it be ok to modify the code for my own use?
Cheers.
Sonny, absolutely!
Hi,
Amazon Showcase has just stopped working and now it won’t even upload. I’m running Wordpress 2.7 and this is a recent problem. Whether I upload the plugin via ftp or using the Wordpress plugin uploader it does not show up in the list of available plugins and isn’t accessible on the widget page. I really need to get this sorted as the main purpose of the blog is to sell the book. The Amazon Showcase plugin was the best plugin I had found but if I can’t get this problem sported I’ll have to find some kind of alternative.
Please help.
Abigail
Aaron thank you! That was the one place I hadn’t looked (feeling really silly now). Now if I can just get Wordpress to give me back the Save button I’ll be fine! Thanks again.
Sorry about this. The save button came back on wordpress and I created a showcase for my book but I can’t seem to get it to show up. Help again please and sorry for being such a pain!
In case anyone else needs to do this.. I wanted to show different showcases for different categories. I was thinking of modifying the plugin to do that.
But then I found the Widget Logic plugin (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/widget-logic/). Putting these two together, and by using in_category(’blah’) logic, you can easily show different showcases depending on the category.
[...] Amazon ShowCase (I customized the plugin’s PHP code.) [...]
Just wanted to thank you for your time creatin this plug-in. I use it on a couple of my blogs (can’t get it to work with some themes?!) and it’s great.
Are you planning any upgrades for advanced features?
@Nintendo What kind of advance features are you looking for?
Great plugin! Is there any way of retrieving summary information from Amazon?
Thanks!
[...] you have the plugins that do everything I want and can be installed from the web. Playing around with those and finding exactly what I [...]
Hi,
This is a great plugin! Just one question: if I input my Associate ID, can I earn money from this link? Is it like links which I got from Amazon Associate Affiliate Links?
Thank you very much!
Tomas
Not a code writer. Is there a simple way to wrap text around images in showcase? If not, do you have a “step by step,” that’s easy for laymen to understand? thanks.
hi. Thank you for really good plug-in.
Unfortunately, It is not working with Amazon.co.jp.
I don’t know why it is not visible. When I put ISBN-10 of Japanese Comics, Thumbnails are not visible.
Except that, it is really good! Thank you!
i installed this, and configured it to show an product and added the widget to my sidebar, but it is not displaying the image of the product and the link, only the title. Why isn’t it working?
Aaron,
Outstanding job — thanks for the great plugin!
Like the widget - thanks for your work. I have this same question - my images are all crowded over to the left side and it really doesn’t look very good. Have tried pasting this in a number of places on my css stylesheet, but no luck. (Pretty new to css as well, so thx for the help!)
Great widget!
I have a quick question i got this
.amzshcs-item { float: left; width: 100px; }
css code to place the books beside each other but where in the stylesheet do i place the code?
Great plugin! Do you plan on adding support for 13-digit ISBNs?
Thanks!
Only if Amazon adds support for them in their API!
Aaron:
Love the plugin, although I’m having a bit of a problem. I’m not a coder, and I know someone asked this question earlier, but does the current version of Amazon Showcase enable you to showcase something from Amazon on an individual post? I think you said it would be in version 2.0. It looks like you can, but it’s not clear to me how to actually do it.
Thanks for your help in advance.
Bradley, open the settings for the showcase in question and copy the code from there into your post.
Great plugin! Is there any way of retrieving summary information from Amazon?
Thanks!
I am working with you pluggin, it is great. However, I think I killed it.
Is there any way to save the showcases. I think I am going to have to reinstall wordpress.
I get the following error everytime. I try to add a showcase in the settings section.
Webpage error details
User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; Media Center PC 4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
Timestamp: Sun, 24 May 2009 21:26:17 UTC
Message: Automation server can’t create object
Line: 144
Char: 7
Code: 0
URI: http://sallystrovetoday.com/WPress/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=amazonshowcase.php
However, I think it might be something in the wordpress code or theme code, that is messed up. Because I get this error on the dashboard.
Webpage error details
User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; Media Center PC 4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
Timestamp: Sun, 24 May 2009 21:27:50 UTC
Message: Automation server can’t create object
Line: 18
Char: 21
Code: 0
URI: http://sallystrovetoday.com/WPress/wp-admin/js/dashboard.js?ver=20081210
Thanks,for any help you can give me.
Grae
[...] με τα βιβλία δεξιά, κάτω από τα tags. Πρόκειται για ένα plugin του Wordpress με λίγο δικό μου κώδικα για να [...]
[...] Amazon Showcase Wordpress Plugin [...]
i would love to have this as part of my website but cant seem to figure out how to put it on- i downloaded it on to my computer and it is in my documents… now what?
step by step if you have the time!!! thanks!
Hi
I’m loving your showcase widget, but I’d like to be able to show different showcases depending on the tag’s which have been filtered … (ie flying, technology, cooking, etc)
Any thoughts?
great plug in, but for some reason its not working with the new 2.8 version of wp
any ideas
nevermind got it working again
Great widget …. have just updated to WP 2.8 however and the app was disabled due to an invalid header
Any ideas on how to fix?
Broken in Wordpress 2.8
Fails to activate.
I love this plugin, but after the wordpress update 2.8 i can’t use it anymore, because of an “incorrect header”. is there a fix for this? would really love to have it up and running again.
Aaron,
Absolutely love the plugin, thank you.
I recently upgraded to WP2.8, and I’m now not able to install your plugin, as it generates the message ‘Invalid header’. Do you know what this could possible mean?
Many thanks!
[...] Amazon Showcase Wordpress Plugin Aaron Forgue Posted by root 51 minutes ago (http://aaronforgue.com) Michael on april 8th 2008 1 38 pm wild i just deactivated the plugin and reactivated it and now it seems to be i looked above but i didn 39 t notice a solution when i activate the subscribe to comment plugin it breaks the dashboard email message send canc Discuss | Bury | News | Amazon Showcase Wordpress Plugin Aaron Forgue [...]
Hi, Any chance of updating the plugin to work in Wordpress 2.8? It currently refuses to recognise it.
Thanks for a great plugin!
I love this plugin, but it doesn’t seem to be compatible with WP 2.8. I upgraded yesterday and it was the only plugin that stopped working. Any idea on an upgrade for compatibility?
Thanks!
Hello:
This looks like a great plugin but I just tried to install it on WP 2.8 version and its showing as installed but it’s no where to be found?
Any Ideas on what I can do to get it working?
Best Regards,
Aaron,
It seems I uploaded something incorrectly, even though I’ve installed dozens of plugins before. It is all working now, sorry to trouble you.
Regards…
I was trying to activate the plugin and got the following error message in the WP admin: “This plugin does not have a valid header.” Any ideas on how to rectify the problem?
hi, great looking widget. I tried to install in WP 2.8 and got some kind of “header” error saying there was not a proper header. I hope you can update this soon, it is perfect for what I am wanting! Thanks!
Hi,
Just upgraded to the latest version (and WP too) and found my widgets have disappeared that had my showcase data in. Where are these stored so I can grab them from a backup?
Thanks
Great plugin, but it broke with WordPress 2.8. It won’t even show up in the list of plugins. After the upgrade WP said something like, “the plugin does not have a valid header”. Any updates planned right now?
I installed using the auto-install feature on WP 2.8. I got a “header” error and now the plugin does not show up at all in my plugin section or in the widget section. I can’t even uninstall it.
any suggestions?
The plugin does not have a valid header.
this is the error WP gives me, so I can’t activate and use this plugin, it seems many did installed in the past but I don’t know why I can’t, help would be greatly appreciated
thanks
any news yet on an update to 2.8?
For those not getting it to work, try using an FTP client and putting the folder “amazonshowcase” in the “/wp-content/plugins/” directory on your webserver.
“amazonshowcase” is a subfolder of “amazon-showcase-wordpress-widget”.
The “amazon-showcase-wordpress-widget” folder is the folder that is currently going in that directory, thus causing the problems. Once you put the “amazonshowcase” folder in that directory, you should be fine.
(It worked for me, anyway).
Great plugin!
This worked for me too. Thanks, Stewie! I appreciate your help! How’d you figure that out?
Thanks Stewie, your advice got it working with WP 2.8. Is it necessary to leave the “amazon-showcase-wordpress-widget” in the plugins folder, or can it be deleted?
Cheers.
You are most certainly welcome!
BigSis, trial and error. Once I saw the “amazon-showcase-wordpress-widget” folder was in my plugins folder as opposed to the “amazonshowcase” folder, I just figured something wasn’t being pointed to properly.
Andrew, the *only* folder in my plugins directory (relating to this particular plugin) is just the “amazonshowcase” folder. If you have both the “amazon-showcase-wordpress-widget” and “amazonshowcase” folder in your directory, I suspect you can delete the “amazon-showcase-wordpress-widget” one.
(run a backup of course, just in case.)