Advertisement

AVH Amazon

The avh-amazon WordPress plugin gives you the ability to add a widget or use a shortcode in your post or page to display a random item from your Amazon wish list, baby registry and/or wedding registry.

Current Release: Version 3.0.6 Released on: Jun 29, 2009

Download | Donate | Features | Support | Installation | FAQ

Features

The following options have been implemented:

  • Use of Associated ID.
  • Wish List ID.
  • Configurable image size (small/medium/large).
  • Find your Wish List ID.
  • Multiple widgets.
  • Works with Amazon.com and locales Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk.
  • Multiple items from the same Wish List can be displayed in the widget.
  • A configurable footer can be displayed on the bottom of the widget linking to the list on Amazon.
  • A shortcode can be used in posts and pages

It’s compatible with WordPress 2.5 and higher.

Download

Version 3.0.6 Released on: Jun 29, 2009

Donate

If you enjoy this plug-in please consider a donation. There are several ways you can show your appreciation:

  • Amazon Wish List
    You can send me something from my Amazon Wish List which is shown in the sidebar.
  • Through Paypal.
    Click on the Donate button and you will be directed to Paypal where you can make your donation and you don’t have to have a Paypal account.

Installation

  1. Download the archive and extract all in the wp-content/plugins directory.
  2. Make sure the directory cache in the plug-in folder is writeable.
  3. Go to your WordPress administration page, click on Plugins and activate it.
  4. Go to the Options->AVH Amazon page and fill out your Wish List id.
  5. Go to the Presentation->Widget and drag the widget into the sidebar.
  6. Optionally you can change the Associated ID and or Wish List for this widget. This is for future implementation so you can have multiple widgets with different wish lists.

Support

If you have comments/problems/suggestions, see something in the code which is not compliant to the WordPress Plugin Codex, or just want to say “Cool! It works!”, feel free to create a post at the AVH Support Forum

FAQ

Q: What is my Wish List ID?
A: You can determine your Wish List ID by going to your Wish List page on Amazon. Click on the wish list you want to use in the plug in, even if you only have one wish list. The URL will show you something like this : http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/2CC2KKW02870/ref=cm_wl_rlist_go. This, 2CC2KKW02870 is your Wish List ID.

Q: What happens if I clear the Associated ID ?
A: The plugin will use my Associated ID.

Q: What do you have planned for future releases?
A: I wrote a list of planned implementations on the support forum.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Ma.gnolia
  • Reddit
  • Slashdot
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati
51 Responses to “AVH Amazon”
  1. Peter says:

    Re: Josh~
    Yes at this time it only support Amazon US.

  2. Josh~ says:

    Does it support only amazon US?

  3. Khristopher says:

    Make it work with Amazon Canada, and you’ll have a fan!

  4. Peter says:

    Khristopher,

    I’m working on it.

  5. Gareth says:

    any chance of making next release work with Amazon UK?

  6. Peter says:

    For Gareth.
    Yep, already in progress. Maybe I’ll do a quick release with just this RFC instead of what I have planned for the next release.

  7. John says:

    I get this error since the last two updates:


    Warning: Call-time pass-by-reference has been deprecated; If you would like to pass it by reference, modify the declaration of avh_get_list_results(). If you would like to enable call-time pass-by-reference, you can set allow_call_time_pass_reference to true in your INI file in / W E B P A T H /wp-content/plugins/avh-amazon/2.5/inc/avh-amazon.widgets.php on line 91

  8. Jermayn says:

    Really like teh plugin but have a weird error:

    http://www.germworks.net

    Warning: fopen(/home/germwork/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/avh-amazon/cache//wsdlcache-8d089f838d34c5d105c3f4b72f5e1e2a.lock) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /home/germwork/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/avh-amazon/inc/nusoap/class.wsdlcache.php on line 129

    Warning: flock(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/germwork/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/avh-amazon/inc/nusoap/class.wsdlcache.php on line 131

  9. Jamison Fitzgerald says:

    Works great for one widget, i even customized the css to remove the box surrounding the images and configured it to leave out the titles and put the items on one row to conserve space, however when i add a second widget and save everything it just copies the contents of the first widget, even if i go back and change it back as soon as i save it will fill the contents of all the options to be the same.

  10. Totally her says:

    I may have to give this a try on our WP site. thanks!

  11. Pdesign says:

    great post. Thank for plugin

  12. Ryan Price says:

    I can’t seem to get the footer text to show up in the widget. Whenever I tick “show footer” and hit save, it seems the “Show footer” get automatically unchecked. Any ideas?

    Thanks! Appreciate the work.

  13. daniel lench says:

    Looking good Peter! Updates installed and everything runs great.

  14. plioz says:

    hey, i’ve been looking for this kind of plugin … but why only U.S Amazon ?

  15. Thanks for the quick update. It works swell!

  16. I have removed the widget from my template because it makes my website very slow

    • Peter says:

      I’m working on version 2.4 right now that should increase the speed.

      This version is running on the site right now and the best evidence I have of the improvement is on this page
      http://blog.avirtualhome.com/2009/02/09/amazon-launches-the-kindle-2/

      Before it took almost 12 seconds to load this page because it called Amazon 4 times (1 in the sidebar, 3 times in the article itself). Currently the load time is about 4 – 5 seconds.

      If you want I can send the Release Candidate of version 2.4 to you to give it try.

  17. bali wedding says:

    i will try it also on my new wedding blog

  18. Lingvemulo says:

    Hi – I have a funny problem… the widget won’t “stick” when I try to add it to the sidebar. I add it, click “save changes”, and when the page reloads… poof! It’s back on the left side again. I’m puzzled… I’ve never had a widget refuse to live in my sidebar before!

    • Peter says:

      You seem to have a problem connecting to Amazon.
      Technical info: I try to retrieve information with the function fsockopen and on your site it doesn’t seems to work.

      This should be resolved with version 2.4 of my plugin. I don’t know when this version will be released.

  19. Does this plugin works with the latest wordpress ? Nonetheless a great plugin.

  20. The new update 2.3.4 still does not perform properly.

    On http://motionpicturecentral.com/blog/2009/02/21/sony-hvr-z7u-professional-1080p-hdv-camcorder/, AVH Amazon provides this link: http://www.amazon.com/Sony-HVR-Z7U-Professional-Video-Camcorder/dp/B00138TS4C/ref=wl_it_dp?ie=UTF8&colid=2YW78VPWH5750&tag=motionpicturecentral-20 – which DOES work.

    On http://motionpicturecentral.com/blog/2009/02/21/sony-hvr-z5u-professional-hdv-high-definition-handheld-camcorder/, AVH Amazon provides this link: http://www.amazon.com/Sony-HVR-Z5U-Definition-Handheld-Camcorder/dp/B001P9HT3Q&tag=motionpicturecentral-20 – which does NOT work.

    It seems the failure is related to the link Amazon provides the AVH Amazon plugin. We have discovered that short links fail. The short links are the sinple direct Amazon links with http://www.amazon.com and ending with the ASIN. The more complex links do not. These are the amazon links with extra tracking information between the ASIN and the Associate ID &tag.

    We have been able to figure out that letting the short link fail at Amazon’s site and then manually inserting a ? or a / after the ASIN and just before &tag=[Associate ID] will cause the link to continue properly to the the related product; however, we do not know if Amazon is properly tracking this. Plus, we don’t know where to manually change AVH’s code to fix the problem.

  21. The new update 2.3.4 still does not perform properly. It seems the failure is related to what link Amazon provides the AVH Amazon plugin.

    We have discovered that the short links fail (the links beginning with http://www.amazon.com and ending with the ASIN). On http://motionpicturecentral.com/blog/2009/02/21/sony-hvr-z5u-professional-hdv-high-definition-handheld-camcorder/, AVH Amazon provides this link: http://www.amazon.com/Sony-HVR-Z5U-Definition-Handheld-Camcorder/dp/B001P9HT3Q&tag=motionpicturecentral-20 – which does NOT work.

    The more complex links do work (those with extra tracking information between the ASIN and the Associate ID tag. On http://motionpicturecentral.com/blog/2009/02/21/sony-hvr-z7u-professional-1080p-hdv-camcorder/, AVH Amazon provides this link: http://www.amazon.com/Sony-HVR-Z7U-Professional-Video-Camcorder/dp/B00138TS4C/ref=wl_it_dp?ie=UTF8&colid=2YW78VPWH5750&tag=motionpicturecentral-20 – which DOES work.

    Letting the short link fail at Amazon’s site and then manually inserting a ? or a / after the ASIN and just before &tag=[Associate ID] will cause the link to continue properly the the related product; however, we do not know if Amazon is properly tracking the manual fixes, plus we don’t know where to manually change AVH’s code to fix the problem.

  22. Thanks for this wedding gift plugin. We are an event florist in Napa Valley and we are seeing many of our client use websites to help organize and remember their weddings. We will definitely pass this link on to our wedding flower customers.

  23. Mark says:

    Does this work with multiple authors? (it looks great)

    • Peter says:

      Yes it will work with multiple authors but, and I think your real question is if each author can have their own associate ID. There can only be one associate id for the entire blog.

      If you want an associate ID per author let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

  24. Anonymous says:

    Could You please tell me if it’s working with Amazon.de? Thanks in advance.

  25. Edwin says:

    Plugin doesn’t want to work anymore.

    Fatal error: Cannot redeclare sha256() in /home/edwink/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/avh-amazon/2.8/inc/avh-amazon.sha256.inc.php on line 304

  26. Inputting an AWS Secret Access Code in the plugin settings causes “unknown failure with Rest Call”. Removing the AWS SEcret Code seems to solve the problem.

    • Peter says:

      Besides the secret code, you also need to put in your AWS Key.

      • Exactly! It should work that way.

        However… Entering Both the AWS Key and the AWS SEcret Key in version 3.0.4 caused the “unknown failure with REST CAll” error.

        Removing the AWS SEcret Key cleared the error and allowed the AVH Amazon plugin to continue operating normally.

        • Radio Maria says:

          We had the same error and applied the same solution.

          Removing the AWS SEcret Key and leaving the AWS Key in place allowed 3.0.4 to work properly.

        • Peter says:

          I opened a topic on my Support Forum, if the suggestion below doesn’t work, let’s continue the discussion there.
          On the page where you got your secret key, you can regenerate your secret key. Use this key for the plugin.

        • We have several different sites. Each have their own AWS Keys; therefore, resetting the keys at Amazon did not work.

          3.0.3 worked fine with the AWS keys. 3.0.4 did not. Something in the new code is causing the error. Peter, perhaps you can try using Query Calls instead of REST Calls to get the XML data. This may hep you find the error.

          • Peter says:

            Thanks for this info. I will see what I can do.
            I think I will create a version with some debug functionality, to get this solved..

    • Peter says:

      Please upgrade to v3.0.5.
      The bug should be fixed in this version.

  27.  
Pingbacks and Trackbacks
  1. [...] Amazon Wishlist Plugin Just added a new widget to the sidebar: the AVH Amazon Wishlist. It randomly picks items from my Amazon wishlist. Anyone reading this can feel free to buy me [...]

  2.  
Leave a Reply