Displaying book image in Sidebar widget & problems with affiliate link

Hi Flowerscat!

Yes, adding your book as a sidebar widget using the system is ABSOLUTELY possible.

Here are the steps to follow:

First, add your desired book:
? Click the TotallyBooked menu in your WordPress Dashboard navigation, and then click Add New Book
? In the resulting window, add the book title in the first box, the book summary text in the second box, and the direct links in the Book Links section
? Upload your book cover under the Featured Image section on the right side of that Book page
? Once you’re done entering all your content, press the blue Publish button on the right side of the page

Now, add your sidebar widget:
? Go the the Appearance>Widgets section of your Dashboard navigation.
? In the list of Available Widgets, find the ‘Totally Booked Widget’
? Drag this widget to your sidebar section
? Open the Totally Booked widget in your sidebar, type in the title you want to appear for your widget (Can be the name of the book, or anything else you’d like)
? The Totally Booked widget will give you a drop-down list of all the books you’ve added into the system. Select the one you want to display.
? Hit Save, and you’re done!

As for the Amazon affiliate url question, you’ll want to use the Amazon URL box for this.

If the affiliate link isn’t working for you, post a direct link to the book on your site, and I’ll take a look and see if I can help you figure out what’s wrong!

Cheering you on,
Kelli

Hi Kelli,

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly & with such detailed instructions – really appreciate it.

I’ve managed to get to the book to display on the page, but I still can’t get the Amazon Affiliate URL to work.

https://tutors-in-bristol.co.uk/?tb_book=personal-statements-how-to-write-a-ucas-personal-statement-by-telfer-paul-10-apr-2012

I am pasting the affiliate link under Your Book Links/Amazon URL, but each time I hit ‘update’ the entry clears itself. Amazon offers me 3 options – Text link, Image link & text&image link – I have tried all 3 and none of them seem to work.

I’ve worked around this by including a text link as ‘See More at:’ but ideally it would be nice if people could click on the title or image to be taken directly to the Amazon site.

On a slightly different topic, is there any way to remove the text ‘About this Book’ – or at least change its font size? I tried going through the plugin CSS files, but couldn’t find the relevant code.

Thanks again

Hi Flowerscat,

We’re making progress! ?? And yes, it most certainly would be nice if people could use the Buy now function and links. We’ll get it figured out.

Let’s attack this problem one step at a time.

1.) Check your TotallyBooked plugin version. Go to your plugins list, scroll down to TotallyBooked, and make sure you’re using version 0.5

2.) Check a basic version of the Amazon link in the box. If you type https://www.amazon.com in that Amazon URL box, and hit update, does it work?

3.) Check a couple of the other URL boxes. If you enter the default url (like https://www.bn.com) in the applicable box, does it work?

4.) Check the code from your Amazon affiliate link. Are there any weird characters/extraneous bits being copied over that might cause the system to reject the link?

Let me know what you find with these four tests, and we’ll take it from there.

As for your question about the About This Book section, you can absolutely change the font size.

This heading font size is controlled by your site’s stylesheet, not the plugin. So you can modify it by changing your site CSS for this section:

h3 {
    font-size: 2.4rem;
}

Hope this helps!
Kelli

Hi Kelli,

Thanks again.

So I managed to
1) Change font size
2) Add a amazon.co.uk link under Amazon URL box – now there is a ‘buy now’ button dispalyed next to the book, which redirects to Amazon. BUT it redirects to Amazon.com not Amazon.co.uk

https://tutors-in-bristol.co.uk/?tb_book=personal-statements-how-to-write-a-ucas-personal-statement-by-telfer-paul-10-apr-2012

Version is 0.5

Also till no luck with Amazon Affiliate code though – this is what my code looks like:

<iframe src=”https://rcm-eu.amazon-adsystem.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=XXXXXXXXX1&o=2&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0951928414&#8243; style=”width:120px;height:240px;” scrolling=”no” marginwidth=”0″ marginheight=”0″ frameborder=”0″></iframe>

Any suggestion would be most appreciated – thanks for taking the time to talk me through.

You’re almost there! Good job!

Okay. A few things:

1.) Use the full URL – In order to get the links working, you must include the full URL (https://www.amazon.co.uk), not just www.

2.) Embed code won’t work – The code you’ve pasted above is embed code, rather than a direct text link. So our system isn’t going to know what to do with that.

The good news is, it looks like you’ve already got the text link available, because you’ve linked to it in the body of your description.

So, copy this link:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0951928414/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0951928414&linkCode=as2&tag=tutorsinbri09-21

And paste it in your TotallyBooked Amazon URL box. Once you’ve done that, let me know if it works!!

The only remaining issue is that your pop-up window is going to display an image for amazon.com, rather than amazon.co.uk.

I’ll chat with Ben about including Amazon.co.uk as a specific bookseller option in our future plugin updates.

Cheering you on,
Kelli

It works beautifully!!! Thanks so much for your help! Having Amazon UK as a bookseller option in your next release would make it perfect! For now I’ll keep the buy now & text link both in, so anyone confused by the Amazon.com window can still access .co.uk via the text link.