Making a custom Template

Hi Paul,

I made the change on line 125 as you suggested, and it seems to work great now.

As long as this works from now on you don’t need to pursue the issue further for my sake!

I really appreciate the help, thanks again for the great plug-in.

Adam

Hi Paul- sorry to ask another question, I didn’t want to start another thread

Is it possible to make a template that just links to the local product and Amazon.com? I tried to modify the ‘localized thumbnail links’ but couldn’t get this to work.

For example:

Buy on:
Local Amazon | Amazon.com
^^(Clicking this goes to the local listing)

or as an alternative, just a link to the Local Amazon, e.g.:
Buy on Amazon
^^(Clicking this goes to the local listing)

Thanks, hope you can help.

Hi,

This should be just a case of applying the country code to the LINK_OPEN keyword.

e.g. something like:

%LINK_OPEN%Local Amazon%LINK_CLOSE% | %LINK_OPEN%US#Amazon.com%LINK_CLOSE%

If you have localisation enabled and the ip2nation database installed then the ‘default’ links will always be localised.

Paul

Thanks that works great.

Is there a way to make it so that the flags don’t pop up on hover?

Sure is, in the Amazon Link Settings page:

Uncheck ‘Multinational Link’.

Cheers,

Paul

That’s perfect.

Thanks again Paul

Hi,

i have another question hope that’s okay.

Right now when someone clicks on a localized link and the product isn’t available on their local Amazon, they go to a 404 amazon page.

Is there any way to just show a dash ( – ) if the product isn’t available on Amazon? That way there won’t be any link to click on and no 404 page. I figured it might be possible since it does this for pricing (shows a – if the price isn’t available)

Thanks

Hi,

Currently the plugin does not support this option, it would require a change to the way templates are processed, so I haven’t quite worked out how to do it!

One option to explore is to enable the ‘Create Search Links’ and ‘Prefetch Data’ options.

With this combination the plugin will create a link to the correct Amazon Locale, but if the product is not available it will create a link to a search page using the products Author/Artist and the product title.

Paul

That sounds like an even better solution.

I enabled both settings,
However right now when I click an ‘unavailable’ locale link, it takes me to the Amazon.ca homepage (I’m in Canada) but the search bar is blank.

Could this be because I need to enable the cache? I notice there is a product cache and shortcode cache, should I enable both?

I should add that I recently installed W3 Total Cache because my site was slow.

Thanks

Hi,

The Amazon product cache is definitely worth enabling if you are looking up product data (which you are). Every lookup takes time, and if it has to do it for two locales will be double for each shortcode.

The Shortcode cache is a bit experimental at the moment – if you do enable it then you have to be careful when updating _any_ shortcode or template or setting that you ‘Flush’ the cache to get rid of old data.

As you may notice any cache may cause the site to show out of date stuff. I don’t know how W3 Total cache works but I suspect it may cause the old links to be displayed. Perhaps disable it temporarily whilst you work through these issues?

Also to clarify ‘Unavailable’ means that product does not exist at all on that locale. Not just that it is not in stock.

Paul

Okay I enabled the Amazon product cache and disabled W3 Total Cache.

Product prices seem to load faster now, that’s great.

I still notice however that when I click on the local Amazon link, when the product is not on Amazon.ca (but it is on Amazon.com) that it just goes to the Amazon.ca homepage.

I thought maybe that enabling the cache would mean that it automatically searches for the product on Amazon.ca and takes you to the results.. is this possible?

Hi,

It won’t do the search on your site, it should construct a link to a search page on Amazon.ca. One thing you need to do is to make sure there is something in the ‘Default Search String‘ setting – e.g. %TITLE% | %ARTIST%.

Can you post the shortcode you are using to create the link then I’ll test it on my site to see what is happening.

Thanks,

Paul

Sure, here is my shortcode:

| %LINK_OPEN%Local Amazon%LINK_CLOSE%

I paste a direct masked link before the | to Amazon.com since every product should be on Amazon.com, so it looks like this:

Amazon.com | Local Amazon

Thanks so much

Hi,

Sorry, the shortcode is the bit in the post/page content, e.g. [amazon asin=xyz...]

Ta,

Paul

Sorry Paul here it is:

[amazon template=00 local amazon&chan=default&asin=B002V9JIYM]