Amazon WP plugin?

April 22, 2016 11:11 AM

The awesome Amazon affiliate plugin, which was kindly written and published by a mefite several years ago, seems to have gone defunct. Are there any good alternatives?

It was based on whatever the background schema is that MF uses, to strip out any extraneous Amazon tracking code and replace it with the affiliate code of the referring party. And it was so great! But now it's not working, and there are so many Amazon WP plugins that all look shady to various degrees. Does anybody have a working alternative to this plugin?

posted by jbickers to MetaFilter-Related at 11:11 AM (5 comments total)

HB, you give me more credit for generosity than I deserve. No, the old plugin used to let me put MY Amazon affiliate ID in, and it would automatically create links that did the thing. Anyone know if that still exists anywhere?
posted by jbickers at 9:48 AM on April 25, 2016

I think affiliate links are stripped and replaced.
posted by cjorgensen at 7:51 AM on April 26, 2016

I know that's what's done on MF. I'm talking about doing it on my own WP site. This. Specifically, this.

Anybody know where that plugin went? Or if there's a good, credible alternative?
posted by jbickers at 10:19 AM on April 26, 2016

Since the original plugin used to work, it shouldn't be a big deal to modify it to work again. If you're still looking for a solution and want to pursue it, shoot me a note and, if you have the original plugin around, I can tweak back to usability. No big, I have a local WordPress install here for developing and testing a custom-written plugin for a client anyway, shouldn't take much.

(kind of delayed response, but I only scan MetaFilter posts once or twice a month unless I get a ping.)
posted by mdevore at 1:36 PM on May 3, 2016

As a follow-up for anyone else interested, the problem is that the Amazon links were in a different format than the WordPress plugin expected and could handle to put in the associate code. Apparently this was a format change made by Amazon at some point since the plugin's release, although the original link formats continue to work, as well.

Anyway, I modified the WordPress plugin code to support the new link format, while retaining the original link support. Worked in all the tests I threw at it with the original and new link formats.

Link to the updated code on pastebin site is at http://pastebin.com/2X18CjVu
posted by mdevore at 9:46 AM on May 9, 2016 [1 favorite]