NEW! Amazon Media Manager 1.5 (*Finally!*)

denyerec
(@denyerec)

18 years, 8 months ago

Hi there all!

Just like to announce that Amazon Media Manager 1.5 for WordPress is now available from http://www.sozu.co.uk/software/amm/

It’s been a while in coming, but the new version is so far improved from the old one it hardly seems fit to call it 1.5, it should be 5.0 or something BUT, to stay in synch with the wordpress value for which it’s designed we went with 1.5

The new system has:

* Inbuilt search
* Options page for, well, options
* So many configurable ways to output stuff you’ll hopefully be able to do anything!
* Support for displaying items in posts using quicktags
* Go and get it now. 🙂

Seriously, head over to http://www.sozu.co.uk/software/amm/ and grab a copy, there might be one or two little bugs we’ve not squashed but on the whole it should be all good.

Sozu doesn’t have a forum or comment system yet, so for the meantime, keep your eyes on these forums and on http://www.denyerec.co.uk/index.php?p=198 where you can comment for the time being.

If it calls for it, we’ll start a support thread in here too.

Enjoy!

** PLEASE NOTE**
Due to our host, occasionally you may get “Document Contains No Data” when trying to access the Sozu website.

If this happens, just try again a few minutes later, they’re working out some issues.

Viewing 15 replies - 91 through 105 (of 217 total)

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archshrk
(@archshrk)

18 years, 6 months ago

The simple answer is to add this text to your post or page where you want to see the list

<!–amm_getMedia(‘amm_default_output’, 3, AMM_ALL)–>

and added the AMM ‘key’ with the ‘value’ of EMBEDED in the ‘custom field’ at the bottom of the ‘edit/write post’ page.
If you have added any items to your list via MANAGE -> AMM
then they will be included in the output list of items.

Better explained here ( http://www.sozu.co.uk/software/amm/getmedia_function.php )

listless
(@listless)

18 years, 6 months ago

Thanks. Please let me know as soon as you figure out what’s going on with the Amazon XML request. I appreciate all your help and work.

Alex
(@bald_technologist)

18 years, 6 months ago

I upgraded to AMM 1.5 from the old plugin after bumping up to WP 1.5. It was smooth and the documentation covered everything I needed to know. Thanks! I am running into one small issue though – the ability to add a product doesn’t work. No matter what I search for, I receive an empty search results page that states that the search was successful, but there isn’t a single result shown. I have used many different combinations of keywords and drop-down selections, including:

United States | All | 1581802366
United States | Books | 1581802366
United States | All | color
United States | Books | color
United States | All | apple
United States | Music | Zeppelin
United Kingdom | All | Zeppelin

Everyone returns a page without results, though none indicate an error. Any ideas?

Thanks!

Alex

—– EDIT —–
Some additional info: the conversion of my old data went perfectly, my old books were ported properly. Editing those old entries didn’t cause any problems.

Thread Starter denyerec
(@denyerec)

18 years, 6 months ago

Bald_technologist:

The symptom you describe is usually due to a malformed Developer ID from Amazon. The one we supply is quite OK to use, so you do not need to replace it with your own unless you have specific requirements.

To restore the default Amazon Developer ID, simply clear the contents of the DevID textbox on the options page and save the changes. When you go to another WordPress admin page, and return to the AMM options page, you should see our default Developer ID re-instated and it should work.

For reference, the default Dev ID is: 1B66SC36ZAZ0WY71QH02

If you have anything different to this, please let me know.

Thread Starter denyerec
(@denyerec)

18 years, 6 months ago

Listless – I’m still scratching my head over the internal image issue. It would help if you could supply a few more example book titles or ISBN’s that the problem occurs with.

Edit:

Looking at what you said, it appears you have made the modification required of people for whom external image checking does not work.
This modification causes the AMM to use the locally stored image, REGARDLESS of which image size you specify. What you may want to try is commenting out both lines, though this will create the potential for a “dead image” from amazon on occasion.

Comment out lines 593->596 (Inclusive) and see what happens. You must be using the latest code for these numbers to match up!!

I can’t rememeber if you needed to avoid external image checking. Can you verify how your AMM plugin behaves with the latest version of the code, without modifications?

It’s likely that Amazon’s XML returns the internal image (Still under investigation) but the normal template calls should return the correct images, providing your server allows you to.

Alex
(@bald_technologist)

18 years, 6 months ago

That did it! Thanks!

listless
(@listless)

18 years, 6 months ago

“Comment out lines 593->596 (Inclusive) and see what happens. You must be using the latest code for these numbers to match up!!”

That solves the problem. For the life of me, I can’t imagine why. (FYI, I must not be quite using the most current version of the code, but I figured out which lines you were talking about anyway).

However, using the newest version of the code, without modifications, the problem occurrs again, exactly as before. I get the smallest image, and the interior image.

Thread Starter denyerec
(@denyerec)

18 years, 6 months ago

Listless: I think it’s a combination of your server not permitting external-image-checking, and the books you’re looking for in particular having slightly goofy default images in their Amazon XML return packets.

For a brief period I was concerned that Amazon may have moved their API spec around, but this doesn’t seem to be the case.

( For reference, I think the ideal configuration for a server to make most use of AMM would be having cURL installed, and safe-mode off. )

jonimueller
(@jonimueller)

18 years, 6 months ago

Denyerec, I’m having a big problem not only with the AMM plugin, but my IMDB plugin. I think somehow perhaps these are related problems, I just don’t know.

What AMM is doing is no matter WHAT I search for, it returns “Nothing found.” There’s no error string so everything is going through fine, but it’s just not pulling anything up, no matter what I search for.

And my RumMovie (IMDB) plugin is returning a fatal error. David Chait’s CGA Amazon plugin is working fine, so perhaps it’s not the fault of the Amazon.com servers. But what on earth could cause it to all of a sudden not run. And it’s not my web host, and I’ll tell you why: Because both my husband’s blogs also running WP and this plugin are on a different web host than my WP blog and he’s having the exact same problems.

Any thoughts? I really want to use this plugin.

Thanks.

jonimueller
(@jonimueller)

18 years, 6 months ago

Update Looks like both my webhost (dreamhost.com) and my husband’s webhost (surpasshosting.com) decided to disable fopen() at the same time. DreamHost pointed me here:

http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/CURL

I have no idea how to modify the AMM files to accomplish this. Seems like a PITA to me. But it may be that as more webhosts take this “security” measure, you may want to think about modifying AMM to work with those of us whose now find ourselves in this predicament.

Thanks.

Beel
(@beel)

18 years, 6 months ago

In the meantime, can you not turn it on for your particular situation in htaccess?

jonimueller
(@jonimueller)

18 years, 6 months ago

Beel, I thought one had to edit the php.ini file, which I doubt I have access to. I’ll look for a fix, but a quick Google didn’t turn anything up other than people bellyaching on various forums about how their web hosts have disabled it. Thanks for the tip.

Okay, I think I found the code that goes into the .htaccess file. This?

php_flag allow_url_fopen on

But how would having this file on MY SERVER enable the plugins to access remote URLs such as amazon.com and imdb.com, which is what these plugins are trying to do and cannot.

Anyway, here goes nothing. I’ll let you know if it works!

Update Nope, AMM still returns 0 items found on a couple of searches for which there definitely should be hits.

And the IMDB plugin (RumMovie) still chokes on this error:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: socket_create() in /home/.bass/jmueller/babygotblog.com/wp-content/plugins/RumLib/httpclient.php on line 59

Oh well, perhaps there’s another problem, but I’m at a loss, unless these plugin devs get back to me, which they have not yet, as to what it might be and how to correct it.

More pestering:

I was rooting around in the plugin code and found this:

$amm_feedback = __('Both cURL and fopen failed to connect to Amazon. Please make sure either cURL is installed on your server or that fopen to remote files is enabled. Contact your server administrator for assistance.',AMM_DOM);

Looks like the plugin developer has already anticipated this problem, but it’s not helping me. I think I will go back to DreamHost with this info and see if they can tell me anything else about it. I’m beginning to think there’s some other problem. Because it’s not affecting CGA (ChaitGear plugin) ability to access Amazon.com items. This is weird. But it’s late and I’m tired.

Later.

Thread Starter denyerec
(@denyerec)

18 years, 6 months ago

Errm.
AMM uses cURL by *default* and falls back to fOpen if cURL is not available.

The original version of AMM, the old, decrepid ancient one, that used fOpen exclusivly and this incompatibility was one of the major reasons for re-writing.

Can you upload a file to your server called phpinfo.php with the content:

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

And then email me the link? That’ll show up what’s installed and enabled.

Meanwhile, if I get chance (Gotta pay the bills first…) I will look at implementing a 3rd connection method into the AMM. If someone wants to donate hard cash so I’ve got time to put into it, feel free 😛

(But hey, we don’t even get links through, so who am I kidding here?)

jonimueller
(@jonimueller)

18 years, 6 months ago

Uh, I do, I do! (Look on my “Colophon” page where I list the plugins I’m using — http://babygotblog.com/?page_id=1308)

Anyway, let me get that PHP file rounded up. I am beginning to think it’s a DreamHost specific thing so it may just be time to pack up and move to another host before my 97 day trial period expires!

Thanks!

edwalter
(@edwalter)

18 years, 5 months ago

I really like AMM. Great job all!

I’m thinking about the best way to do something and I’d love your input. I don’t think this can be done easily out of the box, so advice on the easiest/best/right hacks to make are appreciated.

What I’d like is to add items to my AMM list as I read them. I want to (over time) build up a historical list of what has been on the list. At the same time, I would like to show my “current” items on my sidebar (“what am I reading this week”). The issue is how to get my sidebar code to selectively return just the current items. I don’t want to just do it based timestamp because I can’t be sure that the newest timestamp will always be what I am actually reading currently. Also, sometimes I am reading 1 thing, sometimes I’m in the middle of 3 things.

So, I’m thinking I need to add a column to the table to flag whether an item is “active” or not. Then, I can tweak the getmedia function to be able to optionally filter on that column. That’s all easy enough. Slightly more painful (because I haven’t taken the time to figure out how the admin UI works) is making an easy way to toggle items between active and inactive. I’m an inpatient guy, and so I’m thinking I want an easy-to-click button right on the table of items that can toggle between active and inactive (similar to how you activate and deactivate plugins). I’m not sure how I’ll make that work yet.

Anyway, any comments or suggestions before I start poking around? Also, if I make these changes, would you like me to email them to you guys?