MDBitz Project Laboratory

Hi Everyone:

It’s been awhile since I’ve given any updates as to the status of the plugin so I wanted to quickly post a note on what I’m working on. At this time I’ve stepped away from incorporating Amazon Banners as I’ve overcomplicated some of the functionality and so I’m going to start fresh on it over the next few months. So in the mean time I will be releasing a new Template Module into the plugin. I’m currently testing the features and hope to release it over the next week or 2 if everything goes smoothly.

At a Glance

• Amazon Banner Support … Continue Reading

Rejoice!! Today we released version 1.8.0 of the WordPress-Amazon-Associate (WPAA) plugin. This minor but long awaited release contains full support for the Italy (IT), China (CN) and Spain (ES) Locales of the Amazon Product API / Affiliate Programs.

In addition to the addition of the locales I corrected a bug with the Omakase Widget so that the user’s styling options are correctly rendered and enhanced the validation logic so that if validation fails you are presented with the error code and detail message. This information will help you correct the issue or can be sent to myself for assistance in … Continue Reading

Hi everyone, sorry for the long delay with updates to the WPAA plugin. I wanted to let everyone know the plugin is still under active development and I am currently updating the supported locales as well as the issue faced by users where requests fail out which is caused be discrepancy between server time and actual GMT Time causing Amazon to deny the request due to it perceiving it as an expired request. I’ve got a fix in place for this that i am currently testing and hope to have released later this week.

Next in line for updates will … Continue Reading

Lately I’ve had some back and forth with the WordPress members that “oversee” the plugin repository. At the moment I am slightly annoyed at the way they go about “managing” the repository but I’ll leave that for another post.

After some back and forth I was finally able to get the Plugin Guidelines that they use for determining if a plugin is qualified for the repository. In the hopes that other plugin developers don’t go through what I experienced I’m including it below. These Guidelines are as-is and as-of August 10th, 2011 the date I received them.

1. Your plugin must be … Continue Reading

Today I’d like to announce the release of version 1.7.0 of the WordPress Amazon Associate (WPAA) plugin. As you may know I did not plan to release another minor 1.X version and had been planning to do a major 2.0 version release. However due to unexpected business trips and personal obligations I have not had the time to work on the new Banner Management system that would equate to a major milestone for the project.

As I do not know when I will have the time to finish the Banner Management system I thought it would be worthwhile to … Continue Reading

Hi Everyone:

I wanted to let you all know that version 2.0 of the WordPress-Amazon-Associate (WPAA) plugin is progressing smoothly. At this time I’m working on flushing out the last item on my task list for this release: inclusion of Amazon Banner Ads. I anticipate this to take another couple of weeks as I want to make sure that I think through the administrative interface completely prior to the release.

Some of the other changes made in this release include:

• Admin Settings Cleanup
• Widget & Product Styling Options
• Features … Continue Reading
  

Hi Everyone, I wanted to let all of you know that as of this afternoon we at MDBitz have launched a Support Forum to better assist and answer user questions on any of our projects.

Currently we are just getting started posting information and Tutorials on our WordPress Plugin WordPress-Amazon-Associate. If you utilize the plugin and would like to learn more information on it’s different features, report bugs or share other information then please do so at http://forums.mdbitz.com/.

Enjoy!!

Last year I created the WordPress-Amazon-Associate plugin to make the inclusion of Amazon links and Widgets simpler and more efficient. Since then I’ve made numerous enhancements all in the hopes that users would find it as useful as I do. To date their have been over 30,000 downloads of WPAA and overall great feedback from those that use it.

Recently I came across an excellent article on WinkPress – The Best WordPress Amazon Associate Plugins. On it you will find a great overview and comparison of Amazon Associate plugins for WordPress both free and commercial. To my surprise and … Continue Reading

Today I’m proud to announce the release of version 1.6.0 of the WordPress Amazon Associate plugin. Although there aren’t a large number of changes in this release I think it deserves special attention as it truly makes the plugin a must have for WordPress & Amazon Associate users.

In this release Geo-Localization has been extended to support static amazon links within your website’s content. This means that you no longer have to update links to use the Shortcodes provided by the plugin instead the links will be automatically updated to the appropriate amazon locale with … Continue Reading