Vbulletin Amazon Store

[lebanon]

Vbulletin Amazon Store V0.9
An amazon reflection script , to be eligible to use this script you must obtain an associates id from amazon and a developer token from:
https://associates.amazon.com/exec/panama/associates/join/developer/application.html

DEMO : http://www.tchatting.com/forum/amazonindex.php
Requirements
Seperate DB ( This is REQUIRED )

his program has been initialy developed to work as a stand alone xml parser for amazon products feeds . Requirements are 1 mysql db, associates id and developer token.

I have tested links and everything sounds good, and planning to fully integrate seo mode laters on, please report any broken link i might have missed if you use this.

Features in a glance :
Amazon.com reflection - Checkout and help pages through a frame, ability to add or delete amazon categories from your admin control panel.
When adding a category not listed you will only need to visit amazon.com to findout its ID

Installation takes a few minutes but no complex stuff to do and no file edits at all.

-------------------------------------
1 - You need to be an Amazon Associate to get paid commission for the items your visitors buy via your site. If you are already an associate Amazon allows you to use your current ID.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/?node=3435371
2 - A Developer's Token is required to access AWS. It functions much in the
same way as a password. You will pass it to Amazon's servers with every
request so that they know you have permission to access their system.
https://associates.amazon.com/exec/panama/associates/join/developer/application.html
3 - Upload all the files in the forum directory
4 - Create a mySQL database somewhere and import the .sql file to it.
5 - Edit /script/forumurl.php to your forum url path.
6 - Open script/config.php and change the values. Especially the last 4 lines:
$dbServer = "localhost";
$dbUser = "dbuser";
$dbPass = "dbpassword";
$dbName = "dbname";
You can change the rest from the admin panel of the site.
7 - Import the xml file to add your Vbulletin Templates.
9 - chmod the following files and and folders to 777:
- /script/config.php ( if you dont you will need to do all edits manualy)
- /script/cache
10 - Go into the admin panel, and click "site config"
/script/admin/
Your initial username and password is "admin" and "admin"



Templates (NOT THE VBULLETIN TEMPLATES)
-------------------------------------

There is a template folder which contains several files that are used by the Amazon Store Manager to handle the site's output which you can edit to change the display of output but will not affect any of your vbulletin templates settings:
- welcomemsg.tpl
- browsepagefooter.tpl
- browsepagetitle.tpl
- catpage.tpl
- default.tpl
- footer.tpl
- header.tpl
- menu.tpl
- productpage.tpl
- productpageauthors.tpl
- productpagefeatures.tpl
- productpagefooter.tpl
- productpageheader.tpl
- productpagesimiliar.tpl
- search_result_title.tpl
- similiar.tpl
- similiarfooter.tpl
- similiarheader.tpl
- single_search_result.tpl
- browsepage.tpl

Template tags are recognized by their used of %% and %%. For example, to print the name of
the site, we would go:
%%sitename%%
When editing the templates, please don't touch these tags if you can help it.

SEO Compatible ?
-------------------------------------
seo setting are not active yet, although the script do work fully with seo mode outside vbulletin which hopefully in the next release i will fully enable the seo mode within vb after it passes this beta stage.

Enjoy.

[lebanon]

reserved post

[Paul M]

This looks interesting. :)

[Digma]

Indeed, looks interesting. Will look into this later on when I've got some time. :)

[The Chief]

I like this, will install soon :)

[Tralala]

I love this concept and will install real soon now as well! I'd love to see a way to "Feature products" on the front page (Or perhaps have a category for "Featured products.") This way it's more than just a search engine/portal to Amazon... there'd be a forum-specific feature, and that is products discussed or recommended by our users.

Installing now...

[klaush]

One issue:

Developers may register here for a Subscription ID. Developer Tokens are no longer available. Subscription IDs may be used for Developer Tokens.

[GamerJunk.net]

Is there any way to use this without VBulletin?

[lebanon]

rastamasta , ofcourse and it comes with seo mode , but this is not the place to release it here.

[Vizionz]

love this hack would rather it be set up different go0t to look at it more but main concerns for me would be.

1 images of items would be editable so you could upload your own images instead of using amazons images and there white backgrounds.

2. table adjustments would like it to be more user friendly like shows a whats hot block and some better navigation.. dont like the looks of the main pag3e at your site/ works for you but for my site alot of that is not needed.

i would just want to categorise music movies and video games
i would like to be able to set it up to allow categories and genres (sub categories )
then allow you to add each individual item and edit the information.. and a comment system to allow board members to review comment on the products.

the buy links would already be generated so when you clicked ordr it would bring you to amazon for final order.

but all around very interesting hack and much needed.

[lebanon]

Vizionz
Ill try to answer some of your questions in order,

1 images of items would be editable so you could upload your own images instead of using amazons images and there white backgrounds.
- i thought about this but couldnt do both together , could do either this or this, not both options , and white backgrounds are caused because images from amazon are like this , best is to choose a style that matches , or actually just edit the template provided to white bg and it will be fine :)

2. table adjustments would like it to be more user friendly like shows a whats hot block and some better navigation.. dont like the looks of the main pag3e at your site/ works for you but for my site alot of that is not needed.
--This is all doable from templates i provided , i did state that those templates are ones that control its design and output , u can use any editor to do your own output such as frontpage or any other , just dont touch the values included such as %%value%% ,instead design ur template and input the value there.

i would just want to categorise music movies and video games
i would like to be able to set it up to allow categories and genres (sub categories )
-- this is already doable from admin panel , specify which categories u want, add, delete , or add subcats and delete subcats , only cats u add will be fetched and inserted to your db.

then allow you to add each individual item and edit the information.. and a comment system to allow board members to review comment on the products.
- cant add items currently simply because the idea is AMAZON store not store ! , i released another store hack you can use for adding your own items.
As for your own member comments, you can hide amazon comments from admin panel or keep them and from templates add a link to your discussion forums ( thats all can be done right now )

the buy links would already be generated so when you clicked ordr it would bring you to amazon for final order.
- This is something i could look up for , though using the xml feed they provide this was the value they give, especially that using their own provided values , keeps us not violating any copyright or abusing their service.

Finally ,
This hack doesnt give u all you wish for from amazon , yet , the template driven and xml feed gives you a great start , if u check the admin panel + templates , you can see how much u can add/delete or hook to.

[klaush]

Lebanon,

any solution for the Developer Tokens / Subscription ID?

Thanks!

[Mr Chad]

Lebanon,

any solution for the Developer Tokens / Subscription ID?

Thanks!

this looks dope.

[lebanon]

hello
i didnt re-look that up because klaush said :
Developers may register here for a Subscription ID. Developer Tokens are no longer available. Subscription IDs may be used for Developer Tokens.

so as mentioned on amazon website that should do it !
My developer token is old and its working fine, if they replaced that with subscription id, then just insert your subscription id.

Let me know how its goes ...

[klaush]

so as mentioned on amazon website that should do it !
My developer token is old and its working fine, if they replaced that with subscription id, then just insert your subscription id.

Let me know how its goes ...

Well, seems to work!

What is the code for adding specifical products? The ASIN/ISBN number?

And how can i change the payments and shipping information to the German Amazon site?

Thanks!

[memorex]

I'd love this addition to my forums :)

I'm confused on how to populate the store. I can't see where to add items, also not sure if I'm useing the right key, I chose the "access key id" but theres also a "secret access key id" for the developer token part. Once I figure out how to get the items working I'd be very happy with this addon. The potential looks good.

[lebanon]

Kluash : /script/admin/config.php you can set your amazon language version
As for product codes , actually you get CAT codes just while browsing amazon
code is actually the NODE
example
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/163296/ref=d_hp_br_lf_1/104-9227128-7830320
Is the link to go anime and adventure dvds on amazon.
So the NODE/CODE is the first number after browse/-/---- which is the 163296

Memorex , the first key u need is ur associates ID itself , i suppose its same used as Klaush mentioned , or maybe he can advice you on this since he got a token replacement recently , while my token is old , i didnt try to replace it.

[Vizionz]

Vizionz
Ill try to answer some of your questions in order,

1 images of items would be editable so you could upload your own images instead of using amazons images and there white backgrounds.
- i thought about this but couldnt do both together , could do either this or this, not both options , and white backgrounds are caused because images from amazon are like this , best is to choose a style that matches , or actually just edit the template provided to white bg and it will be fine :)

2. table adjustments would like it to be more user friendly like shows a whats hot block and some better navigation.. dont like the looks of the main pag3e at your site/ works for you but for my site alot of that is not needed.
--This is all doable from templates i provided , i did state that those templates are ones that control its design and output , u can use any editor to do your own output such as frontpage or any other , just dont touch the values included such as %%value%% ,instead design ur template and input the value there.

i would just want to categorise music movies and video games
i would like to be able to set it up to allow categories and genres (sub categories )
-- this is already doable from admin panel , specify which categories u want, add, delete , or add subcats and delete subcats , only cats u add will be fetched and inserted to your db.

then allow you to add each individual item and edit the information.. and a comment system to allow board members to review comment on the products.
- cant add items currently simply because the idea is AMAZON store not store ! , i released another store hack you can use for adding your own items.
As for your own member comments, you can hide amazon comments from admin panel or keep them and from templates add a link to your discussion forums ( thats all can be done right now )

the buy links would already be generated so when you clicked ordr it would bring you to amazon for final order.
- This is something i could look up for , though using the xml feed they provide this was the value they give, especially that using their own provided values , keeps us not violating any copyright or abusing their service.

Finally ,
This hack doesnt give u all you wish for from amazon , yet , the template driven and xml feed gives you a great start , if u check the admin panel + templates , you can see how much u can add/delete or hook to.

thanks for responding :) i will look into this hack and see if i can help with it. i have a radio station running on my forum. that uses amazon for the buy links and to show the album cover of the music playing..


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0002IQ9SW(product id )/associatename?dev-t=D3N5BGC55OM0P7%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2

all you would have to do is be able to grab the product id.

[Holidazed]

This is an awesome addon Lebanon. Good Job.

Question: I posted a message at https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?p=932722 that is a request along the same lines as this addon. Can you read it please and tell me what you think?

Thanks

[blitzburgh]

I love the idea of the amazon store for my coupons website. I have been playing around with the templates a little, but I cannot seem to change the color of the footer template to black, like I was able to do with the amazon logo on the side. But it looks like it can be a great product.

http://www.clicklow.com/amazonindex.php

[lebanon]

bitg, thank you for your note, i have read ur post, the store i provided was not originaly writen for vb, yet i have tried to implement as much of it into vb, i didnt have time to add the admincp features and so on, thus i used the originaly created panel ( which ofcourse can be implemented if i just had time for it as well), maybe later i could go on update more of this script but to be honest i didnt find much pple interested in this portion of the hack thats why i didnt give it more of my time.
blitzburgh , all templates are in the templates folder in /script/ ( .tpl )you can re-arrange or change the whole look or output as you like from there using any editor like frontpage or macromedia. Regards

[Holidazed]

Lebanon, thank you for your response. I was really interested in the addon the way I wrote it. I only posted in here about it because yours also added Amazon to vBB in the hopes you might be interested in doing my hack. I think it is an awesome idea, but that does not make people want to write it.

Oh Well...

[chet]

Followed your step by step but I do no have "site config" in the admin panel, which part did I do wrong?

Chet

[chet]

No worries, sorted

Chet

[blitzburgh]

Ok, I got a question. I finally got the amazon store to finally work, but only when you hit go on search or search for something. If you hit the category links, nothing comes up. Is there something I may have messed up, or have not done, and is there a way you could search all categories when you do a search? It works great until I change from the Tchatting Store and change the info to my store then certain things like the categories do not work, but if you hit go on the search it does. I just get this when I click any category:

http://www.clicklow.com/amazonindex.php?cat=10

Sorry, no results were found.


Thanks!
Any suggestions?

[capebretoner]

Nice looking Hack, will add it to the site in the near future :D

[dai-kun]

Nothing is showing up in my store...
Nvm.. got it working now

[RichieBoy67]

Great Mod... I believe I have it working perfectly but I am having more of a style issue.... It is a ccs problem really..

Look at my page first

http://www.talkandmore.net/amazonindex.php

The menu on the left side... I have tried changing the font which I can do but it changes all the font on the body.. I have no idea how or where the setting is to chane the color of the box itself...

If it is in the ccs just tell me where if you can... Otherwise I would be happy to edit this manually if you could point me in the right direction...

I have edited these store many times but I have never done an integration..... I have not really gone through this much yet so any help would be great...

My next question is how hard would it be to integrate the other version of this script? The version that does not use a database?? That is the version I am running in most of my store www.anonlinemall.com www.dvdsandtapes.com -- I used to run this script but the other version is so much better... I would be happy to help if you have plan to do that??


Thanks

Great idea by the way!!!

[MikeWarner]

Could this work for the UK version of the store - i.e amazon.co.uk?

[blitzburgh]

Richie, I believe you can change that in the templates folder, though not sure about the background but you can change the font color, that was the same problem I had but I removed the sidebar totally because I did not like it. I am hoping to eventually getting it to work the right way on my site, I just have not had time to get back to it and trying to figure it out.

[RichieBoy67]

I don't see why it wouldn't work with the uk version....

Thanks for the answer... Which template did you edit to remove it???

-

[SaN-DeeP]

great work lebanon :)

[blitzburgh]

I don't see why it wouldn't work with the uk version....


Thanks for the answer... Which template did you edit to remove it???


-

I believe this is it in header.tpl. You have to remove it. You may have to adjust it with an html program also. I think I had to.

<!-- Start Left Side Bar -->
<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td width="100%">
<span>
<A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=%%AssociatesID%%&path=subst/home/home.html"><img src=script/a150X70b.gif border=0></A>
</span>
<span id="lmenu">
<table width=100% style="border:1px solid #eeeeee;background-color:#e5e5e5">
<tr>
<td style="color:#cc0000;border-bottom:1px solid #000000" class=small><b>
Menu
</tr>
<tr>
<td class=small style="padding-left:10px;">
%%leftNav%%
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<table width=100% style="border:1px solid #eeeeee;background-color:#e5e5e5">
<tr>
<td style="color:#cc0000;border-bottom:1px solid #000000" class=small><b>
Information
</tr>
<tr>
<td class=small style="padding-left:10px;">
%%leftLinks%%
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</span><br>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- End Left Side Bar -->

[arossphoto]

This looks great. I have a bookstore now using amazon products feed, but it would be nice to have some integration with vB.

What would be really nice is the ability to select specific books that are relevant to your members and have them show on the front page as featured items. Is that possible with this?

I'm also in Canada, so it would be good to know for sure that this works with amazon.ca.

Cheers,

Andrew

[Tralala]

What would be really nice is the ability to select specific books that are relevant to your members and have them show on the front page as featured items. Is that possible with this?


I totally agree... would love this kind of personalization. Without it, this hack isn't nearly as interesting for a community IMHO.

[Code Monkey]

You can do that now with what Amazon offers it's associates. This is more of a store option I believe.

[Tralala]

You can do that now with what Amazon offers it's associates. This is more of a store option I believe.

Well yeah, we can generate associate URLs for linking, but I'm looking for a nice way to showcase those product recommendations in a vBulletin add-on. Haven't seen something like that available. I thought it would make sense to pair that with this hack if the author was interested.

[ciscoguy]

Nice addon for VB, however I am concerned with a possible security flaw. I was comparing my new install to yours to help me work on a few bugs and I came across this.

[EricaJoy]

/me clicks install.

[karthik123]

thank u very much for the hack..

Can I see one of the web sites which uses this hack? The demo mentioned in the hack is no longer available.

[rareclownfish]

Demo not working for me

[bbcentral]

I did a search on google for 'amazonindex.php' and found these:
http://www.talkandmore.net/amazonindex.php
http://www.debatepolitics.com/amazonindex.php

If only someone had managed to create a design that worked with this mod instead of against it :P
Personally I'd just put each section in a white box, or at least use CSS to draw a darker border around each item. It's not that hard :P

[RichieBoy67]

Wow..... My store is already indexed...

[karthik123]

thank you very much bbcentral..tht shurely helps a lot..

[ryancooper]

for those of you who have this installed how aer your comissions? Have you seen a increase?

[John Diver]

Just wanted to ask about something that has already been mentioned, are we able to show specific categories only?

I want to show poker items only for my store.

Thanks a lot
John

[John Diver]

Anyone know?

Thanks :)

[lebanon]

John, yes you can specify categories which you want to show
navigate to your forumurl/script/admin/
login , (defaults are admin.admin)
Then navigate to cats and add or remove categories you want to be shown or disabled.
ALso if there is a category you want to see and not there in my default list, then go to amazon and get its ID and add it there.
See the examples in the script/admin and think you will figure out the rest.
As for design wise, its all in the form of tpl which you can edit using any editot such as frontpage and choose your own design of output for all sections , simply dont touch the %%variables%% or move them into a different table to output them inside of that table.
Regards

[lebanon]

Nice addon for VB, however I am concerned with a possible security flaw. I was comparing my new install to yours to help me work on a few bugs and I came across this.
Well, that was because i was too lazy to upgrade my vb3.5.0 not because of this and many pages were defaced ,obviously i didnt catch all defaced pages and left few that still appeared, its unusual as after defacing i used search of modified files by that day and checked each manualy, but seems i left few:!

[menoutdoors]

Ok, I got a question. I finally got the amazon store to finally work, but only when you hit go on search or search for something. If you hit the category links, nothing comes up. Is there something I may have messed up, or have not done, and is there a way you could search all categories when you do a search? It works great until I change from the Tchatting Store and change the info to my store then certain things like the categories do not work, but if you hit go on the search it does. I just get this when I click any category:

http://www.clicklow.com/amazonindex.php?cat=10

Sorry, no results were found.


Thanks!
Any suggestions?

First I would like to say thank you for the hack.

Unfortunately I am also having the same problem. If you go to any of the categories in my store they all appear empty. However, if you use the search box and search for pretty much anything the products will all show up.

Anyone have any ideas on what I need to do to get this working?

Thanks
-Chris

[Boguns]

I have a problem. If you go to http://discusscareers.com/ everything is fine.

You click Store at the top and all the links in the navbars get mixed up.

How do i fix this?

[lebanon]

appearantly amazon changed something in their api which i wasnt updating, i will look it up but that would be after the weekend :)

[John Diver]

Hey,
Should we wait for a while before installing?

Just about to install but if theres a problem I dont mind waiting :)

Thanks

[hdcolumbus]

Just installed this (thanks for the mod, by the way) and when I drill down from the amazonindex.php page, I receive "Sorry, no results were found." I followed the directions properly--am I missing something?

Thanks!

[hdcolumbus]

Got it! Just need my AWS Access Identifier (had to add AWS to my associates account).

[efil]

Hi,
Does it works with vb 3.6?

[MotMann]

Does it works for amazon.de and vb 3.6 ?

[GoTTi]

i got this on 3.6.1...

when i goto the store and click some categories or do search i get:

Sorry, no results were found.

any ideas?

[^SuiCyde^]

installed, just wondering, can i do a full feature, for instance as an associate member of amazon, i can build frames.....how do i add these in?

[^SuiCyde^]

Got it! Just need my AWS Access Identifier (had to add AWS to my associates account).

apparently that's all i need....how do i get it?

[LordDB]

Just have a look at mine! Click one of the links below!:)

PM me for further guidance!

[raiderlax]

Can you possibly get this working with 3.6x vb???

Thanks :)