you get paid to sell amazon products(if they go through your referal)

This is cool. I want to look at it and see what it would take to convert it for other affiliate programs.

Amy,

I found out that Amazon has a RSS feed. Since i run the RSS Bot hack I thought about using it and this hack by you. Will this hack change the links they use in the RSS feed? Heres one link

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0007VZVG0/ref=nosimRss/webservices-20?dev-t=amznRss

It depends on two things:
1. How the bot hack forms the message. You may have to tweak it a bit to make it parse the amazon urls before saving the message.
2. If the RSS feed is set up to already use your affiliate ID, the hack won't change the links again. (which is a good thing)

Not sure how it does it but it doesnt give them UCash points so I am guessing it just adds te posts right to the database. :(

The RSS feed doesnt use the aff id.. :(

ok. Then it will be easy to do.
In the rss bot hack, find the line where it puts the message in the database. Then, above that line, copy the code that I used in functions_newpost.php.

Explicitly:
You might have to change the message variable to match whatever the hack called it. It's April 15 (tax day) and I am busy finializing tax returns for procrastinating clients. So, I can't help you dig through the RSS hack today.

Thx for this great hack... will work with the german sites.

Greetings from Vienna,
Norbert

I took a look but am scared to test because I just know Ill screw it up hehe

Does this hack affects existing posts/links?

Thanks,
-k

No. It does not. With VB2 it did, but the way links are show has changed in VB3.

I dont have this.. I think its because of the Warning Hack I have installed. :(

I have a

This is in there 2 or 3 times.. :(

Anyone with the ADVANCED WARNING SYSTEM (AWS) hack that figured out where to make the changes for private.php?

Fixed the private problem. :)
Also I tried messing with the amazom feed with and without adding that code to the RSS Article Bot and it didnt work at all. THe RSS didnt work. :(

Too bad, that would be really great to be able to change existing ones! (any taker?)

Thanks for sharing!

-k

You COULD change where my hack is run. Instead of running when a post is made and making the changes stick in the database, you COULD run it when the posts are shown instead. This way, they would be converted at display time, which would mean any link gets changed, no matter how old. That is the way it worked under VB2.

I didn't write the hack this way because that adds extra processing time that I felt wasn't worth it. I believe it's better to convert as each post is made, rather than having to reformat the link every time somebody views the post.

Amy

Good point. Is there an easy way to change this to make it work with the NTTP usenet hack?

-k

Gang, I don't have the time to get this working with other hacks that I don't use. I'm sorry but you're going to be on your own to get it working with other people's code.

The good thing is, it's trivial to make this puppy work. You just have to run the post message through my Amazon parser right before the post is entered in the database. It's just a matter of reading your hack code and finding the message variable and passing that to the parser before the database insert.

Amy I cant register at your support forum.. Gives me a font error message that I cant copy...

OK. Try it now. The image verification was goofing up.

Amy,

Is this right? I posted this link.....
and it changed it to this...

It loses the 002-5061230-3600869 and adds a extra /
Not sure but I also think the dealmeinnet-20 part is the persons ID from where I grabbed the link to post to my site.. :(

Nope. It's not. It needs to kill the dealmeinnet-20 part or you won't get credit. When you post a link to a product, it does kill any other referral links. But, it may have issues when you post a link to a general page.

I have good news and bad news.

First the good news. This hack will be trivial to port over to 3.5 as a plugin. It won't require any code edits on your part when I release it.

Now the bad news. Amazon has changed their affilliate link format again. The links to direct products are working still, but the rest is not. So, those of you who are using this hack are probably seeing a drop in revenue.

I'm working on getting it fixed, but parsing the urls has been less than fun. I'm not sure why Amazon keeps changing how they do their links. You would think they would leave well enough alone.

Amy

ported to 3.5
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/forumdisplay.php?f=166

I just added a new zip file called update.php. In it, there is a new version of functions_amazon.php. Please give it a try as it handles the new link formatting style that Amazon now employs. I am running this version of the file on my 3.5 board with no problems. If a few of you 3.0.x guys let me know that it works for you, I will replace the file in the original zip with the new one.

I just installed the update, and here are the results.

Random affiliate link found on the web:

gets changed to this:

which doesn't work. I'm guessing it's the double slashes. But I could be wrong. I did try the URL with only one of those slashes, and it takes me to the product page.

I'm going to look it over to see if I can find anything. But thanks Amy for your contribution. I'll probably head over to your forum to join. :)

Well, now that link seems to work. Not sure why...

Let me do some playing around tomorrow with different links to see how it goes. It's getting a little late here.

Thanks again. :)

The double slashes don't mess it up on my site. I haven't seen this version of the mod break, but it's not the heavy time for my users to be using it yet.

Amy

Amy, this modification would be absolutely perfect for my site, but I'm having some trouble with it.

I followed your instructions and here's what happens:

Test 1 is where I just copied and pasted a link from amazon into a post.

Test 2 is where I used the Insert Hyperlink button in the post and typed in the text "this is using a hyperlink button in a post".

Can you give me any ideas about what I'll need to change? I'm using vBulletin 3.03.

Thanks for any help you can provide.
Mary

So does this hack work still at all for V3.0.X?

and if so which ZIP do I need? the original one or the update one?

Is there something similiar vor 3.5.x?

Check her page here on vB.org to see what hacks she has for what versions of vB.