<CF_AMAZON>
| Tag Name: | <CF_AMAZON> |
| Version: | 4.0 (Released 7/17/2000) |
| Recent Changes: |
&/17/2000 v4.0 - Changed to server model. CF_AMAZON no longer
contacts Amazon.com directly, it contacts the CF_AMAZON Data Server located
here at Wake Internet. This will prevent you from having to constantly
get updates of CF_AMAZON.
7/16/2000 v3.13d - You know the drill. Sorry for the delay getting the update out! Two files changed this time - "amazon.cfm" and "amazon_parselist.cfm". 5/9/2000 v3.13c - Another change at Amazon, another version of CF_AMAZON. The only change was to the file "amazon.cfm" again. 5/9/2000 v3.13b - Sigh. Download 3.13b - the only change was to the "amazon.cfm" file. 4/12/2000 v3.13a - I released 3.13 on Sunday, and on Monday, they changed their book search layout. Sigh. Download 3.13a - the only change was to the "amazon.cfm" file. 4/09/2000 v3.13 - Amazon changed the layout of their book search results. I also added two new fields to the query results that are returned during book searches - "PublishDate" and "Format". 2/04/2000 v3.12 - See reason for change in 3.11. 1/27/2000 v3.11 - Those bastards changed their site design slightly, so the search by ISBN broke. It's fixed in 3.11. 1/25/2000 v3.1 - Added the FEATURE_ID attribute, allowing the tag to parse for special categories like "Best sellers in Business" or "Classic Fantasy". See tag documentation for details. 1/20/2000 v3.0 - CF_AMAZON now includes all Amazon product categories. And it's a source code release under the GNU General Public Licence. 12/8/99 v2.13 - Amazon changed the font of the product titles. Damn them! 11/30/99 v2.12 - Amazon moved the location of the product images. The tag was adjusted accordingly. Damn them! 9/7/99 v2.11 - Amazon changed the design of the following pages: top selling vhs, top selling dvd, coming soon vhs, and coming soon DVD. You can now see up to 100 items in each of these categories. I've adjusted the tag to match Amazon's new design. 9/1/99 v2.1 - When individual results were returned, either via a normal search or an ISBN search, the tag did not return any author information. It now returns authors in such cases. This was not a bug, merely a lack of a feature. =) 8/17/99 v2.0 - CF_AMAZON now returns list price, product status (such as "special order" or "out of stock"), image URL (when available). It also returns data for one search result (previously it when a search resulted in only one product, the user was linked directly to that product). You can also search by ISBN now, or even multiple ISBN's. We also noticed that the "limit" attribute was broken. It never returned more than 25 results. It will now return up to 100 items in certain cases (top_books, top_music, etc..). |
| Author: | Rick Root (ric@arborsites.com) |
| Licensing Status: | Open Source (view license) |
| Purpose: |
Amazon's affiliate program can help you make money on your web site. But
unless you spend a lot of work creating the links, you're only going to get
5% of most purchases made from your web site because they're not direct links.
In other words, a search box or a link to Amazon's home page is only going
to get you 5%.
The affiliate program becomes more valuable when you can link directly to products. There are over 400,000 products which will get you a 15% commission, but only if you link directly to those products. So I've created a "low-maintenance" way for you to get those direct links without having to spend a lot of time creating the HTML for those links. The <CF_AMAZON> custom tag pulls information in a variety of categories directly from Amazon's web site, and provides you with the information requested as a Query dataset, so you can output the results however you want. The data it retrieves is the ASIN, Title, Author (except for DVD's and video), List Price, Price, Image URL (when available), and Status. |