Hi.

The page I am trying to search is www.hipoint.co.uk/index.php/book-reviews

I have the plugin installed and enabled. I have my AWS details saved in the plugin. The allow_url_fopen option is on by default, and I am using the filegetcontents option.
Error messages are on, and I get no response from the server. I know I'm doing something stupid, as I am new to Joomla. Could you possibly give me an idea where to look? What do you need to know? What step(s) do you think I have missed out?
Could it be anything to do with permissions?

I had a look through the generated source page and nothing shows up. I am at a loss.
TIA,
Susi

We do have a FAQ answer on this, it may answer your question. www.spiralscripts.co.uk/FAQ/i-cant-get-t...isplay-anything.html

Also which version of PHP are you using? It is essential that PHP 5+ is used.

Hi Susan. Great name, btw.

I've studied the FAQ from top to bottom and back again, that's why I posted. I seem to have done everything it says.
PHP version is 5.2.16

How do I get words on the page to be identified as the search words? Perhaps that's the problem?
The category selected is "book reviews" and the article is the same name "book reviews".
I've tried using "root" as the category, and "all articles" as well. Nothing.
I've tried a less strict template. Nothing.
I'm at a loss.

The PHP version is fine, so it should be possible to solve this.

First, have you remembered to enable the plugin?

When you say error messages are on, do you mean your site error reporting? or the plugin show error messages option? It is best to have both enabled. If you get any message let me know, usually Amazon error messages are quite informative.

If you don't get any message from Amazon then the error is in trying to contact the server.

Since you say you are using filegetcontents to contact the server, try switching to the cURL option. Also check that your Access key and private key are correct, also Amazon now require that you have a valid Amazon Associates ID as well.

You set the search terms using the article meta keywords tag, if you don't set these then you won't see anything happening. It doesn't matter if these are related to the article text or not.

Many thanks for the reply.

The plugin is enabled.
Both site, and plugin, error reporting are on.
cURL is not enabled as I am on a shared server package. You only get cURL on a real or virtual server package from Fasthosts. I've tried it anyway, "just in case." Nothing. Sorry.

I haven't seen any errors, but then I don't know where I'm looking. I've looked in the root error.php log and there are only a few password login errors. Nothing else.

The HTML from the page shows the following article metatags and that the amazonWS stylesheet is loaded:

<meta name="keywords" content="A Breath of Hope, Pandora's Highway, breath, hope, Pandora's, highway" />
<meta name="author" content="SusanJayne" />
<meta name="generator" content="Joomla! 1.7 - Open Source Content Management" />
<title>Book Reviews</title>

<link rel="stylesheet" href="www.hipoint.co.uk/plugins/content/amazon...s/amazonWS.css" type="text/css" />

I have a valid associates ID.
My AWS passwords have been copied direct from the AWS website to the plugin.

You should see any error message displayed in the article text, not in the error logs.

Your search terms are very specific, it could be that they are too specific to produce a result.

As a test try using the following embedding code rather than the metatags (set these to blank for now)

{amazonWS:searchIndex=Apparel;keywords=silk,scarf;maxresults=3;country=com}

This code definitely works on our site, so if you don't see a result then it is most likely a problem with contacting the server.

Hi Susan.

I did not know how to embed the line, but I put in the metatags silk,scarf,apparel and it worked!!
The strange thing is, so do my metatags. Well, sort of. Are the metatags additive? The more tags, the less results? If so, this would explain things. The thing is, I need to provide links to two books. I don't mind the other results, just have to sort out the ranking, so my books appear at the top.

Thank you so much for your help and patience.

Very best wishes,
Susi.

My review on Joomla Extensions site. You deserve it -

As a complete Joomla beginner, I found the setup of this plugin to be easy. You need to look at their FAQ's and take note of what is said there. I struggled, because I did not know enough about metatags in articles, but the support is superb!! Problem solved thanks to support. If you want something that puts Amazon sites on your page, this plugin is for you. I highly recommend this plugin. Well worth the small cash asked.

Thanks again Susan.

Great, I am really pleased that it is working, and thanks for the nice review.

You are right, the tags are additive. Amazon product search is very inflexible, it looks for an exact match to all search terms that you supply, that is the product title or author or other details must include all the search keywords. So if you use very specific ones then there is a good chance that there won't be any that match the terms.

The plugin makes things a bit easier by only using the first two metatags that you supply, so that additional ones can be anything that you like. If you want the results to return a specific product a good trick can be to use the product ASIN or ISBN as one of the first two tags - you can find this on the Amazon product page.

I have noticed that you are not the only person to have difficulties with this, I am going to add this information to the FAQ.

You don't need to do anything special to use the embedding code, just include it in the article text, the plugin automatically finds it when the page is output. The advantage of using it is that it allows you more options, although if you are happy with using the metatags then stick with that.