Upcoming Amazon Changes

[associate-o-matic]

Amazon has announced they will be making some API changes October 15, 2010. They will also be introducing efficiency guidelines which will be phased in over a period of three months, starting July 15, and by October 15 all usage will be subject to these guidelines.

You can read the complete announcement here (Yellow Box):
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp ... /main.html

Unless and until we hear otherwise from Amazon, certain features will in turn be removed from Associate-O-Matic by October 15, 2010:

- Tag Cloud Box
- Display Order Status Link
- Automotive Parts Finder Box, the Automotive category will still be available

We are sorry to see these features go. We've spent considerable time making them a part of Associate-O-Matic. But the show must go on.

Thank you all for your continued support.

Justin

[jquarta]

Justin they also made official the deprecation of the log-in page that used merge cart=false. Sad to see it go!

http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC ... tsNew.html

Joe...

[littletoons]

Not to mention Customer Reviews. I wonder if this means Editorial Reviews as well are being nixed within the API. Does anyone know?

They WILL allow linking within a Iframe though. I'm sure Justin is aware at this point.

[mcarp555]

Editorial reviews will remain as they are. We should more information next week.

[sexydexie]

Hi,
v4.5 is coming before Oct 15, when is v5 Beta launching?
Is v4.5 using CSS or only for V5 onward?

Must all AOM site upgrade to v4.5 before amazon changes? Can I wait till v5?
If did not upgrade to v4.5 after amazon changes, will the aom older version site working properly?

Thanks

[associate-o-matic]

The v4.5 BETA is coming today or tomorrow with a public release hopefully by the weekend. It was mostly a matter of stripping things out so the code should be pretty much ready for public consumption. A few days of BETA will work out any kinks we might have missed.

You'll want to update your stores to this version prior to Amazon's October 15 deadline. This release also includes the new Customer Reviews format which is required by Amazon. Older versions will not show reviews unless upgraded. For the specifics on how AOM is affected by the recent Amazon changes please see this blog post by mcarp555:

http://www.aomtalk.com/2010/09/amazon-c ... -good.html

The templating and CSS are coming in v5 which we'll be telling you more about in the near future.

[neodyne]

I have always had one nagging thought at the back of my mind - that I've got a number of sites as an amazon associate and that all my eggs are in one basket being with amazon alone - not a good idea! It would be nice if the folks at AOM could look at the possibility of alliances with other major players on the web. AOM have come up with the best integrated and simple to use software I have ever used, is it not possible to expand? give amazon some competition? maybe then they may be tempted to play a little more equitably with their associates.

[Caroline]

Hi,
I don't use the Tag Cloud Box, the Display Order Status Link and Automotive Parts Finder Box.
Can I wait till Nov. 09. with the update?
Only the reviews are important for me.

Best reguards Caroline

[mcarp555]

Sure.

[associate-o-matic]

Amazon was very vague on how deprecated features would be handled after the cutoff date. We were told that certain deprecated items would simply be ignored in API calls. We're seeing that this isn't the case and hard errors are being returned.

This MultiOperation error requires that you update your stores to version v4.5 as we have the fix built in there.

We'll be updating our demo stores today as they too currently show the MultiOperation error.

Justin