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Windows Live Plug-in for Amazon Quick Linker – Download

In my previous post Creating a Windows Live Writer Plug-In with C# I created a plug-in for the Amazon Quick Linker.  I didn’t include the plug-in it self.  I thought It would be better to have a smaller post showing it and the download.  So here is a quick tour or FAQ on it.  Please feel free to post your questions and suggestion on this post.  I really would like to hear back from you.

Download Amazon Quick Linker Plug-in for Windows Live Writer

Installing:

  1. Close Windows Live Writer it isn’t already.
  2. Unzip the AmazonQuickLink.zip file into your “C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Writer\Plugins” directory.
  3. Open Windows Live Writer and check for the lighting icon on the bottom right menu labeled “Insert”.

AmazonQuickLinkerDemo

Please note, you need to have the Amazon Quick Linker Widget installed to use this.  In my post WordPress, Windows Live Writer, and Amazon Quick Linker I talk about how I got Amazon Quick Linker working with WordPress.

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WordPress, Windows Live Writer, and Amazon Quick Linker

A friend of mine turned me on to Windows Live Writer for doing my blogs.  It works great with WordPress and I don’t have the trouble of waiting for post-backs or time-outs like I did when I work with WordPress.  I love it!  I can also save my drafts locally on my hard drive or to my blog and then pick them up later.  Its loaded with lots of great features.  One of my favorite is that it shows you just what your post will look like on your blog before you publish it.

I only had one problem installing it.  When I set up Amazon Quick Linker I pasted the code they gave me into the header.php file of my WordPress theme.  For some reason this stymied Windows Live Writer when it tried to return my theme.  After I removed the Quick Linker code and updated the theme in Windows Live Writer it installed correctly.  I then put the Amazon Quick Linker code back in and presto! I am off and blogging again.

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Adding Amazon’s Quick Linker Widget to WordPress

Amazon provides a Amazon Widget called Quick Linker. This widget can be used to easily add a affiliate link from your blog post back to a product on Amazon. For example here is one for WordPress for Dummies.  If you already have a Amazon Affliate account it is just a matter of logging in and getting the script it generates for you. But where do you paste it? I couldn’t find anything that would tell me. I finally decide to paste it in the header.php file before the body tag. So far it seems to be working correctly.  I did notice that when I edited a post with tags in it for the Quick Linker that the asin attribute was removed from the anchor tags.  I don’t know why that is.  I just put it back in and tried not to edit it again.  If anyone knows of a better way to do this please let me know.