# WordPress Plugin - Buy This Book Extended



## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Okay, this plugin was called Buy This Book Extended - but due to shenanigans with the older version, I had to rename it. It's now called the Author Showcase plugin!

It's a WordPress plugin for self-hosted blogs that lets you display your books in several different ways using shortcodes and a sidebar widget. Big thanks to everyone for their feedback!

Link to the WordPress Directory​
[Original post]

I'd also like to get some suggestions for extra functionality. I can make the code do just about anything, but I don't know what authors really need. So if you've got a wishlist, or something you want a WordPress site to do that it doesn't do right now, lay it on me and I'll try to build it into BTBE before I submit it to the WP Directory.

Current implemented functionality

Admin page allows you to add each of your books with title, series, author, blurb, cover image, and any number of links to buy it
You can choose the icons for each link
Shortcodes can display different layouts on pages, see here: http://imgur.com/a/ZDq5o#0
Grid, List, Columns, Single
The grid layout includes the same slideout menu as in the sidebar widget
The grid allows you to choose the number of books per row

The sidebar widget displays book covers in a row, with a slideout menu of the links
Built-in responsiveness, so it should display properly on any screen size
Adding the ISBN and your Goodreads API key displays Goodreads reviews on the single book display shortcode (you can see how the reviews look here: http://raynfall.com/the-meldling/)
Adding your Amazon Affiliate access credentials and the ASIN displays Amazon reviews on the single book display shortcode (you can see how the reviews look here: http://raynfall.com/the-meldling/)
The sidebar widget has a 'Randomize' function that shows a new book from the chosen selection every time the page is reloaded. (Thanks to Vaalingrade for the suggestion)
You can now disable the grid or sidebar slideout menus and show the sales link icons by default. (Thanks for elizabethbarone for the suggestion)
There's now a dropdown list of pages in the Book editing screen that allows you to specify a WordPress page for each book. If this is set, a Find out more link will appear below the sidebar covers, and in the grid, columns and list formats. You can see the book page in a new column on the Book List screen. (Thanks to Kate Lowell for putting the idea in my head)
A short blurb has been added to the Book editing screen. The short blurb will be used in the list format, the columns format, and the sidebar (if set to visible). The original long blurb will be used in the single page format.
The List, Columns and Single layouts have text buy links by default, but you can specify that icons be used instead.
There is an 'icons only' option to show one book's buy links in icon format. (Thanks to Brandon Shire for the suggestion)
There is an 'links only' option to show one book's buy links in text format. (Thanks to Jamie Ross for the suggestion)
You can add a series number value to each book which will show up wherever the series name appears, e.g. A Song of Ice and Fire Book 1, Bodies and Souls #1 (thanks to Kate Lowell for the suggestion) 

Update: the Author Showcase plugin will soon be available in other languages! French is on the way, and hopefully Brazilian Portuguese. If you'd like to help out with a translation, please message me.​


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## Carradee (Aug 21, 2010)

I don't use WP for my site, but I'll pass this on to a friend who does use it for hers.


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## Felix R. Savage (Mar 3, 2011)

Hi Claire, how is this different from MyBookTable?


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Felix R. Savage said:


> Hi Claire, how is this different from MyBookTable?


No advertising, for a start. I'm not selling you anything - I made this because I needed a plugin and thought I might as well make it myself. It will always be 100% free and available in the WP Directory for all. You can add links and icons for any store, not just the ones the plugin allows you to.

I kinda thought MyBookTable was a bit of overkill, personally, but if people like that, I can start replicating its features.


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## onguard74 (Apr 3, 2014)

Thanks for posting, Claire. I've been looking for a plugin like this all week. The other ones I found didn't work for me personally. I'll give this one a go and get back to you.


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

I added a responsive grid layout with the same slideout menu that the sidebar widget uses this morning. I might add a single page layout with embedded reviews from Amazon - I've done some API stuff before, it's not hard - but it means that you'd need an Amazon Affiliate account, which kinda sucks.


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## onguard74 (Apr 3, 2014)

A single page layout with reviews sounds good. Most authors have Amazon affiliate accounts anyway, so don't stress about that


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## Vicki Hinze (Oct 25, 2010)

Thanks, Claire. I just took a look and saw your two books with the links. I like it very much.


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Alrighty, I set up a single page layout and added Goodreads reviews. I'm going to put those and the Amazon reviews side by side. Shame they can't be formatted nicely, but what can you do.

[added by edit] this isn't in the version on my site yet, I have some more doodads to set up.


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Okay, I've added the single book layout, and stuff for including Amazon and Goodreads reviews. The zip on my site is updated. If anyone's installed it already, the new version may not overwrite properly, so please let me know here if you see any errors.

Also you may need to deactivate it and then activate it again to make it update itself properly


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## Felix R. Savage (Mar 3, 2011)

This looks like the business, Claire! I'm not a fan of MyBookTable personally. Its layout doesn't look professional. I'm going to download your updated zip and play around with it! You're a star for doing this.


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Felix R. Savage said:


> This looks like the business, Claire! I'm not a fan of MyBookTable personally. Its layout doesn't look professional. I'm going to download your updated zip and play around with it! You're a star for doing this.


If you've any suggestions for the layout, please let me know! I'm adding minimal CSS so that everything is responsive and looks coherent, but otherwise it should pick up the theme CSS, and that can sometimes produce some odd effects. The grid is especially weird - I'm generating and adding CSS styles depending on how many show up per row, while still being responsive.

I'm not a CSS person, more or less. I know enough to get things working, but I'm really more of a PHP dev than a web designer.


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## Steve Margolis (Mar 31, 2015)

That is an amazingly clever Plugin!


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Interesting. any chance of getting some shortcodes so one can drop a sidebar-esque book entry into a post or page? I tend to announce new books at the end of blog posts and being able to drop the book box into the post would be nice.

Also how about a rotating book widget?


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Vaalingrade said:


> Interesting. any chance of getting some shortcodes so one can drop a sidebar-esque book entry into a post or page? I tend to announce new books at the end of blog posts and being able to drop the book box into the post would be nice.
> 
> Also how about a rotating book widget?


Okay I think I'll just post some screenshots of what each shortcode looks like. I think the default list type with a single book ID will do what you're talking about.

I can definitely do a rotating widget  what kind of transition would people like?


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Okay! I used A Game of Thrones as an example, and put a few screenshots into an Imgur album that show the different shortcode options.

The grid type also includes the slideout menu on each book.

http://imgur.com/a/ZDq5o#0

(Apologies for the horrible grey and blue, that's my test server.)


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

If anyone is getting an activation error about a missing class, delete the plugin and get the most up to date version from the link in the OP here.

Thanks to Neal for spotting that, it should be fixed now.

[added by edit] I uploaded the latest version to my own site and got it set up, then pushed through a bunch of bugfixes. If anyone's seeing anything odd, delete the one you've got on your site and upload a fresh copy from the link in the OP. Let me know if anything breaks.


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## Shei Darksbane (Jan 31, 2015)

Could you put a live preview up somewhere? 
Hard to know if I'd want to use it if I can't even see it in action.


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Shei Darksbane said:


> Could you put a live preview up somewhere?
> Hard to know if I'd want to use it if I can't even see it in action.


Sure - here's the test page on my site - http://raynfall.com/books/

It uses the list view. And you can see the widget slideout menu in the sidebar, just click on the book covers.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Claire Ryan said:


> Okay I think I'll just post some screenshots of what each shortcode looks like. I think the default list type with a single book ID will do what you're talking about.
> 
> I can definitely do a rotating widget  what kind of transition would people like?


Cool.

I'd be happy with a rotate on-reload.

Are you planning to put it up on the official WP plugin site once you're out of beta?


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## JalexM (May 14, 2015)

Claire Ryan said:


> Okay! I used A Game of Thrones as an example, and put a few screenshots into an Imgur album that show the different shortcode options.
> 
> The grid type also includes the slideout menu on each book.
> 
> ...


Looks nice, i'll give a try when I update my site in a few weeks. Since I use X theme short codes are paramount.


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## Brandon Shire (Jun 17, 2012)

Looks good. definitely needed.


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Vaalingrade said:


> Cool.
> 
> I'd be happy with a rotate on-reload.
> 
> Are you planning to put it up on the official WP plugin site once you're out of beta?


Definitely. I won't be able to upgrade the old plugin, unfortunately, so it'll be a separate listing, but it'll be there.


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Vaalingrade said:


> Cool.
> 
> I'd be happy with a rotate on-reload.
> 
> Are you planning to put it up on the official WP plugin site once you're out of beta?


Right, the sidebar widget now has a Randomize option to display a single book out of the selection on every reload.

Also I did some more bugfixes.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

This is great! I've been looking for more author-friendly WP plugins/themes. Thank you so much for doing this!

One suggestion: I'd love for the icons to be visible without users having to click the book cover.


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

elizabethbarone said:


> This is great! I've been looking for more author-friendly WP plugins/themes. Thank you so much for doing this!
> 
> One suggestion: I'd love for the icons to be visible without users having to click the book cover.


Certainly. I'll add a switch to the sidebar widget so that you can choose whether the icons appear or not.

The grid is kind of a special case, should I add the same option there as well? It does mean a little more putzing around with the shortcodes.


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## Elizabeth Barone (May 6, 2013)

That's perfect! Maybe not necessary for the grid. What does everyone else think?


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## Kate Lowell (Apr 18, 2015)

I really like the functionality the way it is, though I can see that people might not realize they need to click in order to get the links. I occasionally think it would be nice if the blurb and the buy links would slide out when you click or mouseover something in the grid, but it's pretty good right now and I start feeling like I'm looking a gift horse in the mouth. I love being able to customize all the links--being with a mid-sized pub, that's important to me.

Anyone else missing the ability to modify or delete books on the list? Looking at the code, I can see that is supposed to be available, but it doesn't show up for me. (I remember just enough about coding that I can see it's supposed to exist, not enough to fix it myself.) If so, how did you get around it, other than recreating the book every time you figure out you made a mistake?


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Kate Lowell said:


> I really like the functionality the way it is, though I can see that people might not realize they need to click in order to get the links. I occasionally think it would be nice if the blurb and the buy links would slide out when you click or mouseover something in the grid, but it's pretty good right now and I start feeling like I'm looking a gift horse in the mouth. I love being able to customize all the links--being with a mid-sized pub, that's important to me.
> 
> Anyone else missing the ability to modify or delete books on the list? Looking at the code, I can see that is supposed to be available, but it doesn't show up for me. (I remember just enough about coding that I can see it's supposed to exist, not enough to fix it myself.) If so, how did you get around it, other than recreating the book every time you figure out you made a mistake?


I can make more than just the buy links slide out if you like  A very long blurb could be tricky, though. There's only one blurb which serves for all formats, so I'd have to add a new field for an excerpt.

In order to modify or delete books, you should see a column in the main book list called 'Last Update', and there should be a link in the box there that says 'Edit this Book'. You can delete books by going to the end of the Editing screen and clicking on the link there.

[added by edit] Actually, I know what I can do for the grid! On the slideout, I'll drop in a "Find out more" button below the sales links that will go to an existing page. Then on that page, you can put the single layout or a list or anything really.


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## Kate Lowell (Apr 18, 2015)

Claire Ryan said:


> Actually, I know what I can do for the grid! On the slideout, I'll drop in a "Find out more" button below the sales links that will go to an existing page. Then on that page, you can put the single layout or a list or anything really.


That sounds like a really good idea.

As for editing, I can't get into that screen. I get a 404 error when I click the link. But if you haven't heard about it from anyone else, it must just be me, which makes me sad. I mean, I like being special, but not like that.


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Alrighty then, more changes. There's now a dropdown list of pages in the Book editing screen that allows you to specify a WordPress page for each book. If this is set, a Find out more link will appear below the sidebar covers, and in the grid, columns and list formats. You can see the book page in a new column on the book list.

A short blurb has been added to the Book editing screen. The short blurb will be used in the list format, the columns format, and the sidebar (if set to visible). The original long blurb will be used in the single page format.

Then I did some CSS changes and a couple of bugfixes.


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

If anyone has an issue with the sales links and icons not saving properly, please download the plugin again from my site and reinstall it. I just caught a JS bug and fixed it.


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

The Amazon and Goodreads reviews literally turn my brain inside out.

I think I've got them working though. The Goodreads reviews require an API key, which you can get from the GR site. You can see the reviews working here: http://raynfall.com/the-meldling/


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Thanks very much to Kate for helping with the 404 error. It's fixed so if anyone is having issues with that, you can get the latest version of the plugin from my site to correct them. (It's due to your WP blog being in a subfolder.)


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## Kate Lowell (Apr 18, 2015)

It's working great, Claire! Tried it out in a post tonight and it looks great.


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## Brandon Shire (Jun 17, 2012)

Wondering if a shortcode just for the buy links would be possible. 

That way I can just drop that into the pages I already have set up.


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## Brandon Shire (Jun 17, 2012)

Think I've run into my first problem with this. It only allows 10 books to be uploaded into the list. 

I loaded 11, it hacked off #10 and replaced it with #11. The book that was in #10 place simply disappeared. Thought I made a mistake and missed it, so I went back and reloaded all the info. But it's gone, even after uploading it a 2nd time.


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Brandon Shire said:


> Think I've run into my first problem with this. It only allows 10 books to be uploaded into the list.
> 
> I loaded 11, it hacked off #10 and replaced it with #11. The book that was in #10 place simply disappeared. Thought I made a mistake and missed it, so I went back and reloaded all the info. But it's gone, even after uploading it a 2nd time.


That really shouldn't be happening! I'll investigate immediately.

If you could PM me a WordPress login so I can see this in action, that'd be great.


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## Kate Lowell (Apr 18, 2015)

It might be a temporary thing. I couldn't save more than one thing at a time last night, but today it's fine. My guess is gremlins.


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Nope, looks like I cocked up the pagination. It should be fixed now - download the plugin and reinstall it. I also swapped the book list display over to the usual WP format.


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Brandon Shire said:


> Wondering if a shortcode just for the buy links would be possible.
> 
> That way I can just drop that into the pages I already have set up.


Also, Brandon - how would you like this to look? Can you link me an example?


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## Brandon Shire (Jun 17, 2012)

Claire Ryan said:


> Also, Brandon - how would you like this to look? Can you link me an example?


If you scroll down a bit on this page http://brandonshire.com/books/listening-to-dust/ , you'll see what I did with jpegs to make it easier for readers to click and buy. I've found that the jpeg works 40% better than just text links. But they're a pain in the butt to put into a WP page. A shortcode with just the sales sites would eliminate all the problems of inserting jpegs and they could be inserted anywhere within the page.


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Brandon Shire said:


> If you scroll down a bit on this page http://brandonshire.com/books/listening-to-dust/ , you'll see what I did with jpegs to make it easier for readers to click and buy. I've found that the jpeg works 40% better than just text links. But they're a pain in the butt to put into a WP page. A shortcode with just the sales sites would eliminate all the problems of inserting jpegs and they could be inserted anywhere within the page.


Excellent. Okay, I can do that. I'll let you know when it's implemented.

Your icons are 64x64 - I'll assume you want to keep that size.


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Brandon Shire said:


> If you scroll down a bit on this page http://brandonshire.com/books/listening-to-dust/ , you'll see what I did with jpegs to make it easier for readers to click and buy. I've found that the jpeg works 40% better than just text links. But they're a pain in the butt to put into a WP page. A shortcode with just the sales sites would eliminate all the problems of inserting jpegs and they could be inserted anywhere within the page.


Okay! The latest version of the plugin now has this feature. I've also added a new switch so that you can choose to use icons instead of text links on the List, Columns and Single layouts.

I've written up a User manual for the shortcodes, which you can see here: http://raynfall.com/btbe-user-manual/


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## Brandon Shire (Jun 17, 2012)

So awesome. Thanks!


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## Brandon Shire (Jun 17, 2012)

Getting a 404 on link for new beta version


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Brandon Shire said:


> Getting a 404 on link for new beta version


Gah, sorry! The link is fixed now.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Any ETA on getting this on the WP plugin site? I hate messing with my host's UI to install plugins myself.


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Vaalingrade said:


> Any ETA on getting this on the WP plugin site? I hate messing with my host's UI to install plugins myself.


I think I'm close to having it ready. If there are no more feature suggestions in the next few weeks, I'll go ahead and submit it to the WP Directory.

I'm away on vacation until the 26th so it's unlikely I'll get anything done before then.


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## Kate Lowell (Apr 18, 2015)

This is partly a bump, and partly just to tell Claire again how much I'm loving this plugin. I had to change out a cover from a placeholder to the real cover, and it was the easiest thing ever to do. I don't even have to worry about running around trying to find all the instances of the picture, because the plugin has picked them all up.


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Kate Lowell said:


> This is partly a bump, and partly just to tell Claire again how much I'm loving this plugin. I had to change out a cover from a placeholder to the real cover, and it was the easiest thing ever to do. I don't even have to worry about running around trying to find all the instances of the picture, because the plugin has picked them all up.


 Glad it's working well for you.

Remember guys, feature requests and bug reports are welcome! I'm subscribed to this thread, so anything posted here will get seen.


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## JTriptych (Aug 23, 2015)

Bookmarked!  

Will this work with free WP sites as well? I heard you couldnt embed anything on them?


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

JTriptych said:


> Bookmarked!
> 
> Will this work with free WP sites as well? I heard you couldnt embed anything on them?


No, sorry. This is for self-hosted WP sites only. I don't think you can install any plugins on the free Wordpress.com blogs.


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## Kate Lowell (Apr 18, 2015)

Claire, can you tell me what this error I'm getting is and what I can do about it?


failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request in /home/katelowe/public_html/wp-content/plugins/buy-this-book-extended/class_btbe_api_connections.php on line 64  

I only just got around to getting the API keys for reviews, and this is what happened. (Did some more investigating and it seems to be the AWS Acces Key that's causing the problem. But without it, I can't pull the reviews over.)

Hmm. Would it be difficult for you to add a field for what number book it was in the series? Like, I've just started a trilogy. The first one is up on my website, but there's no place to indicate that it's book #1. Ideally, it would be nice to have:

Flesh Market
Bodies and Souls #1

Or something similar, above the blurb. I've sort of brute forced it for now, but when the second one comes out, it would be nice if I could leave the series field as Bodies and Souls, and have something else to append the #1 to Flesh Market, and the #2 to Proud Flesh.

Thanks


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## Nancy_G (Jun 22, 2015)

I just installed this tonight and really like it! Here's a link to my site with the plugin on the right side: http://www.nancyglynn.com/. I love how it'll be on every page/post. This is the second plugin I've gotten from a fellow Kboarder this week (the progress report above it).

Thanks so much!


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Kate Lowell said:


> Claire, can you tell me what this error I'm getting is and what I can do about it?
> 
> failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request in /home/katelowe/public_html/wp-content/plugins/buy-this-book-extended/class_btbe_api_connections.php on line 64
> 
> ...


That does not look good. I'll review the code tomorrow, see what I can do.


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## Kate Lowell (Apr 18, 2015)

awesome. Thank you. I removed the offending API key so it's not doing that, but if you want to see the whole text, I can put it back in and you can check out one of the pages.


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Kate Lowell said:


> awesome. Thank you. I removed the offending API key so it's not doing that, but if you want to see the whole text, I can put it back in and you can check out one of the pages.


Hi Kate, I think I need to see this one in action. Just to doublecheck, I'm running the plugin on my own site and you can see the Amazon and Goodreads reviews working normally here: http://raynfall.com/the-meldling/

Did you add the Amazon Associates tag as well? Missing that might cause this kind of error.

I've also added the series number value to the book records as well, it'll show up anywhere the series name appears in the format [Series Name] [Series Number Text]

Examples: A Song of Ice and Fire Book 1, Bodies and Souls #1


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## Kate Lowell (Apr 18, 2015)

I can put the codes back in if you want, but I literally released today, and don't want to mess up the way the blog looks, lol.  If I throw them in tonight, would you have time to have a look?


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Kate Lowell said:


> I can put the codes back in if you want, but I literally released today, and don't want to mess up the way the blog looks, lol. If I throw them in tonight, would you have time to have a look?


Can you set up a test page that isn't linked on any other pages, and message it to me?

I can't remember if you were having an issue with your blog being in a subfolder, might be related here.


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## Kate Lowell (Apr 18, 2015)

Whoops! Sorry, i got crazy busy with promo and working on the Christmas release. I've got the shortcodes scattered all through the website, so making a test page isn't going to change anything unless I go through and replace them all with list codes. I don't have the site in a subfolder any more, so that shouldn't be an issue. I'm wondering if I'm not putting in some value that the code needs, but I don't know enough javascript or php to figure it out on my own.

What if I put the codes in and copied the whole error code and emailed it to you?


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Kate Lowell said:


> Whoops! Sorry, i got crazy busy with promo and working on the Christmas release. I've got the shortcodes scattered all through the website, so making a test page isn't going to change anything unless I go through and replace them all with list codes. I don't have the site in a subfolder any more, so that shouldn't be an issue. I'm wondering if I'm not putting in some value that the code needs, but I don't know enough javascript or php to figure it out on my own.
> 
> What if I put the codes in and copied the whole error code and emailed it to you?


I've really got to see this in action, so I can check what's coming back from the API call. Can you PM me when you've got the chance? If I can get on google chat or something with you while you do this, I can get a look at one of the pages for the five seconds you have the codes in there.

Alternatively, and this might be a long shot - can you check the ASINs, the Amazon Associate tags, and the API keys to make sure that there are no extra spaces or punctuation hiding in there?


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## AngelaQuarles (Jun 22, 2014)

Is this still an active plugin?

I like being able to have it accessible as short codes so I can put other stuff on the page, but I was wondering if I'm doing something wrong, because my blurb isn't wrapping. Test page: http://angelaquarles.com/books/must-love-series/must-love-breeches/

Is it possible to not have the colored background?

Thanks!


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

AngelaQuarles said:


> Is this still an active plugin?
> 
> I like being able to have it accessible as short codes so I can put other stuff on the page, but I was wondering if I'm doing something wrong, because my blurb isn't wrapping. Test page: http://angelaquarles.com/books/must-love-series/must-love-breeches/
> 
> ...


Yes, this is still active, but I've run into some issues when I submitted it to the WordPress Directory. I added it as a new plugin, and they want me to rewrite it as an upgrade to the original BTB plugin. This is going to take a while longer.

If your blurb isn't wrapping, and there's a colored background, that's controlled by the CSS in your own WordPress theme. It's not actually the plugin doing it. Do you know anything about CSS styling?



KQ said:


> How quickly do you need people to try this? I'm interested but I'm about to roll into some promos from the 1st and wouldn't want to mess with my website until afterwards (about the middle of the month). I'm using my book table but I hate it.


There's no rush on testing. It's been available for a while on my website and I've got enough feedback to submit it to the WP Directory. I'm always open to feature requests if there's something that people want that isn't there.


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## KL_Phelps (Nov 7, 2013)

tagging


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Just a further update about this - I'm in contact with someone over at the WordPress Directory, and I'm trying to get the plugin submitted as an upgrade to the old one. If they give me the all-clear, this should be available in the Directory very soon!

I've been thinking about other plugins that might be useful for authors, and I'm wondering about taking a closer look at Goodreads and LibraryThing integration.


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Another update about this plugin - it's going to be submitted as a new plugin, but it needs to be renamed so there's no confusion with the old one.

If anyone has any suggestions for a name for this tool, I'm all ears! I'm leaning towards calling it the Author Showcase or something, seeing as all it does is display books nicely on a WordPress site.


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## A.A (Mar 30, 2012)

'Author Showcase' sounds great!


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## Sarah Shaw (Feb 14, 2015)

A.A said:


> 'Author Showcase' sounds great!


I agree.


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Alrighty then, the renamed plugin has been submitted to the Directory. Waiting on their feedback now...


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

And it's done! Thanks to everyone who helped develop this plugin! It's now available in the WordPress Directory!

https://wordpress.org/plugins/author-showcase/

Anyone who still has the plugin under the old name of Buy This Book Extended, you can keep using that if you like. If you'd rather use the version in the WP Directory, just uninstall BTBE first. Once you activate the Author Showcase plugin, you should see all your books as normal.


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## A.A (Mar 30, 2012)

Yay Claire! Well done 

Am going to take this plugin for a spin when I get the chance.


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## Incognita (Apr 3, 2011)

Hi, Claire. I installed the plug-in and have started to add books, but for some reason it's not letting me enter any buy links. Every time I hit "save," it says the book is saved, but there's no place to enter the actual store links. Any ideas on what's going wrong?

ETA: Even though it seemed as if I was saving my work after I entered each book, only the last one I set up actually appeared in the book list, so I lost all that work.  I'm not sure what's going on, but I'm going back to the older version for now. It's easier to deal with.


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

ChristinePope said:


> Hi, Claire. I installed the plug-in and have started to add books, but for some reason it's not letting me enter any buy links. Every time I hit "save," it says the book is saved, but there's no place to enter the actual store links. Any ideas on what's going wrong?
> 
> ETA: Even though it seemed as if I was saving my work after I entered each book, only the last one I set up actually appeared in the book list, so I lost all that work.  I'm not sure what's going on, but I'm going back to the older version for now. It's easier to deal with.


Hi Christine, do you have the add button here? http://imgur.com/korjKSd

You should be able to add the links using this button. You click that to create a new link slot, fill it in, then save the book.

The reason only the last one is showing up is because the form switches to editing that book as soon as you save it, or it should. I suspect you've overwriting the books you've already entered.

Do you get a link at the top to add another book or return to the book list when you hit save?

Just FYI - you can actually use both of these plugins at the same time, so feel free to mess about with the Showcase one as much as you want. It won't show up anywhere on the front end until you use the widget or the shortcodes.


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Hi all

Traci Loudin emailed me about this plugin, and suggested a new feature - a scrolling widget that shows books in sequence with left and right arrows to flick through each one. I think this sounds like an awesome idea  especially for a series, you could put them all in there, start at Book 1, and then let the user flick through them all.

Here's what it looks like, as per Traci's site: http://www.traciloudin.com/free

You can see the widget in the sidebar with the arrows above it. If I add it to the Author Showcase, it'll obviously pick up whatever style your theme uses, so it'll probably look a little different on your own site.

What say you, friends? Do you think you'd use this? If at least three people say yes, I'll get to work


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

Just a quick bump to let everyone know that this plugin is still under active development. I'm taking suggestions here or through my site. The latest thing to be added is a text version of the buy links display. I've also added some more checks and bugfixes to make it more stable.

I'll see about adding some more display options, like the carousel mentioned previously.


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## Claire Ryan (Jun 7, 2012)

More updates: I've set up the plugin for translations into languages other than English! I've pulled together the first translation into French using my rather rusty knowledge and Google Translate.

If anyone would like to help translate this into another language, please contact me.


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## George Saoulidis (Feb 2, 2016)

I think this is just what I needed for a project! Many thanks, will put it to good use.


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## George Saoulidis (Feb 2, 2016)

Not-so-urgent request: I'd like the book cover to be clickable in the default format, linking to the same as "Find out more". I'm pretty sure I can hack a temporary fix for myself for now, but I'd love it if was done properly


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