Thursday, 3 June 2010

Invalid User IQ

I was trying to set up "Amazon Associates" links for my last post, and had no end of trouble; it just didn't want to display. The Blogger editor interface didn't even show the "Amazon Associates" Panel properly; it just showed a stuck/frozen "Initializing" message that never got anywhere.

I eventually tried it in IE (I normally use Firefox, currently 3.6.3) and it all worked fine, and then it dawned on me -- My AdBlocker Pro Firefox plugin was preventing me from seeing my own Amazon associate links. D'oh!

A few mouse clicks later and I disabled the rules that were blocking the Amazon product link for the design book I was referencing, and all was fine and dandy! I also directly copied the link URL from the served ad and embedded it in the original post so that even people with the same AdBlock settings as I originally had would have a product link that worked as intended.

Details on ABP settings:
  • CTRL-SHIFT-V to open the blockable items pane
  • You'll see some items blocked by the Filters "assoc-amazon.com^$third-party" and "ws.amazon.*/widgets/q?$third-party". Click the icon at the far right to disable the rule.
  • Reload the page; the Amazon Associates panel/ads should work now.

12 comments:

  1. Thanks - worked for me, too!

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  2. Thanks a lot...I was struggling with issue for few days...Two clicks and a restart of Firefox solved it :D

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  3. Man, that was driving me crazy! Thanks for letting me know! :D

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  4. thx a gazillion for the great information and solution

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  5. How do I fix this for the latest firefox?

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  6. I was having this issue and thought my AdBlock might be causing it. Thanks for the helpful post!

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  7. I am running XP and Chrome 14.0. My widget stopped working a couple weeks ago. I hadn't made any changes (that I remember). I switched to IE8 and it was working there until a few days ago. Any ideas? Should I just load Firefox? Is the AdBlock you're talking about part of Firefox or something you have to manually add?
    Please help before I go crazy. Amazon and Blogger are no help.

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  8. I have google chrome how do i fix that?

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  9. You genius! Thank you! my head was nearly to explode.

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