Prerequisites
The basic root directory install of ASM2 is fairly easy and straightfoward and could be completed in less than five minutes.
You must of course, be an associate of Amazon.com, or any of the Amazon sites that this script works with to get paid commission for the items your visitors buy via your site.
A Subscription ID is also required to access AWS. It functions much in the same way as a password. You will pass it to Amazon's servers with every request so that they know you have permission to access their system. If you still do not have one, apply for one from here.
Server requirements are equally straightfoward:
PHP (version 4.2.3 or higher), and
Mod_rewrite (if you are using the script in seo mode).
Once the requirements above are in place you may then proceed with the installation itself. The root install (installing the script in the root directory of your site) covers three basic stages.
Download Download the script, ASM4.zip (it comes in a zipped version) and use your WinZip or any other unzipping facility that you have to extract the files to a folder on your machine.
Configure
Use your word editor and open up the script/config.php file to configure the script for your site, change the variables in the upper portion of the file accordingly;
The '$locale="us"' variable specifies that your store is associated to and will display products from Amazon.com. It is best not to change the locale to uk, de or jp just yet as you need to change some othe components in the system to make it fully functional. This will be dealt with in subsequent sections.
The lower portion of the file deals with what you want displayed on the front page of your site and your seo setting.
To enable your site to display a special selection of products on the front page, you first have to remove both hashes (#) from in front of the '$frontpage_SI' and '$frontpage' variables and specify tne mode and node of your selection.
In the example given below you will be displaying the 'Top Selling' books of Amazon.com (the Mode is 'Books' and the Node is '1000').
// SearchIndex to use for frontpage section
$frontpage_SI = "Books";
// BrowseNode to use for frontpage section
$frontpage = "1000";
$seo = 1;
The '$seo=1' variable specifies that you want your site to run in SEO (Search Engine Optimised) mode. This mode works in conjunction with the .htaccess file which you must upload to the server as well.
Save the changes you have made and your are ready to upload the files to your server.
Upload
Use your favorite FTP software and upload (binary) all the files and sub-directories intact (just as is) to your server.
Once the upload is complete access the domain where the script is installed and your brand new Amazon affiliate shop should be up and running pretty.
Note
We have installed more than a dozen of this scripts on various domains that we own or manage and have so far never had any problems with any of the basic installation procedures that have been described here.
If you do have problems with your setup then the logical place place to start looking for answers is at http://www.freekrai.net/forum/. Welcome, see you there.
