thischarmingben

Thanks Martin! Well for no reason I can see, and after no changes on my side, the tags suddenly started working again! They’d been broken for a couple months, and sometime in the last couple days they started working.

Sounds like something weird going on with my host server maybe? Wish I could have helped track down the root cause!

The strange thing is, the key I’m using now has been my key for months, and the Amazon plug-in had been working fine… it only suddenly stopped displaying properly sometime in July. So I assume if there was a problem with a special character, it would have been causing me an issue all along? The only special characters I see in mine are / and +.

I haven’t been using the sidebar but rather the tags within a post (of the “[amtap amazon:asin=B003EELV1Q]” variety). Again, they were showing up all along, then stopped. I think this was even before I upgraded my WordPress version, so I don’t have the impression that the WP upgrade itself broke anything. Even with the debug option checked, my source for the posting shows no reference (commented or otherwise) to the Amazon tag. It doesn’t render the “[amtap amazon:asin=B003EELV1Q]” in plain text, so it clearly recognizes it as something special, but there is nothing there at all where it should be appearing in the source. Strange!

I’m looking to see if there’s anything weird on Amazon’s site re: my account, but no luck so far.

Thanks again, Martin!

I tried the XSL URL you suggested for my domain and received this response in my browser:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
- <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="https://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:aws="https://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/2009-07-01">
  <xsl:output method="text" />
- <xsl:template match="/">
  <xsl:apply-templates select=".//aws:IsValid" />
  </xsl:template>
- <!--  valid response
  -->
- <xsl:template match="aws:IsValid">
- <xsl:if test="contains( ., 'True' )">
  <xsl:text>true</xsl:text>
  </xsl:if>
  </xsl:template>
  </xsl:stylesheet>

Hey, thanks for taking the time Martin!

My “amtap-aws-key-verification.txt” shows this for its second half:

- <Information>
- <Request>
  <IsValid>True</IsValid>
- <HelpRequest>
  <About>ItemIds</About>
  <HelpType>ResponseGroup</HelpType>
  <ResponseGroup>Help</ResponseGroup>
  </HelpRequest>
  </Request>
- <ResponseGroupInformation>
  <Name>ItemIds</Name>
  <CreationDate>2005-07-26</CreationDate>
- <ValidOperations>
  <Operation>ItemLookup</Operation>
  <Operation>ItemSearch</Operation>
  <Operation>ListLookup</Operation>
  <Operation>SimilarityLookup</Operation>
  <Operation>TagLookup</Operation>
  </ValidOperations>
- <Elements>
  <Element>Arguments/Argument/Name</Element>
  <Element>Arguments/Argument/Value</Element>
  <Element>Errors/Error/Code</Element>
  <Element>Errors/Error/Message</Element>
  <Element>Item/ASIN</Element>
  <Element>Items/CorrectedQuery</Element>
  <Element>Items/CorrectedQuery/Keywords</Element>
  <Element>Items/CorrectedQuery/Message</Element>
  <Element>Items/TotalPages</Element>
  <Element>Items/TotalResults</Element>
  <Element>OperationRequest/RequestId</Element>
  <Element>OperationRequest/UserAgent</Element>
  <Element>Request/IsValid</Element>
  </Elements>
  </ResponseGroupInformation>
  </Information>
  </HelpResponse>

I assume the IsValid = True is what we’re loking for and the “True” is the answer we’d want, yes? When trying to debug as best I could before posting here, I actually logged into Amazon and created/activated a second key, and they’re both (my original one and newer one) active according to Amazon. Didn’t seem to help though. ??

Thanks again!

Hey guys, hopefully my response here will show up on your radar! I recently started experiencing the same symptoms. I tried blowing away and recreating the cache folder as suggested (and though I don’t know how to change the permissions on it, it appears to be getting repopulated with new HTML and META files, so I assume everything’s OK there?). I also tried using the servertime.php method and found that my server time and local time (adjusting several hours for what I assume is a timezone difference) they are within about 15 seconds of each other.

When I go into the “Amazon Machine Tags Configuration” page in WordPress, I now get the “The access key or the secret key you entered is invalid. Please double-check it.” error using the same keys that have been working fine until recently and are still active according to Amazon.

I am on v3.0.2 of the plugin and WordPress v3.01. I started noticing the problem before I upgraded from WordPress 2.9.2., and I was blindly hoping the upgrade would fix it. I know this isn’t much to go on, but any ideas for what else I can check? I assume whatever is causing me to get that invalid key error on the config page is what’s causing the plugin to no longer show on my postings. I can’t think of anything I changed on my end around the time it all stopped working. Big thanks in advance!

Sorry, I know that was probably a bit wordy. But holy crap, your suggestion worked! I don’t know why I had it in my head that I shouldn’t change the “WordPress Address,” but I changed it to match the subdomain as you suggested and voila! All seems to be right with the world.

Thanks so much adiant!!!