o this sucks. I’d been invited to help run three model railroads during a local event. I’ve proven myself to the owners with running and dispatching their lines. Super. These were jammed into two days and as I always do, I wanted to blog each of them (my blogs are famous in the local community).

The next morning (early) I went to write the first one. Everything went fine until I went to include my link to my website’s book page (where my various offerings are available). And wouldn’t you know it – the references to Amazon (which you have to directly insert via HTML) are down. They don’t work right and don’t click through.

This happened years back when my site was Joomla. It really sucked them (since i had to figure how to inject the direct HTML into the text version of my site). I recalled it took a lot of effort. In WordPress (which I’m running under now) I don’t know how to view the page in text only. I diddled around with it and got into it once, but it wasn’t memorable and now I can’t find my way back in.

Well, I decided that (a) I wasn’t going to solve it early on a Saturday morning and (b) I don’t move all that many books anyway. So rather than fuss with it now, I’ll fuss with it later. I’ve got too many things to do right now to mess around it it. I’ll let it simmer and re-investigate in the coming weeks.

But it pisses me off that Amazon changes their link format from time to time. This time, they did it as soon as we clicked across to 2024. Yes, it’s cute and all to have a direct link to a product. But it sucks that it changes every couple of years.

Just another reason I hate Amazon. How many other writer hacks are looking at websites they barely understand, trying to make it work? A lot, I suspect. This shit ain’t easy.

So I’ll write another piece when I do figure it out, both for your entertainment and also so I have a record of how to do it.

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