In my post yesterday, I talked about how I added Matt Haughey’s Trackback Playlist and that the song titles would link to a Google search. I wasn’t at all happy with how the results were being displayed. I wanted to be able to provide you with a link to the artist, or at least to a page where you could find more information about the artist.
Since I’m a bit anal retentive (who me?) with my mp3 ID tags, I always include a link to the artist’s web site in the URL field. Unfortunately, the Do Something plugin doesn’t support that field. After fighting with it for about an hour, I had decided to give up – this feature just wasn’t meant to be. 🙁
Then I stumbled upon an article at Virtual Venus on how to make a hoverable playlist that displays the album cover along with a host of other goodies, like the sales price, release date, and a link to Amazon.com to purchase the album. It’s one heck of a modification/tweak, that has some pretty cool looking results, however this modification isn’t for the faint of heart. 🙂 There’s a suite of plugins, templates and modules that have to be installed. In addition, you will need an Amazon Developers key (required) and if you’re so inclined an Associate ID (although not required). If you’re patient and go step-by-step, the tutorial will walk you through installing everything you need.
The only steps not covered are installing the plugins themselves – for that, you’ll need to refer to the plugin documentation. I would recommend installing all the plugins first and then start with the tutorial. If you’d like to see what the end results look like, simply go to my odds and ends page [edit: removed]. Move your mouse over the song title link and you should see a pop-up box appear. Pretty cool huh? Was it worth all the work? Well, that’s really up to you isn’t it? 😛
So please let me know what you think by posting a comment. To me it was a fun excercise, with nice results. In addition, should you purchase anything from Amazon based on the link, I will received a small commission. So in about 10 years, I should make enough to cover my time. LOL
Cool… 🙂