AppleUsers Share
NCMUG have utilised the free O’Reilly Book Widgets service which can be fully customizable to suit the look and feel of your own site.
To use the Book Widget you simply select the O’Reilly Book Widget you’d like to use from a number of categories including;
- Topics, eg New Macintosh Programs Books & New Mac OS X Books
- Series, eg Missing Manuals & New Dynamic Learning
- Author, eg David Pogue & Joe Kissell
Once you have selected your topic, you can decide if you want the Book Widget to display as a List or a Grid; then you can select how many items (books) are shown and set the width. You have control over the display of Text Descriptions, Book Cover Thumbnails and Links, along with a number of sort options.
Then there is a great feature that allows you to incorporate Affiliate Link codes with many major affiliate programs including Amazone, eBay, Linskshare, and Commission Junction, which enables your group to earn a small commission off any sales that occur when people purchase a title after clicking on your link.
It’s all very simple and the best feature is it is dynamic and when new books are published they will be automatically added to your widget – no further input from you is needed.
Once you have added the Book Widget to your page, visitors will get to see a selection of books and if they are interested in a particular topic, they can click on it and a dialogue box will appear with many options… the best of way of seeing how this works, click on a title from the NCMUG website.
AppleUsers Share is a series of short articles that highlight a feature or service found on another website that Apple User Groups may wish to consider incorporating into their own sites. If you have a website feature or service that you think should be shared with Apple User Groups, then drop us a line.