Today (December 3^rd) we released version 1.3.0 of our WordPress plugin: WordPress Amazon Associate. We’re really excited about the new features that have been included in this release and think that you will be as well.

Everybody loves widgets and in this release we have added support for the Amazon Omakase Widget. This widget (shown below) will render Amazon Products that have been optimized by Amazon for your website.

[amazon_omakase locale=”” size=”300×250″ ]

You can add this widget to your site through PHP, Short Code, The Widget Admin screen, or through the new extended tinyMCE control. As of 1.3.0 we have extended our custom tinyMCE editor into a drop down button that allows you to insert ShortCode for all supported widgets through an overlay config page with built in preview.

We further enhanced our widgets by enabling support for Geo Localization by IP Address. We introduced this feature for product links in version 1.2.0 and now we support it for widgets by setting the locale/marketPlace value to an empty string (ShortCode) or -Geo Localizaton- (UI).

This may be the last 1.X version of the plugin as we are currently working on the next major release. However there are a few items that may get released sooner as version 1.4 depending on how the new feature development proceeds.

In addition to the Widget enhancements made in this version we also stream-lined code and formatting of existing pages and removed the shortcode_unautop filter that will cause page content to be blank in some instances.

You can view the complete changelog for full details about the changes, download the plugin here or install it through your WordPress powered website.