Smashwords Tools

My latest coding project:
http://www.raggedangel.net/smashwords-tools

A set of smashwords widgets to help authors promote themselves and their books. They've passed a closed alpha (with no website) a closed beta (with no website) and are now in open beta with a website and simple links. The install scripts are down to one line of code and take one piece of user supplied data (a book or author name).

No, the website isn't pretty - nor will we be wasting dev time on it until the beta is over. It's only there to hide an industrial strength datafeed production system, scrape and RSS generator with the homebrew PHP library that runs it all, and make sure that testers can a) see the things running and b) get the URLs to get their own.

Can I guarantee these work everywhere? Hell no. The applet set that are in development might, but the current javascript ones are subject to the several hundred browsers, javascript installs, user settings, even Greasemonkey and personal user scripts that people have which can break things. This is why iframes are offered...

Personal experiences? I've the javascript one on some of my blogs. One of my blogs won't run the javascript widget, so I use the iframe one - with a resulting increase in downloads. The Squidoo one works a charm and looks better than the HTML links that were there. The RSS is on one of my lenses and works fine. The fan button is blocked (like all dynamic or animated images) on one of the messageboards I use so I saved it locally and uploaded it.

Effect on downloads? Significant. There's certainly been a recordable increase in clickthrus.

All I can suggest is try them and see - but let us know if they break or what tweaks you need to make. This is after all a beta test.

Whether we roll out applets and flash which involve much more complex development will depend on whether there's any interest in these.