Amazon Affilliate Invalidates HTML

[mynewchoice]

The other day I had added an Amazon affilliate link on my site as I am testing out the integration. Today I ran my site through the w3 validator and noticed that my Amazon link is raising a handful of errors.

Have others experienced the same thing? Do I need to escape the URL that is provided by Amazon? Are there restrictions on modifying the URL provided by Amazon?

-mnc

[golden14]

Not sure but I'd guess modifying the url is a big no-no

[mynewchoice]

Not sure but I'd guess modifying the url is a big no-no

I tried searching through the forums on the Amazon site but didn't find anything that answered this question. It appears to be the ampersand that is causing the page to be invalid so I am wondering if a urlencode would be sufficient.

I'm heading back to Amazon now to see if they have a contact address that maybe I can send an email asking this question. Thanks for the feedback.

-mnc

[Reprobate]

While validated HTML is a worthy goal I wouldn't be too concerned about it. At least not in this case where it is one URL causing the error.

[mynewchoice]

While validated HTML is a worthy goal I wouldn't be too concerned about it. At least not in this case where it is one URL causing the error.

Yeah, for the time being I have left it alone and have submitted a question via the Amazon Associates website to see what their opinions are on altering the URL such that it validates properly.

I'm just anal that I want the entire site to validate and don't like that this one Amazon link is causing my page to return as invalid. If I hear back from Amazon, I will post back in the event anyone is interested.

-mnc

[mynewchoice]

As an FYI to anyone interested, I received a response back from Amazon today regarding my question about the links failing to the XHTML validation. The response indicated the following:

You are welcome to alter the coding to make it compatible with the
validator, however after placing the link on your web site, it would
be a good idea to send us the URL to the page on which it is located
so that we may check and be sure it is tagging to your account
properly.

In addition, the response included the option of using a different URL format that does not pass the data as traditional parameters. Instead, the URL is constructed as follows:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/nnnnnnnnnn/ref=nosim/your_Associates_ID

So it looks like there are a few options and it does not violate any TOS to alter the URL code. It is nice that they offer the option to validate the link as well if I do alter the code. Hope that helps anyone else that may encounter this issue.

-mnc