Well I think I have been stalling long enough, and as I only have 10 or so projects active at the moment, and as my time is only three times oversubscribed - I figured it was time to kick off the push to get the aforementioned mambot finalised (or at least make it usable).

About Joomla:

For those who don't know Joomla is a content management system that lets you more easily manage a growing website.
Further info about Joomla can be found here: http://www.joomla.org/
The installation files can be downloaded here: http://www.joomla.org/
Help resources are here:            http://help.joomla.org/
The community's support forums are here:    http://forum.joomla.org/

Free and commercial templates:

Template are available around the web JoomlaShack's are the best - slight bias - I work for them so  please forgive the  blatant plug  http://www.joomlashack.com/

About MrRat's Amazon Products Feed (APF)

If you have followed me here from Joomla or JoomlaShack then you may not be familiar with MrRat's Opus - Amazon Products Feed - the leading script that utilises Amazon Web Services to build an online store that you can integrate into your site.
MrRat lives here: http://www.mrrat.com/
APF can be downloaded here: http://www.mrrat.com/aws/
Support is available here: http://www.absolutefreebies.com/phpBB2/

About the Amazon Products Feed Bridge - APF Bridge

APF Bridge is a Joomla component - an add-on, that incorporates the output of MrRat's script into Joomla.

See the APF Bridge - Joomla - Amazon component in action and the APF Bridge documenatation here  (and in the submenu on the left)
I have just repackaged the files - and will continue to update this page as new versions are created.

All of the available files can be downloaded from our downloads section - the link is in the menu at the top of the page.

A mambot (soon to be renamed simply plugin) is a small piece of code that scans the text about to be output for tags marked with curly braces and then does something clever. The mosAPF mambot will take instructions and either build links into your content (articles) or better still actually place the product listings into your content.

Example plugin / mambot command:

[APF Action='SearchInclude' Operation='ItemSearch' SearchIndex='Books' Keywords='Dean']
I have used square brackets here - so joomla doesn't try to replace the tag with produts.

mosAPF Features:

Flexibility - if APF can do it the mambot can do it.
More flexibility - some things APF can't do, the mambot can

• More than 10 products on a page (through clever caching - and multiple  tags on a page)
• Enter a list of more than 10 ASINs and have a user specified sample selected randomly.
• Eventually a visitor will be able to specify their preferred locale and the mambot will automagically show them the results for their locale - if available. If not - either an alternate SearchiInded will be used - or - the site owners default locale will be used.

I am sure I have missed some usefull stuff - but for now that's all I can think of.

Current status of project:

 APF Bridge itself is stable - I think there is one issue outstanding
 APF Mambot - a serious issue with Joomla's SEF urls got in the way a while ago, before I was dragged off to do some real work.

Next steps - What you can do to help:
 I am looking for some experienced Joomla users, preferably with APF bridge experience to help me test and debug the mambot. No programming experience necessary although it would be helpful.

I can't stress this next part enough - so please TAKE NOTE:
the mambot is NOT ready for a production site - if you make a living from your website DO NOT install this in a publicly accessible Joomla installation.

If you have a localhost server, or can set up a separate Joomla install, or you don't care if my sloppy programming takes down your site - the I would like to hear from you.

Timeline for progress:

I see no reason why this mambot shouldn't be ready for a more widespread public release by the end of the month.  Who knows maybe we will get a couple of months use before Joomla1.5 comes out and I have to start recoding everything ;) Today I will package the files I have so we are all using the latest available files. I will then personally install the files that I build so I know that they install okay.

I will install a new Joomla Installation on my development server, and set up TWO mirrors on my publicly accessible test site. One copy with Joomla's SEF Urls and one copy without.

I will build a suit of demo pages covering everything the mambot will eventually be able to do. Hopefully this will act as a test suite showing what does and does not work as well as a demonstration of what the plugin and store can do..

I am looking for others to do likewise - set up a new Joomla install, install APF Bridge and the mambot, put both through their paces and see what works and what doesn't.  I would like feed back about the documentation, about what worked well, what needs more explanation and of course about which parts of the scripts are non-functional.