As mentioned in our GDPR article, you may come to the point where you want to use a proxy for loading product images from Amazon’s server.
Why would I need a proxy for product images?
Product images provided by Amazon’s API are delivered directly from the Amazon servers. Regarding the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation, this is a problem because Amazon has access to the IP addresses of your site visitors.
To prevent this, we introduced a so-called privacy proxy, which delivers the product images through a small PHP file. By doing so, Amazon only receives the IP of your web server instead of your site visitors.
How-to use the image proxy
This function must be activated via plugin settings (“Output” tab, “Product images” section). In case you are using a caching plugin on your site, its cache should be emptied afterward too.
Troubleshooting: Images don’t show up properly
PHP “allow_url_fopen” is not enabled
In order to make use of the image proxy, PHP “allow_url_fopen” must be enabled on your server. Otherwise, the plugin is not able to read the image inside our little PHP file.
In case you’re not sure if it’s enabled or not, let’s find out:
- Inside the plugin’s admin area, click on the menu item “Support“
- At the bottom of the page you can find the section “Environment“
- Here you can find an info wether PHP “allow_url_fopen” is enabled or not
Permission denied
Right-click on the image URL and open it directly in a new tab of your browser. In case it shows “Permission Denied”, there’s a problem with the .htaccess of your site.
Please make sure that the file is accessible under the following URL: https://your-domain.com/wp-content/plugins/aawp/public/image.php
Security/Firewall Plugins
All In One WP Security & Firewall
When using this plugin, please deactivate the Deny Bad Query Strings setting.
iThemes Security
When using this plugin, please deactivate the Suspicious Query Strings setting.
Incompatible WebHosting
At the following WebHosting providers, we noticed that the image proxy file was blocked on the server side:
- Cloudways
For a fast WordPress Hosting we recommend Bluehost and Kinsta.