Sorry you had to go through all that but glad to hear it is working for you now. Media Center can query AMG already through the Artist Info button, so I see no reason to add that one. Not all sites will work depending on how the site is set up. If the search phrase becomes a part of the URL, then you should be able to do it.
I don't know how much HTML editing you have done, but if you know a little HTML you should be able to look at the code in the index.html file and see how the links are set up.
Then you want to go to the site you want to make a link for, and use their advanced search function to search for some dummy text, then grab the URL for the search results, and replace the dummy text with the keywords you need to use in the trackinfo page.
To use Barnes & Noble as an example, if I search for artist U2 and album boy, I get the following URL:
http://music.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.asp?z=y&NME=u2&TTL=boy&SNG=&INS=&LBL=&TYP=P&CAT=&Search=SearchTo use it in a trackinfo page I need to replace "U2" and "boy" with the proper keywords that will pull the currently playing song info into the page, so the URL becomes:
http://music.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.asp?z=y&NME=TRACKINFO_INSERT_ARTIST&TTL=TRACKINFO_INSERT_ALBUM&SNG=&INS=&LBL=&TYP=P&CAT=&Search=SearchAnd then you just make a hyperlink with that URL string.
Sometimes spaces will cause a problem… you just have to experiment. Sometimes putting quotes around it will help, but you can't type the quotes in the HTML directly... you have to use the code %22 which will convert to a quote character.
So for the same Barnes and noble URL, if you want to put quotes around the artist and album name in your query, the URL becomes:
http://music.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.asp?z=y&NME=%22TRACKINFO_INSERT_ARTIST%22&TTL=%22TRACKINFO_INSERT_ALBUM%22&SNG=&INS=&LBL=&TYP=P&CAT=&Search=SearchJust start on the site and experiment with quotes/no quotes to see which gives you better results, then replace the actual artist/album/song name info with the proper keywords for track info.
I hope that makes sense. I believe there is also some trackinfo documentation on the j. River site.