X-Cart forums

[xplorer]

Hello!

I'm happy to announce new Product Feeds module for X-Cart 5 / X-Cart Next.



The module allows you to export your products to the following comparison shopping websites:

• Google Shopping
• eBay e-Commerce Network (shopping.com)
• Nextag
• Pricegrabber
• Shopzilla

Product variants go into feed files as separate lines.

The export process is split into multiple Ajax steps, so there should be no problems with servers that set a limit on the time allocated for PHP scripts to execute.

Some shopping engines require you to have extra columns (like Color, Size, etc) in your product feeds. With this module you can do it by mapping product attributes to these columns. If you have several "color" attributes (for example, "Color" attribute added for "Apparel" product class, and "Case color" attribute configured for "Notebooks" products), you can map all of them to the same "Color" column - the feed will contain that very attribute which exists for this particular product.

You can buy the module on this website page, or from your store back-end.


Feel free to post your questions and suggestions in this forum thread.

Thanks!

[Tigershark8700]

Great feature ..

Question .. With this feature do you plan on offering the ability of allowing users to create their own custom feeds?

Example: Right now we currently partner with a site called Bonanza. It would be great to create a Bonanza Feed on our X-Cart page, than be able to set the column headers for the feed and automatically map the X-Cart form fields to the Bonanza form fields. Once that is created, we can download an CSV document of these fields (with all of our deal information) and than upload that into the Bonanza site.

Thanks,
Ryan

[xplorer]

Hello Ryan,

Thank you for the feedback!

The ability to export products to a feed of a custom format is a good one - we thought of having the feature right from the start. However, after studying several feeds formats we found that almost every shopping engine would require custom programming to support all of its features.

For example, with Bonanza you should assign Bonanza categories on your products and convert product attributes to "traits" that look like "[[material: red]] [[condition: new]] [[brand: Gucci]]".

We could export basic columns and leave these special columns empty, but how useful would be such product feeds? If you have ideas on how to overcome this, please let me know.

Thanks!

[Tigershark8700]

Originally Posted by xplorer

Hello Ryan,

Thank you for the feedback!

The ability to export products to a feed of a custom format is a good one - we thought of having the feature right from the start. However, after studying several feeds formats we found that almost every shopping engine would require custom programming to support all of its features.

For example, with Bonanza you should assign Bonanza categories on your products and convert product attributes to "traits" that look like "[[material: red]] [[condition: new]] [[brand: Gucci]]".

We could export basic columns and leave these special columns empty, but how useful would be such product feeds? If you have ideas on how to overcome this, please let me know.

Thanks!

Yea every shopping site supports different column headers. For our team is is quite time consuming to have somebody essentially create a brand new CSV document, manually map the form headers, and copy and paste our content from one document to another ( assuming its updated ).

Instead of showing empty columns, why not just show columns that are relevant to my needs?

Example:

Within the Product Feed area, have a button that says "Create Custom Feed". Once you get to the next screen it shows a table view of ALL the current column fields within X-Cart.

Below that ask the user to enter in the name of the fields for their CSV document. Once those are made, ask the user to map the existing X-Cart form fields to the CSV custom form fields.

Similar to this picture on Salesforce (Field Mapping) = http://www3.formassembly.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/mapping.png

- I recently built this type of feature for an custom ecommerce platform one of our clients is using.

= Basically you are giving clients the ability to build whatever they want, without being limited to empty, or unneeded fields that do not belong with X-Cart.

Just something to think about

[fixhh]

I bought and installed the mode tonight and it doesn't work.

X-Cart 5 Business Version 5.1.3

Problem: Al of the Feed Settings Pages are "Blank"... only the Title is showing up:

Shopzilla feed settings

Nothing else is shown and it is the same for all the feeds.

How do I fix this mode?

Thanks,

Kevin

[tony_sologubov]

Slava just got back from holiday today and he will contact you on this matter during next couple of days.

[xplorer]

Hello Kevin,

Can you check whether the following MySQL query returns some data, or gives an empty response?

SELECT category, name, value FROM xc_config WHERE category LIKE '%Shopzilla%';

If there is data in the database, the page should not be empty.

Also, do you see any errors in the logs?

[fixhh]

Hello Slava,

I ran the MySQL query and there's data in the database and I looked at the error logs and I didn't see any errors. It said the mode was installed successfully.

But for some reason all the setting pages on the mode are empty except the title.

Not sure what to do?

BTW: I use TSS for my hosting company... VPS Professional Package.

Thanks,

Kevin

[xplorer]

Kevin,

Is the module settings page empty too? Also, is it possible to debug the issue right on your server?

Thanks!

[fixhh]

Hello Slava,

Yes, the module settings page is there with the list of shopping feeds... but when you click on the "Settings" of any one of the Shopping feeds, all the setting pages are blank except the title.

How do I get a refund for this mode? I'm not going to pay X-Cart Tech $99.00 to fix a mode that should work. I purchased 5 other modes and installed a bunch of free ones and they all work just fine except this one.

I would like to get it fixed if possible but I'm not a techy kind of guy... so I don't know... let me know what I should do?

Thanks,

Kevin