help with uploaded files.

[Lorena771]

Help again! I have read & watched tutorials but am still stuck. In file manager I've uploaded my logo, & product images & descriptions files.
I can access the logo file but not the others. I believe I read that there's a way to easily upload my image & description files rather than doing each product manually.

Can someone tell me where I am missing a step or if am misunderstanding something. I am working on manually uploading products now.

[Karen Mac]

Re: help with uploaded files.

Lorena,

You can ftp images, via an ftp client, like smart ftp, cute ftp, filezilla etc.

You have to navigate to the public html folder, then to the domain folder, if its not your main domain that soho resides in, and then to the image folder and you can hilight them all from your computer and upload them all to the image folder.

As far as populating the product, you have to first make a csv file, comma separated value in excel. What you downloaded from your old host is tab delimited. You will also need to make categories in the shopping cart, and then look at your database for the right headers. You them will have to take your old spreadsheet, and copy and paste the appropriate columns into a new one to match the info needed for soho. rename the header column, and then go thru the category column and put in the number corresponding to your category in soho. You will also need a column to set the display of the product. Then you will need to export or save it as a csv file. You will also have to change your image column to /images/whatever.jpg.

Go to soho, filemanager, spreadsheets, csv files and then click to upload a new one. Upload your file then go to main menu... bottom row, site database tables (not table manager), and find the product table and click IMPORT and then match up some headers, leave the ones you dont know or need to default and.. press ok.

This is outlined for you in the manual with some screen shots and even tho its an older version.. you should still be able to catch on. Now if the category misses you.. they will all go into one category in the cart area and you can simply go in there and move them to the appropriate category when you edit the products.

The step you are missing is IMPORT in the data table and the formatting of the file.

Karen

[Lorena771]

Re: help with uploaded files.

Karen,
I have a current csv spreadsheet from my supplier, I think thats what's confusing me from watching the tutorials & your last reply. I am just now learning excel too...naturally I didn't learn this stuff from my previous host.

I've gotten a custom template set on all my pages and created categories & pages for them. I will work on improving my template later. Thanks for the offer on that.

I'm not having any sucess copying column names from site data tables. Also, my suppliers csv table lists each product 4 times for each shipping option so I think it will be a hastle anyway I do it. I'm starting to believe that I could do it manually easier than trying to learn excell right now. Unless you know a quick trick!

As usual, you & Beth are awesome!

[Lorena771]

Re: help with uploaded files.

Oops again....I didn't see how to edit my last post so I'll add this...I uploaded my image files all in one file and I can't seem to get to certain images for individual products...hmmm...so what now?? I AM GOING TO GET CHEWED WHAT i'VE BITTEN OFF YET!

[Karen Mac]

Re: help with uploaded files.

Lorena,

Did you upload them to the soho folder via ftp? to the images folder? If you did they should be there. You cant upload a zip folder or anything like that tho.

If you go to the site data tables, again bottom row, I think, without looking its cart_products, and click on concise view if its not giving it to you, you have some options there, like DOWNLOAD, IMPORT etc.. Download the file, import data to excel and you will have your column headings. You dont NEED to fill them all, they will just go as default when you are importing them, but you will need PriKey,(which is just 1, 2, 3, 4, etc for the number of products down) Category, (which if you look at your category table, each category name is assigned a number, and if you dont put this in, they will all go to ONE category, which u can go edit later, but if you have 2000 products thats alot,) Item Number or SKU, NAME, Description, Price, Image, and product display (all set to y for yes).

It takes a bit to learn the process and its not entirely without flaws. For me editing an excel file with a few thousand products is alot less time consuming than doing one by one, even if i have to import it, download it again to get some tweaks into it, and then reup it as a new csv file.

Do what is less confusing for you! I can only tell you from experience, that the more you try the more you will learn! The more you learn the easier it gets!

Karen