Easy Populate allows you to add/update products from a delimited text file, which can be edited in Excel, or OpenOffice Calc. Please use Excel with care as most versions have trouble with files with lots of columns/rows. Please make sure to backup your products before trying it.
- The temp folder is configured to reside in your store directory. If you store is not in the site root (eg. /mystore/) then the temp directory must also go in this directory.
- If you want to rename the uploads (temp) folder, ensure that you configure Easy Populate to reflect this change after installation
- Upload all files in their respective directories.
- Set permissions for your temp directory
- UNIX/Linux: chmod 700 or chmod 777
- Windows: ?
- Go to Admin -> Tools -> Easy Populate. Click "Install EasyPopulate" link provided.
- Go to Admin -> Configuration -> Easy Populate, and configure the upload directory if you have changed it from default. Also, ensure that the correct date format is set for your upload files.
- Go to Admin -> Tools -> Easy Populate
- Click "Remove Easy Populate"
- Click "Install Easy Populate"
- Go to Admin -> Tools -> Easy Populate
- add ?langer=remove after easypopulate.php in the browser address bar
- Click "Install EasyPopulate"
It is recommended that you download a file first and use this as a template for your uploads.
** Downloading **
Once you have installed & configured Easy Populate, go to Tools -> "Easy Populate" in Zen Cart admin
There are multiple file types to choose to either download, or dump into your /temp/ folder on your website. All of the files will download data for all of your store's products. Depending on what you wish to update, choose the most appropriate file.
Download file types:
- Complete - All product information, including Specials. Attributes are currently only available as separate download while I renovate the HTML area of Easy Populate. HINT: USE THIS FILE FOR YOUR TEMPLATE FOR ADDING NEW PRODUCTS
- Download it and remove all but one product for your reference when adding new products
-
Model/Price/Qty - For updating pricing and/or Qty only, including Specials!
-
Model/Category - For updating/adding product categories
-
Froogle - for Froogle feeds
-
Model/Attributes - Just the attributes & options
** Uploading **
Either transfer your file to your /temp/ directory (best for large files), type in the name of the file and choose "Import from Temp Dir (temp/)"
or
Browse to your file on your harddrive and choose "Upload EP File"
Things you should know about uploads:
- Each time you update a product (any product in an upload) the last_updated field is set to now.
- When deleting products using v_status = 9, All products with the exact model number of the flagged product are deleted
- Changing the category of a product will create a linked product in the new category (same product, just a navigation link)
- NOTE: THE PRODUCT MODEL IS THE INDEX! All product updates are done using the products model as the index.
- Any fields left blank (NULL) will not always retain the current data in your store. Best to delete unneeded columns, and use original store data as updates template
- The categories are the category levels, and not multiple categories: Category1 -> Category2 (sub-cat) -> Category3 (sub-sub-cat) etc..
- Specials - To delete a special, make the price zero (0) in your upload file. To add, simply put a price in. All blank specials price fields are ignored by Easy Populate.
See Admin -> Configuration -> Easy Populate
You can find some useful information here: http://www.zen-cart.com/modules/ipb/index.php?showtopic=31073
You can find a list of releases (and contributors) in history.txt