Easy Populate image URL

[ChadAustin]

I've just installed Zen Cart, Easy Populate and OpenOffice with which to manipulate & edit the CSV file.

My client has a spreadsheet (can be provided in any format I prefer) of about 3000 products. We'd like to use this spreadsheet to populate zen cart- even to the point where we could re-upload the spreadsheet daily if we so wished.

The images for each product already exist in an online folder. We have the URL of each product image within the spreadsheet.

So I downloaded the CSV file from Easy Populate, populated it with about 10 products from my client's spreadsheet for testing, then uploaded the CSV file into ZenCart, using Easy Populate.

However, when I upload the CSV, the images never show up. The URLs are correct... here is an example: http://www.garagebookcafe.com/media/SKU10001003.jpg

So what could be wrong? Is the URL too long? I noticed some of the product names gave errors (which will also have to be addressed later) about the name being too long... I was wondering if this was the same issue perhaps with the image URL.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,
Chad

[kobra]

Aren't images in the /images folder??

[ChadAustin]

These aren't. These are currently located elsewhere. That's the reason for the whole URL.

[kobra]

That's the reason for the whole URL.

I think you need to view the code for images

[ChadAustin]

Ahh, I see it has to be a relative URL... anybody know the reason it can't be an absolute URL?
Also, there was only 1 image column within the CSV file... and this image gets squished when displayed. So, if I need to supply both a thumbnail and large image (pain), under which column does each go within the supplied Easy Populate CSV file? Or, do I have to create a new column?

[kobra]

ep only takes the main image
Use FTP to upload large &/or medium images

[ChadAustin]

Thanks for all your replies kobra, by the way.

EP didn't take any of my images, no matter what kind of URL I entered into the v_products_image column fields. I had to FTP the ones I currently see.

So you're saying, in essence, that EP really isn't all that helpful for managing 3000+ products and their associated images (thumb, medium & Large)? And by extension, zencart wouldn't be that easy to manage such a project of this magnitude either?

[kobra]

Ep get the information into the database and quickly versus manually entering them

To FTP 3,000 images is not all that complicated

So FTP images and upload your EP file and all should be correct

[SPH]

We've had zencarts with 5,000 or so products, although perhaps 3k now. I can tell you that the ONLY way we manage the products and images is with Easy Populate.

You didn't specifiy the Easy Populate version you're using. But we use Easy Populate 4 and an earlier version, sometimes simultaneously on the same site. (I believe that an earlier Easy Populate is now 1.5.x ready)

We also use Image Handler (the correct version for our zencart version) to manage images.

We have to FTP up the images to their proper folders.

Then we enter the image location in the Easy Populate sheet. Here is how we enter our main image location in the sheet on one of our sites, when located in images/11fall_alyce:

11fall_alyce/afterfive-4150.jpg

I can also tell you that although I've been interested in carts such as Prestashop and Opencart, perhaps the major reason why I have not taken one of these to a live domain/site is because their Export/Import functions look much more user UN-friendly than any Zencart Easy Populate. We've used about every Zencart Easy Populate over the years and they have all worked with their proper ZC version.

prommart.com
fashion-mart.biz

[ChadAustin]

Kobra and SPH - thank you for attempting to help me. Folks like you make this forum successful.

I'm using the latest versions of everything... at the time of this writing, that would be ZC 1.5.1, Easy Populate For ZenCart v1.5, and finally, Image Handler 4.0.

Image Handler works good, bnd while EP is installed and I'm an Admin at Superuser level, I still don't see it in the TOOLS dropdown the way I do Image Handler... but no worries. It's still functional. At least I think it is... it seemed like when I first started testing it with my 10 test products, that I could download the EP CSV file, update it, upload it... and it would sometimes double my 10 test products? I'm going to run some more tests here in a minute to see if I screwed up. Probably did. I did download and install OpenOffice 3.4.1 for handling the EP CSV file, instead of using Excel.

My main question, SPH, once you install Image Handler, will the EP CSV file reflect the change to show a field / column for Image Handler?

Thanks,
Chad