Froogle Merchant Center merged into GoogleBase

[ecobunz]

So am I to assume everyone using the FroogleGoogle mod is doing the uploads manually or via the website? My file is generated fine, but I had to manually upload it to have it even register.

[Woodymon]

So am I to assume everyone using the FroogleGoogle mod is doing the uploads manually or via the website? My file is generated fine, but I had to manually upload it to have it even register.

FTP works for me. Both manual FTP and FTP via cron job.

[BlessIsaacola]

Good to hear you have found a solution to your timeouts and thanks for sharing. Can you report if you're using Andrew's latest mod version, which still includes label and currency fields in the generated feed and which are no longer "supported" by Google? And if so was your feed upload accepted and published by Google? And did you do bulk upload via GoogleBase web interface or did you FTP?
With the number of products you have what is the size of your feed?

Or did you manipulate Andrew's code to remove label and currency attributes?

Woody

I am using Andrew's version 1.3.3 NOT 1.3.3a available in the download section by another author.

The Label and Currency are included in my generated file but that doesn't throw an error on Google side because neither of the above fields are part of the required fields. Google is more concern that the following required fields are present:

brand
condition
description
expiration_date
id
image_link
link
price
product_type
title

Because by default, our product type is other we bypass the requirement for other Product_Type specific requirements.

Our product feed was accepted and published when manually or automatically uploaded to Google.

The size of our file is 8.01MB fro ~10,000 products.

No manipulation has been done to Andrew's mod at this time. The only thing I temporarily turned off is Watermark for images which was making GoogleFroogle mod to generate new large image on the fly.

If there is anything else you'd like me to answer please let me know.

Isaac.

[BlessIsaacola]

So am I to assume everyone using the FroogleGoogle mod is doing the uploads manually or via the website? My file is generated fine, but I had to manually upload it to have it even register.

FTP through Zen Cart Admin, Cron and Web upload through Google interface all works fine for me and the feed is accepted and published.

[Woodymon]

If there is anything else you'd like me to answer please let me know.

Isaac-

Appreciate the detailed info. Certain to help others analyze feed issues.

I've had similar results except I don't have near that many products and was not seeing the IH2 water mark issues and timeout issues as you previously reported.

And good to know about the product_type exception. I did not know that assigning "other" for the product_type allowed for exceptions.

I've been treading through some recent GoogleBase docs and Google highly recommends five additional attributes over and beyond the old base Froogle feed and also have repeatedly reports that label and currency attributes are no longer "supported". But as both you and I have observed and reported Google appears to be continuing to accept/publish old-style froogle feeds and are not rejecting feeds containing the two now unsupported attributes and not including five extra recommended attributes. I am glad to see that as we were previously under the assumption that Google might start rejecting old froogle feed schema which would then cause Andrew's mod to be no longer useful, (unless some code edits were implemented).

BTW the only difference in the 1.33a version in the downloads area from Andrew's last version (1.33) is in the 133 updater SQL patch. The 1.33a uploaders intent was to repair an issue with the 1.33 version. But I found the updater SQL in 1.33a is problematic in itself.

It would be good if folks "fixing" mods developed by 'real developers' would allow others to test their code fixes/edits, before uploading to the downloads area. Q&A does not necessarily mean questions and answers.

Woody

[ecobunz]

I'm using the 1.3.3a version. It's strange, I can use the file from the addon and manually upload, yet the cron job version seems not to work for me. At least when I check the latest upload it's the manual version. Hrm wonder whats up.

FTP through Zen Cart Admin, Cron and Web upload through Google interface all works fine for me and the feed is accepted and published.

[BlessIsaacola]

Isaac-

Appreciate the detailed info. Certain to help others analyze feed issues.

I've had similar results except I don't have near that many products and was not seeing the IH2 water mark issues and timeout issues as you previously reported.

And good to know about the product_type exception. I did not know that assigning "other" for the product_type allowed for exceptions.

I've been treading through some recent GoogleBase docs and Google highly recommends five additional attributes over and beyond the old base Froogle feed and also have repeatedly reports that label and currency attributes are no longer "supported". But as both you and I have observed and reported Google appears to be continuing to accept/publish old-style froogle feeds and are not rejecting feeds containing the two now unsupported attributes and not including five extra recommended attributes. I am glad to see that as we were previously under the assumption that Google might start rejecting old froogle feed schema which would then cause Andrew's mod to be no longer useful, (unless some code edits were implemented).

BTW the only difference in the 1.33a version in the downloads area from Andrew's last version (1.33) is in the 133 updater SQL patch. The 1.33a uploaders intent was to repair an issue with the 1.33 version. But I found the updater SQL in 1.33a is problematic in itself.

It would be good if folks "fixing" mods developed by 'real developers' would allow others to test their code fixes/edits, before uploading to the downloads area. Q&A does not necessarily mean questions and answers.

Woody

Thanks Woody for the response. We are taking the approach that we will not chase every thing Google says (because Google talks too much :)) until it becomes necessary to change.

However, in light of our dialogue on this forum, I have disable the currency attribute on the Admin side. That reduced the size file a little bit as well. I am sure Google is going to be annoucing more changes with GoogleFroogle and hopefully, someone will pick off where Andrew left off to keep this great mod updated.

Isaac.

[Woodymon]

I'm using the 1.3.3a version. It's strange, I can use the file from the addon and manually upload, yet the cron job version seems not to work for me. At least when I check the latest upload it's the manual version. Hrm wonder whats up.

Did you install 1.33a fresh or update over a previous GoogleFroogle mod version?

Test if you can manually FTP your feed from a FTP client either on your PC via a FTP client hosted on your server (not a web based upload).

Note the cron job doesn't actually FTP. It just pings Google to come and get it. After the ping, the come and get it part can take awhile.

Woody

[Woodymon]

We are taking the approach that we will not chase every thing Google says (because Google talks too much :)) until it becomes necessary to change.

This is prudent ;-)

I noted in the GoogleBase Blog a developer reported recently that another significant feed schema change would be announced/introduced shortly. I'm awaiting to hear details.

However, in light of our dialogue on this forum, I have disable the currency attribute on the Admin side. That reduced the size file a little bit as well. I am sure Google is going to be annoucing more changes with GoogleFroogle and hopefully, someone will pick off where Andrew left off to keep this great mod updated

In version 1.33 I don't see method of disabling currency in admin. I see a "default currency" dropdown with five choices but one must be chosen. Did you hack the code? Or did I miss a SQL patch somewhere along the way?

And whatever you did to "disable the currency attribute on the admin side" did that also remove the currency type attribute in the "link" URL parameters. e.g.

http://www.domain.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=12&currency=USD	50.00

I'm thinking the price also does not need to be in the link URL?

I will take a stab and removing label attribute outpout from the feed generator code. Will test it out and the post if successful. Should be fairly straight forward, even for a non-coder type like me.

Yes an XML based RSS2/GoogleBase feed generator for Zen Cart with ability to define your own attributes would be a very cool thing.

Woody

[BlessIsaacola]

Woody, I have a feeling I misunderstood you. I thought you were talking about the currency showing which I disable by setting Show Default Currency to false.