Bulk Uploading

Is there a way to do bulk uploading to PowerStore 3. I have seral thousand products and don't want to upload them all individually.

Thanks for your help.

Uploading products in bulk is possible, but you will have to make sure you insert the proper information for each of the fields in the database. This can get quite complicated if you are adding different options and categories. To bulk upload you will have to manually insert the products into the database.

The best way to get started on this is to insert some of the products manually and see how they are inserted into the database. Then you can insert the rest of the products. Since you have so many products, it is probably best that you use simple options if you are going to add options if possible. Using the simple options means that any combination of the options will not modify the price of the product.

I have done that. I created a csv file and uploaded roughly 5500 products directly into the database. I put the categories in manually then created another csv to upload the linkage between products and categories. This is where it fell apart and I have not resolved it yet. Although from admin mode, checking on the products I could see that they were in the proper categories but in user mode it would not find any products when you clicked on a category. It would just freeze for 5 minutes while searching the return nothing. Another issue you may have is that in search view the text size is fine but in detail view I find it too small. This has to be handled manually for each product. There is no uploadable database field that I could find that changes font size on the description and these are not controlled by a csv but rather within CMS.

So yes you can easily get all the products in but as far as I've been able to work out you will have to assign them to categories manually. I've gotten pretty good at importing though so if you get stuck I'd be happy to help you with what I know.

If no products show up when you click on a category, it may be because they're not available online? Since you have so many products, it takes a while to search the database to find the ones in that category.

Are you able to email a sample of the form you use to enter your details into? Or attach it to a post?

The products are there and work fine. If I click on show all products they show up almost immediately. It's only if I click on any category that they fail to show up. It gets busy for 5 minutes then finally comes back empty. There is something about uploading the ps3_productcategories that does me in.

To answer the question of the form for uploading the data it's a csv spreadsheet. You do this through phpMyAdmin on the server. You will find your Power Store database there and there are three main tables that need to be filled. The ps3_categories I did not upload but rather did that one manually. The next one is the ps3_products table. Opening this table will show you the fields or columns that need to be populated. Ignore the first one, ProductID. That's a system number. All the others have to be filled out. I tried it with only a few columns intending to later go back and fill in other columns but I could only get it to append the data. So I had to wipe it out and start over. I'm sure there's a way to fill out part of the table and go back later and do the rest but that knowledge is beyond me.

One of the things I learned is to make sure I put a 1 in the ProductLive column. The point of uploading is so you don't have to go to each and every product to set its status.

Using a spreadsheet you head each column with the name of the column heading from the database table. You then fill in the information, save as a csv and in phpmyadmin open the table you want the information in ps3_products and import.

The other table you want to condiser if you number in the thousands of items is the ps3_productcateroties table. This links products to categories os if you don't import this into the database you'll have to visit each product individually to connect to categories and if you're going to do that then you might as well do it all manually.

This is where I had trouble. I can see this table populated and in Power Store admin I, checking products randomly they are in the proper categories. However as I said before my store did not function beyond that point. I may try this again with a smaller table just to see if I can figure out what's going on but I'm no longer worried about it.

Creating the ps3_productcategories csv spread sheet is a lot of fun. It combines the CategoryID from the categories table and the ProductID from the products table. The CategoryID is a sequential number applied to the categories and subcategories in the order they are entered into the table. You then have to take this number and put in in a column beside each product that is in this category. It took me a day and a half, with 5500 items to get it all filled in and correct.

Good luck with it.

Thanks for the help with all that info. That is great.

I have been searching through all the files to try and find the file that comes in the store but I can not find it. Do you know where it is hiding? :)

Also has any of the staff been able to help you with the issue in uploading all these items and not being able to get them working?

Hi Ronald,

Glad I could help.

"I have been searching through all the files to try and find the file that comes in the store but I can not find it. Do you know where it is hiding?"

I'm sorry, you've lost me, I'm not sure what file you're talking about. Give me a hint and maybe I can help you.

I never did get a resolution and have given up on this particular store. I like Power Store, though it's not as easily customizable as I would like. For a small store of up to a few hundred products I would definitely use it. But I needed features not available like gift certificates and electronic goods, affiliates, multiple prices, and the ability to import several thousand items. :-)

I hear you on that. i have one supplier with over 5800 items and would love the ability to have an import feature.

The file I was referring to is the Stock CSV spreadsheet/database which would house all the items if I was to manually upload them. I figure if I can find that sheet then I could just add all the item into that and it should be able to upload them onto the site. Does that make sense.

What I am trying to do is find the area/file of the site which when I would usually manually imput all of the data through the website (one-by-one) it would be saved to. Then I could Copy and paste the parts of the files I have and it should be workable.

I am a little bit anoyyed at WebAssist as this should be something that their staff know how to help with and also they should be able to offer this as apart of their program. I did suggest it for future versions of PowerStore. I have 6 stores right now online and if they offered Bulk uploading it would be of high value!!! I would pay more for that ability!!!

Thank you again for all your help!

Hey Ronald,

There is no import sheet within Power Store that I know of. Perhaps a technical specialist can chime in here. The sheet I showed you was one I created from the database. I did my upload through the admin area of the database. That shows you which fields are available to be populated. You don't have to fill them all out but you can't go back later and add another field, that I know of.

I totally agree with you on the uploading feature, this should be included in the product. The store I ended up using has that and after trying to get 5500 products into Power Store, let me tell you I would never do a large store without that feature. It's still a lot of work making sure your csv files are properly set up but with proper uploading built into the product yuou can go back and change or append easily.

So as far as I know you are on your own. You have to create a csv according to the fields in the spread sheet I attached earlier or the database itself. Make sure you don't miss any important fields or you have to manually add them later. (If there is another way I would love for Web Assist to fill me in.) You can also create a csv for your categories if you like. The problem I experienced was when I tried to upload a csv to link all the products to their respective fields. It took me a day to get it right and the darn thing wouldn't work anyway. So you may end up having to do this all by hand anyway but if there is another solution I would love to hear about it.

Let me know how it turns out.