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Export ZenCart products, Import Magento products Part 2

July 29th, 2010

Ian Roberts

Once your products are in Magento you will probably want to change settings.

For example all my products had a quantity of 0 and were not visible or included in searches. To get started quickly I want to change everything to in stock and display the items in the search and catalogue.

Once again we can do this by exporting and importing a file rather than go through everything individually.

Change 1 item to the way you want it by editing the first product on the page.

Catalogue>Manage products>Edit a product.

For one product I changed the following in the product edit from the menu on the right hand side:

General: Status to Enabled, Visibility to Catalogue, Search

Prices: Tax Class

Inventory: Quantity, In stock yes.

These are the basics but your item will still not show in Magento. You need to assign the product to your website, or store view even if you only have 1 website/view. This is by using the catalogue, products menu, ticking the box by the product and updating attributes then using the websites option.

I found a detailed explanation of it here: how to display products in Magento and assign products to a store view. They also show a video on where to click if you are not sure what to do.

This is another example of the strange quirks of Magento and how user unfriendly it is. Now we know how to do it and have a product in better shape, lets export the file.

System> Import/Export Profiles>Export All Products>Run Profile

The file is found on the server var/export.

The first product should now have all the values in the columns set up correctly so its simple a case of copy and pasting those values in excel.

My changes to copy and paste down the columns are :

B websites

T status, U tax_class_id, V is_recurring, W visibilty, X eenable_googlecheckout

As these are helpfully together in one block we can copy the whole row from T to X and paste is downwards. I changed all mine to:

Enabled Taxable Goods No Catalog, Search Yes

I have also taken this opportunity to once again paste the stock quantity in from the Zencart file. Ensure the is_in_stock column is all set to 1.

Save the file then re-import it as shown in previously in part 1 importing products to Magento from Zencart.

Products should now be in stock, enblesd, searchalble and showing on your site.

Next I shall be making categories and assigning products to categories using the same export/edit/import method.

Export ZenCart products, Import Magento products Part 1

July 27th, 2010

Ian Roberts

How to import/export products from ZenCart to Magento with a csv file?

Firstly, in ZenCart, export your catalogue using Easy Populate to a CSV file.

Admin>Tools>Easy Populate:

Download Complete tab-delimited .txt file to edit (Attributes Not Included)

In magento I have created a sample product just to see which headings are needed in the CSV file.

Create a category, product and export it to a CSV file in Magento.

System>Import/Export>Profiles>Export all Products>Run Profile

The file will be located in /var/export/. Now open the csv files from Magento and ZenCart to compare the fields. It’s just a case of copy and pasting in Excel the required columns from the zencart file to the magento file.

Some of these are obvious and can be easily copied and pasted from ZenCart file. For example v_products_model is the same as sku so i simply copy and paste the entire column into the magento file and rename it sku. The same goes for v_products_name_1 and name

NB: for some reason name in the magento file appears twice so needs to be pasted over twice. Mine was at column M name and again at column BM product_name (I’m sure it will be obvious why at some stage).

Some columns need to be copied and some do not – lets worry about that later in part 2. For now just get as much copied and pasted as you can, remembering to change the Magento column names if you paste over them.

Some of the obvious ones:

v_products_price – price

v_products_weight – weight

v_products_description_1 – description

v_products_quantity – qty

There is a strip of rows from AN (min_qty) to BG (enable_qty_increments) with 1 and 0 values in. For now I am going to copy these values in this row across and then paste it downwards to fill these values in for every product.

Lets leave it there for now. Some columns need to be filled in but we can do it later.

Important Values you must have:

For now the most important column is SKU. Every item needs a unique stock code so ensure there is an sku value for every product.
In the first column store – all values are admin
In the third column attribute all values are Default
In the fourth column type all values are simple

You can change some of these values later if needed but they have to be copied and pasted down to all products otherwise errors will occur and the products will not import.

Save the file in CSV format.

Upload it to Magento using the admin menu: System>Import Export> Profiles>Import all Products>

Upload the file. by browsing and then selecting Save and continue. Mine is called magentoproducts.csv .This uploads it to the server.

Now select the Run Profile menu on the right and in the file pull down menu should be your CSV file. Run the profile and wait – it is quite slow.

How did you do? I hope you got few errors. Mine worked pretty well and only rejected a few SKUs. I was pretty impressed at how straightforward this was.

In part 2 I will look at exporting, editing and re-importing the products file.

store

websites

attribute_set

type

category_ids

sku

has_options

status

tax_class_id

is_recurring

visibility

enable_googlecheckout

name

meta_title

meta_description

image

small_image

thumbnail

url_key

url_path

custom_design

page_layout

options_container

gift_message_available

price

special_price

cost

weight

description

short_description

meta_keyword

custom_layout_update

news_from_date

news_to_date

special_from_date

special_to_date

custom_design_from

custom_design_to

qty

min_qty

use_config_min_qty

is_qty_decimal

backorders

use_config_backorders

min_sale_qty

use_config_min_sale_qty

max_sale_qty

use_config_max_sale_qty

is_in_stock

low_stock_date

notify_stock_qty

use_config_notify_stock_qty

manage_stock

use_config_manage_stock

stock_status_changed_automatically

use_config_qty_increments

qty_increments

use_config_enable_qty_increments

enable_qty_increments

product_name

store_id

product_type_id

product_status_changed

product_changed_websites

Removing the Help Us to Keep Magento Healthy Message in Magento 1.4

July 18th, 2010

Ian Roberts

Before starting your edits turn off the cache.

The footer message is really annoying.

There is a footer function in admin to configure but the bug reporting message is coded into the files, not through the admin/backend.

I don’t know why the developers make it so difficult to use. I realise it is a community edition yet should a free product should be an example of what the paid for item can do. It should shine and stand out from the crowd, be a call to upgrade, a beacon for others to set their standards, the start of a new relationship? Not a pain that makes you want to look elsewhere.

However, I found the answer

/app/design/frontend/base/default/template/page/html/footer.phtml

Mine looks like this:

<div class=”footer-container”>
<div class=”footer”>
<div ?php echo $this->getChildHtml() ?>
</div>
</div>

Turn the cache back on
Why not take this opportunity to change the footer copyright to something of your choice?
This can be found in the system/configuration menu. Select design on the left then fill out the footer parts as required.

NB: I am currently testing the modern theme so to remove the magento bugs message edit the footer file in app\design\frontend\default\modern\template\page\html

Simply remove the whole ‘p class bugs’ line.

Changing Files in Magento

July 12th, 2010

Ian Roberts

Before changing code within the files of Magento turn off the cache.

Admin menu: System -> Cache Management.

Select All then use disble from the pull down menu. Submit.

Doing this ensure your changes are seen straight away rather than viewing an old page.

When you are finished with your editing don’t forget to turn the cache back on.

Moving to Magento

July 9th, 2010

Ian Roberts

Your competitor has a new website with a modern, individual look and many useful functions. You have an open source 2 or 3 column standard layout that looks like any other shopping site available and offers only basis functions Which website is a customer going to browse?

While osCommerce and ZenCart are not difficult to use or to understand how they work, are they rather dated and unable to do what customers require of a modern shopping website? I think its time to move on and I have chosen Magento.

It is a challenge. Magento works very differently and offers many more functions with more ways to customise than either ZenCart or osCommerce could hope to offer. The downside? It’s complicated.

Rather than go live, I have installed it at home on my own server in order to test and understand how to manage the front and admin side.

My aim: to run 3 websites using one installation of Magento with one database, offering a selection of products through sites that look and feel different.

I am starting with the free 1.4.1 version and I’ll keep you updated on how i get on. Hopefully if you are a Magento beginner like me it will help you too.

Multiple Pages and Website Optimiser In ZenCart Part2

June 20th, 2010

Ian Roberts

Google Optimiser gives a piece of code to insert at the beginning and end of the original ez-page and another piece of code at the end of the 2nd alternative ez-page. This can be easily copy and pasted using the ZenCart admin.

Now for the tricky part.

Having selected the add to shopping cart stage as the ‘measurement of success’ page i placed the tracking code in /includes/templates/YOURTEMPLATE/template/tpl_shopping_cart_default.php. This file will need to be copied from the template default and uploaded to the server in YOUR TEMPLATE folder.

This file has 2 functions: display the cart when an item is added and display the cart when it is empty. So, to measure page success when something is added to the cart, the Google code needs to go in the middle of the file before the ‘cart is empty’ function.

I inserted the code around line 174 in tpl_shopping_cart_default.php just after the shipping estimator section as shown below.

Once edited upload the file to your server and save an additional temporary copy to your desktop.

Validating the file.

Google will not be able to validate the performance success page so this needs to be done manually with the saved copy of tpl_shopping_cart_default.php as illustrated below.

Verify all the information in the optimiser and let your experiment begin.

It may need some tweaking but now the pages are in place I can edit the ez-page easily through ZenCart admin section as long as I don’t disturb the Google script allowing experimentation with the page content.

Multiple Pages and Website Optimiser in ZenCart Part1

June 19th, 2010

Ian Roberts

Having braved google analytics, the bounce rate of an ez-page is high and I want to change it. But what to?

Well, by looking at how and why people visit a page and, from the overlay, where they click I can make assumptions at why there are there and now i want to meet their expectations.

But hold on. How will I know my new content will be an improvement? Why not offer multiple variations of the same ZenCart page and see which one is more successful?

Once you have a Google analytics account you can go directly to Google Website Optimiser and set up testing. I am using a simple A/B page to begin with.

One page is made in EZ pages and consists of the normal, but revamped, page. The other is again an ez-page but one that google will redirect to rather than publicly linked and clickable.

Having created two pages and selected a ‘results’ page (i used adding an item to the shopping cart as a result to measure page performance http://allgiftsdirect.co.uk/index.php?main_page=shopping_cart) it is time to add the tracking code. That stage is a little more tricky so I’ll cover it in part 2.

Get Serious About SEO: 3 Meta Descriptions in ZenCart

June 15th, 2010

Ian Roberts

Previously I briefly covered the basics of meta descriptions. Here I focus specifically on Zen Cart and how it can help you.

I haven’t manually assigned meta descriptions and keywords for each product, that is too time consuming, but I have for product categories. Google picked up those changes very quickly so it it absolutely worth doing.

In your categories menu you will see, on the right hand side, something like this:

The orange symbol shows the tag has been manually configured, the black shows it is on automatic. Doing it manually is so much better and from the example above there is one category to configure so lets do that now.

There are 3 boxes to complete: the first is a customised title for the page which should reflect its content. The second is for keywords which should reflect the products within that category (or subcategories if you use them). The third box is for the meta description.

This is what could be displayed when people search for a particular key word. If your keywords and content match up to a users search term then the meta description may be shown in the search engine results, otherwise only the page title will show.

Maximum characters displayed (by Google) in a meta description is 150 so don’t go over this.

My previous post offers ideas on what makes a good meta description.

It is too important to leave to Zencart to auto display. Ensure for each category and sub category you manually configure your (meta) title, keywords and description. It is so worthwhile.

Update: Don’t forget /includes/languages/english/YOUR TEMPLATE/meta_tags.php

and then add a line for each of your EZ-pages

define(‘META_TAG_DESCRIPTION_EZPAGE_2′,’your description here’);
define(‘META_TAG_DESCRIPTION_EZPAGE_3′,’your description here’);

and so forth for the title, description and keywords for each EZ-page you are using. Google loves it.

NB: When editing meta titles, descriptions and keywords for your categories or pages all 3 fields must be filled in otherwise the meta fields are not complete and will be ignored.