Products don’t get imported unless they have “admin” in the store field, even though the import profile has the user select a store and says “Products will be added/updated to this store if ‘store’ column is blank or missing in the import file.”
So, i put admin everywhere and then imported, but then no products show up in the store unless I use “Manage Products” to assign them to a website. But that process seems to only work on a few products at a time (screens goes white and nothing gets updated if I try, say, 20 products), so it’s useless.
there are plenty of posts about this....it actually should be set to default...check out this post http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/6971/
I have some questions about importing images.
I have understood that I can import 3 DIFFERENT (or same) images (base, small and thumb) per product via csv import. Please tell if I am wrong? Is there a way to import more than 3 DIFFERENT images per product, or should I add images via admin panel?
Maybe I missed it, but in all these discussions of how to import products and upload images en masse I haven’t seen any analysis of what magento does with the images once they are on the server. If you FTP to the server you’ll see all kinds of craziness going on with very deep folder structures and what seems like arbitrary folder names. What the heck is it doing? Maybe some resizing and crazy caching? Why?
Also, if you export the data after importing, the location of the images is completely different from what you specified in the import file (at least it was with my tests).
Maybe I missed it, but in all these discussions of how to import products and upload images en masse I haven’t seen any analysis of what magento does with the images once they are on the server. .
I was wondering that very deep and strange directory structure as well, maybe I have missed something too. And I find something when I was exploring around. When I remove product with image, images are still there, deep under the /media directory. Whys that, is that right? :O
Has anyone figured out the directory structure for the product images? I am assuming someone I just dump all my images in there and put the directory in the Excel file to import??
@ Hoodgrown - In regards to the exclude button for images being checked as default when importing product, I have found a way around this. All you need to do is update your “store” column in your import file (CSV) from being admin -> default. This changes the product being imported from assigning to the backend “admin” to “store level view”. When I did this I also found that it automatically un-checks the “exclude” button on the images as well as assigning them to the store front.
This has saved me even more time in managing the products.
NB: You need to make the store listing on your import is whatever your store is named. The “default” name is the one out of the box.
Thanks for this great post, which has helped me a lot in getting my images into Magento… but in my experience they would never actually make it into the store pages. Worse, they would all be present in the admin tool, but took a lot of manipulation to make visible…
... until I poked around the database (following some pointers from other threads), and I can now make them all visible again by executing the two SQL statements below after upload.
UPDATE `catalog_product_entity_media_gallery_value` SET `disabled` = 0 WHERE 1;
UPDATE `catalog_product_entity_media_gallery_value` SET `disabled` = 1 WHERE `value_id` IN ( SELECT `value_id` FROM `catalog_product_entity_media_gallery` WHERE `value` LIKE "%_th%.jpg" OR `value` LIKE "%_sm%.jpg" );
The first statement makes all of the uploaded images visible, and the second one ‘disables’ the small images and thumbnails, to avoid them appearing in the media gallery also. The exact SQL will depend on your naming conventions: I am using JPG images with the suffixes “_sm” for small and “_th” for thumbnails.
Note the wildcards (%) between the suffixes and “.jpg” - this is to allow for the case where you have already run the upload in the past, and Magento adds a sequence number to make the name unique. If you are doing a full catalogue upload, you may prefer to remove all images from the /media/catalog/product directories before running your upload.
My tip for someone who might like to have control of which image/images will show in “More views”.
For example, if I want to have all 3 images, and only one image (base) should show on “More views”:
-First import products with all data, except field “image”.
*field “store” values should be set to “admin” for all products
*after this import product should be visible only in backend
-Then import same sheet containing only “store” and “sku” fields.
*set “store” to “default” for all products
*add field “image” where you can put images which you want to show on “More views”. If product doesn’t have image, it’s ok, just store default and product’s sku is enough to make it visible on front end.
This is how I managed to show products both front and backend and only base image in more views. I just tried it so I don’t be sure if there’s any problems with it, but it seems it’s working well and is quite easy.
I have done everything from first post (Richard H)
It work ok, but i have to add something:
- You can use one file for different image sizes (small, thumbnail, image). Magento resizes images to cashe folder itself.
- (For LINUX) You should check permissions for files in folder media/import befor start import. WebServer should have access to read and write files.
Does anyone know if store “default” is still working? I’m asking this because when importing records with store “default”, I got messages like “default is not correct field” or something like that.
happy
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