Template Data Feed exports your product and category data in the file formats required for multiple data feed submissions (Google Base (Froogle), Google Sitemap XML, Yahoo, Shopzilla, etc.) for inclusion in their ecommerce search directories and shopping portals. Like our other modules, this module is licensed by domain, so if you have multiple stores in a single domain, you only need one license for all the stores in that domain. This module is for MIVA Merchant 5.x. We also have the corresponding module for 4.14-4.2x versions of Merchant.
This data feed plugin module creates the datafeed flat file directly from your admin
Frequent, no hassle submissions keep your data current
Eliminates the need to copy product and category databases from the server to your PC to produce a flat file export with software such as MS Excel
Uses your data as it exists within admin at the moment it is run
Exclude/include export of specific products (by code, price, weight)
Control over category insertion
Exclude/include export from specific categories
Include a table for each export that matches your category codes to the shopping index's category system (no need to edit data into each product's custom fields to hold the shopping index category)
If you are using MIVA's custom fields module, the additional field data can be used to populate additional fields and/or added to the description. No need to purchase an additional fields module since the customfld.mvc module is built right into MIVA Merchant.
Removes html from your product descriptions
Included in the module are features to eliminate timeouts when generating the data feed export of large numbers of products
Exports to your documents directory rather than your data directory for ease of capture and transmittal
You can create directory style and search friendly links in the feed to match those in your store
Template layout allows you to set the product data in the order you want it using tokens to dynamically insert the data at the position you want it
You can even create xml feeds or list your specials in a specific category for RSS output by this module
The module comes with five (Google Base (Froogle), Google Sitemap XML, Yahoo, Shopzilla, PriceGrabber) pre-defined formats already configured
You can create more based on your search index's specifications fairly easy.
Minor changes are needed for your url or search friendly links
You'll can create custom product fields and assign values in them for the Shopzilla, Yahoo and many other feeds to meet their additional data needs
Many ecommerce search services are not free, so you'll need to create accounts and pay applicable fees prior to feed submissions (Google is free)
You can even use this module to submit bulk uploads to the free Google Base which lets you define the columns you are going to submit by using the tokens available in the module
I put several feeds on my site as example output. Contact me for the urls if you want to see them. They demonstrate some of the features:
Rearrange fields to fit the format of the shopping search index
Include custom fields not found in the standard MIVA Merchant products database (year, actors, director, etc.)
Include category matching so if the index uses a different or additional categorization, you can meet their requirements (Yahoo uses your category and theirs, Shopzilla has their own category ID system)
Steps
Apply to the search directory, e.g. Google Base, Yahoo, Shopzilla, PriceGrabber, and others to be included in their program
Install this module and run it
FTP/upload resulting flat file to the applicable search indexes
The module currently fully supports the mivasql configuration of MIVA Merchant 5. It also supports MySQL as long as load balancing has the data stored on the single MySQL server and
permissions are set correctly on the data
directories. This would be the case in most of the server setups. If you are using Merchant 5.x and your host is web.com, you will not be able to use this module due to the way they configure their servers. There are no known issues with
other hosts.
Compressed screen shots below are expanded at the slide show link on this page.
Feed names and last date run displayed in admin
Configuration settings can customize each export
Export xml (like Google sitemap) or one product per line txt feeds
Exclude specific products from the export
Exclude specific categories and match your categories to the shopping index categories
Report finish with convenient link for easy transfer to your PC without need for FTP
