Preparing the Datafeed for WebMerge

 

The FUN TO COLLECT (FTC) datafeed is available at www.funtocollect.net/szone. You must insert your affiliate Website ID after you download the datafeed. The feed includes approximately 4,000 collectible products and is updated about once a month. For this tutorial, however, I am using a sample FTC datafeed with 20 records. (See additional notes at the bottom of this page for editing the full FTC feed).

 

Each product constitutes one RECORD in the datafeed with the following ten FIELDS of information.

1)      PRODUCT NAME

2)      KEYWORDS

3)      DESCRIPTION

4)      SKU

5)      BUYURL

6)      THUMBNAIL IMAGE

7)      FULL IMAGE

8)      PRICE

9)      CATEGORY

10)    SUBCATEGORY

 

For database Newbies, here are some simple steps (using Excel) to prepare the FUN TO COLLECT datafeed for WebMerge. You can use other editor programs.

 

1) When you open the FTC feed using Excel (or a similar database editing program) it should look like this:

 

 

2) Add Header Row: The feed does NOT include a header row with the FIELD names. Adding a header row is optional, but helps to keep things straight when cleaning a datafeed. To add the header, use the Insert, Row command to insert a row at the top of the page. Then, enter the names of the fields at the top of each column. The resulting feed should look like this (colors are optional):

 

 

3) Insert your FTC Account ID: Select the BUYURL column, then use the Edit, Find, Replace commands to replace the text WEBSITEPID in this field with your FTC Account ID, e.g., replace WEBSITEPID with 1399340

 

4) Sort Records: Select all records (Control-A) then use the Data, Sort commands to sort the data by CATEGORY, SUBCATEGORY (& PRICE if you want the least expensive items to be displayed at the top of the page.

 

5) Export the data: Save the file as a tab-delimited .TXT file. You may receive several prompts/warnings during the save process. Simply select YES at each prompt. It is also a good idea to save the file a second time as an EXCEL file (assuming that is the editing program that you are using.

 

6) Additional Points when using the full FTC datafeed:

 

a)  A datafeed field name that includes a space (like PRODUCT NAME) will be changed by WebMerge to an underscore, i.e., PRODUCT_NAME. It is important, therefore, that WM tags in templates include the underscore, e.g., [WM-FIELD: PRODUCT_NAME]. Also, beware of trailing spaces in some BeFree databases where the fieldname "Secondary Categories " becomes "Secondary_Categories_" when imported into WebMerge.

 

b)  The SUBCATEGORY field includes a few records with a slash symbol (/). In order to use the CATEGORY or SUBCATEGORY field to create filenames as part of a multi-tiered Website, you must remove the “/”. WebMerge interprets the “/” to create subdirectories. To avoid this, simply replace each occurance of “/” with something else like “&”

 

c) Some SUBCATEGORY fields are blank. This can create a problem when creating multi-tier websites (it results in blank pages). To avoid this problem simply copy the CATEGORY field into any blank SUBCATEGORY.

 

d)  It is OK for the CATEGORY and SUBCATEGORY fields to be identical. However, it is NOT OK (repeat NOT OK) to have duplicates within the SUBCATEGORY field across different CATEGORIES.

 

NEXT:  Creating a TWO-Tier Website

 

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