Some of the ad images/thumbs from other site?

[smog +]

At the moment i have a costumer who usually do a mass upload. So far i solved it via MYSQL CSV importing. As the AD side its working pretty neat, and used the same (they corporate logo) AD image.

The problem is they asked if its possible to do the "mass upload" for the images aswell (differet picture for different ads), (via the same MYSQL CSV import method)

Since the pictures/thumbnails need to be on the site storage and even if i change the picture location "picture.jpg" for example "http://costumersite/uploads/picture.jpg" @ MYSQL it doesnt show it for me.

I can ask them to create they own thumbnails/normal pictures and store it on they own ftp, but is it possible to point to that site/image?

Hope i was clear.

Thanks for any support!

[Lhotch +]

Images arent stored in the database, just their name is which is used in a URL to display the images. That being said, you can put the image name in the database as part of a csv upload BUT the process that uploads images during normal ad placement checks for duplicate names and assigns a new one if the original image name is in use. It also creates a thumbnail image and additionally resizes the original image.

Ive created scripts in the past that imported ads, checked for dup ads, uploaded photos, created thumbs etc etc but it was very site specific and complex. Also, depending on how many ads there are and how many images per ad the process can be pretty lengthy if your running on a low budget hosting plan.

[seymourjames +]

Yup - we do XML feeds which you can make from a csv file if you wish but you need dedicated hosting or a VPS as the process is CPU hungry. There are companies out there who will scrape the target web site and make an xml feed for you as well. Its a complicated process due to every site being different and therefore not cheap to develop and organize.

Bulk Uploading-Adverts Via Feeds

[Eric Barnes +]

I have also done this in the past and what I did was have them enter the full url to the image on their server and added that to the db. Then modified the script and if the image had "http" in it then just the show the full url to the image. That way I didn't have to store the images for them.

[smog +]

Originally Posted by Eric Barnes

I have also done this in the past and what I did was have them enter the full url to the image on their server and added that to the db. Then modified the script and if the image had "http" in it then just the show the full url to the image. That way I didn't have to store the images for them.

Thats what i wanna do. The problem is when i change the picture name in the database like picture.jpg to http://yoursite.com/images/picture.jpg it doesnt show me any pic only the text.

The product database sync is solved only the picture part is missing.

[Lhotch +]

Originally Posted by smog

Thats what i wanna do. The problem is when i change the picture name in the database like picture.jpg to http://yoursite.com/images/picture.jpg it doesnt show me any pic only the text.

The product database sync is solved only the picture part is missing.

Notice Eric said he MODIFIED THE SCRIPT.

[smog +]

Originally Posted by Eric Barnes

I have also done this in the past and what I did was have them enter the full url to the image on their server and added that to the db. Then modified the script and if the image had "http" in it then just the show the full url to the image. That way I didn't have to store the images for them.

But in that case there will be no thumbnails, only text. Right?

[Lhotch +]

Originally Posted by smog

But in that case there will be no thumbnails, only text. Right?

It all depends on what you do, this is not a one size fits all scenario. If the other site has thumbs AND full size images you can alter the script to display them from the other site. If the other site doesnt have thumbs, your site wont make them. You may be able to get away with using the full size images as thumbs by simply pointing to the full size image for the thumb and restricting the display size at the html markup level but this often results in pretty poor images.

[seymourjames +]

Basically the only real way to do this perfectly is by running the checkout process in some form for each advert so that you scale your images correctly. The csv file is converted easily into an XML feed as a first step. The XML Feeds is then processed where the images are uploaded using in this case our multiple image uploader module and scaled per norm. We have the modules to do this but it is a time consuming and expensive thing to do. This is because every site structure is different - categories, extrafields, etc. We do not sell these modules generally as every job (site) is a custom undertaking. Depending upon complexity of your site structure we may be able to convert what we have for your application.