Google Base manual feed

[gene]

I wanna submit my product to Google Merchant Center using manual upload. Currently my Shopsite backoffice couldn't Send Feed successfully. It just hang up. And we need to upgrade our server for this.

But now, I wanna do a manual upload. Where is the Google Base feed located so I can just copy the contents and manually uploading it to Google Merchant Center?

[robm]

In your ShopSite data directory:

log/froogle-bulk.xml

[gene]

The xml file is still the same as the Feed Last Submitted link. It is not updated.

[robm]

You will need to still click the submit button in the backoffice to have the xml file be updated. You can put "fake" FTP information in the configure section so the file is not actually uploaded to Google directly.

[Jim]

At what point is the feed failing? If it is failing during the generation process then only a faster server or one with a higher time out would allow that phase to complete.

You might try reducing the number of products that are included in the feed to half or one third of your products. Generate the feed for each part and copy the feed results to a different file. Then in a text editor cut out the product portion of the feed from each file and consolidate them into a single file and manually submit that file.

[gene]

The send feed is failing in the Generating XML Data file... I know that we will require faster server, but as of the moment I just wanna have all my products include in the feed and manually upload it to Google Merchant Center.

How can I generate a feed by half or one third of the file?

[gene]

Can I generate a feed part by part?

[Jim]

LIst all products under Products and select all of them. Click the Power Edit button, and select the Google Base field in the left select box. Check the Global radio button below the select boxes. Click Proceed. Uncheck the Include in data feed checkbox. and save changes

Next select a quantity, say 1/3 of the products like those starting with A to H. Click the Power edit again and choose the Google Base field and check the Global radio button option. Click Proceed and this time check the Include in data feed check box and save changes.

Now go to Merchandising > Google > Product Search > Configure > Setup a bogus user name so the feed will definitely fail. You need to do this so a partial feed doesn't actually get sent to google or it will be replaced by the next partial feed.

Send feed. The feed will generate a file which you can copy by clicking the Cancel button and then clicking the Product Search button again and then clicking the date link after the Last Feed Submitted label. On the next screen click the top link "Click here to view the original datafeed". The xml for the feed will be displayed to the screen.
Save that first screen to a file.

Now go back to the products screen and repeat the first 2 steps above of selecting the products and unchecking the ones that have the Google Base option selected and then select the next group of products (I to P or what ever you need) and check the Google feed for those products and repeat the steps to submit the feed. This time when you display the xml feed you will need to select the product portion of the feed and insert it at the end of the products in the file that you saved. Note that each product in the feed begins with an <entry> tag and ends with a </entry> tag. The last tag in the file must be the </feed> so make sure you insert before that tag.

Now repeat the above for the rest of the products until you have them all in the one file. Rename the file you have been adding to to froogle-bulk.xml and ftp the file manually to Google.

This will take a little work to do but it should get you past the server timeout for generating the feeds since fewer products would be in each generation.

[gene]

This procedure still didn't work for me. Generating XML Data file still hung up when Send Feed.

[Jim]

What is the server process time allowed to a particular process. (find out from your host).

The options are:
1. Increase the process time on the server.
2. Get a faster server
3. Do as I suggested in breaking the number of products included in an one feed to a smaller number and then manually create the file from the small sections and then manually send the feed.
4. You _might_ be able to create a custom page and product template that would generate the feed through a publish rather than the Google feed. The page template would include just the header information as in the xml file and the closing </feed> tag. The product information would output each of the required fields in the <entry> ...</entry> tags.

Not sure what other options would be available.

[BFChris]

I made a feed for another feed site once using a custom page and product template.

With a little PHP, I actually got it to generate a text file. XML should be no different.